1. Carsten Nicolai Visual Music Artist
By: Deanna Barber, Shauna Dunn, and Brian Chu

2. Biography Born in 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany
In 1984, he worked as a gardener and later moved on to study landscape design in Dresden, Germany ( )
In 1999, he founded his label Raster-Noton

3. As Noto
Nicolai preforms under the stage names of Alva Noto, Noto, and Aleph-1
He produces music in the electronica, glitch, and microsound genres
His equipment includes: His laptop, synthesizers, keyboards, percussion instruments, and guitars
Noto frequently preforms with other German Music groups such as Cyclo, Opto, and Signal

4. What is Visual Music?
Visual music also refers to systems which convert music or sound directly into visual forms, such as film, video or computer graphics, by means of a mechanical instrument, an artist's interpretation, or a computer.

5. Techniques
Music production, live performance, sound art, sculpture, video, and curating.
Nicolai’s work emphasizes processes and working methodologies, the intersections of art and science, and the tensions between polarities.
In his work Nicolai often engages with mathematical patterns such as grids and codes, as well as error, randomness, and self-organizing structures. (Algorithmic Visual Music)

6. Installations and Shows
α (alpha pulse)
Presented during Art Basel 2014 in Hong Kong.
In this show synchronized, pulsing light was broadcasted across the faces of the International Commerce Centre.
It is an experimental construction that looks at the effects of audiovisual stimulation on the human perception. In accordance with scientific research, the work is based on the principles of neural feedback on pulsating light sources.
It was an interactive exhibit in which viewers could access an app made by Nicolai which provided the audio for the installation.

7. (Cont.)
unidisplay Specially presented and modified for display at SonarPLANTA (2014)., unidisplay was created to examine human perception through different visual effects which were made to interfere with it. The installation unfolds against a long projection wall in a mirrored room, thus visually expanding, “like a universe”. The basic visual – made up of graphic translations of various units of time measurement – acts as a world clock and evokes the notion of inter- twining time, between past, present, and future.

8. (Cont)
unicolor Presented at the Sapporo International Arts Festival (2014) unicolor is a sequel of works displaying a collection of visualizations. already existing ancestors for unicolor are the works univrs/uniscope version (2010) and unidisplay (2012). The installation unidisplay offers an examination of semiotics and the laws of perception. In contrast to unidisplay, the installation unicolor examines the psychology of color perception based on studies by several scientists and other visual artists. unicolor operates with a number of 24 modules that examine a special color perception. one module, for example, is the perception of RGB color filters that move in a high velocity sequence and visualize the process from slow to fast, thus evoking an optical effect of a grey surface in the visitor’s perception.

9. Works Cited
"Carsten Nicolai | Carsten Nicolai | The Creators Project." The Creators Project. Web. 7 Oct "Carsten Nicolai." Carsten Nicolai. Web. 7 Oct "Carsten Nicolai . α (alpha) Pulse." Vimeo Web. 8 Oct "Carsten Nicolai - Unidisplay." Vimeo Web. 8 Oct "Carsten Nicolai - Unicolor." Vimeo Web. 8 Oct