Language - Image - Sound

My practice involves finding pathways from one medium to another. I uses experience to make text, vocalized text to create recorded sound files, spectral analysis to generate projected imagery, midi bass to trigger text samples, and triggered text samples to generate spectrographic imagery.

"A sound spectrum is a representation of a sound...in terms of the amount of vibration at each individual frequency. It is usually presented as a graph of either power or pressure as a function of frequency."

Finding pathways from one medium to another evolves with the abandonment of static boundaries, categorization, differentiated thinking over unified thinking. Images induce memories, associations, symbolism and language equivalences. Adding or reducing layers of sound that accompanies imagery (such as during a video, film, or performance in a room of paintings), the tone, warmth, weight, sense of light, and interpretation shift and morph. To switch and interplay between typically separate mediums can at times confuse, frustrate, seem chaotic - but it is from conflict, new solutions arise. Boundaries are challenged. Mediums co-mingle and gestate ideas which thrive on newly shared borders. There are creative answers that only fit unusual questions. It is in responding to that which is unseen, unheard, unknown and intuitively guiding technology through methods that utilize all necessary aspects of the machine we are organized by and which we aim to organize, that new shapes are formed.

A vital machine aesthetic - through pixels and samples - occurs by the way artists spur, capture, warp, destroy, destroy again, to create. To see a tree and record it to digital tape, capture this data to a digital flow of pixels, then arrive at a result which depicts more or less a rendition of the 'authentic' tree does not allow an artist to share their vision or experience of the tree. Ultimately, the machine and its nature is what allows the creative person to find and express their human nature. Pixels and samples are as cells to a newborn. A digital recording is fundamentally digital, therefore available to all expressive liberties one desires to take upon it. What one does with their pixels is entirely a personal matter. In shaping a spectrographic image, one can watch for density, speed, palette, and size, all of which are entirely independent of the meaning, feeling, memory, and associations embedded in the sound file. A transformation from one kind of experience (sonic) to another (visual) occurs, boundaries typically simple and restricted, are broken, freed, and complicated. Likewise, associations, memories and experiences are transcoded into strings of words - through writing - which embodies text and then sound. Text sounds can be played, analyzed, and produce imagery, and imagery embodies and allies with language and sound. Therein lies a fulcrum for infinite exploration and expression.

Nisi Jacobs works with video, sound, language, music, digital imagery and processing. The basis of her work involves finding pathways from one medium to another. Jacobs collaborates on installation and performance with composer/sound artist, Michael J. Schumacher (DRAW); other collaborations have been with poet Bruce Andrews, violinist Tom Chiu, sound artist David Gailbraith, and percussionist James Gailbraith (Padtech), sound artist Andre Goncalves, indie band Aeroplane Pageant, etc.

Jacobs has presented work at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, Jeu De Paume Museum in Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, SONAR festival at the Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, CalArts Film/Video Cinematheque, The Alejandro Otero Museum, the National Cinématheque of Spain, Maya Stendhal Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University of England, Tribeca Film Festival 2003, River-To-River Festival, and Hong Kong Film Festival, Happy New Ears Festival, Ear to the Ear Festival, among other venues. Jacobs performed live video with pop bands at The Bowery Ballroom, PIANOS NYC, The Living Room, Mercury Lounge, Music Hall of Williamsburg and curated video/film in 5.1 surround sound for SYNCH FESTIVAL in Greece, The Phatory Gallery, and HOWL Film Festival in NYC. The soundtrack for DISHING was listed as KQED radio's on-line choice of the month for EARSHOT: LISTEN TO A FILM WITHOUT PICTURES, ‘02. Nisi teaches video and sound editing at NYU and Soho Editors in NYC, and is an Apple Certified trainer in Apple's Final Cut Studio. Jacobs assists Ken Jacobs as video-sound editor. Among the many works she has assisted in editing, STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH, a 4-part internationally distributed documentary, won The Douglas Edwards Experimental/Independent Film/Video Award by the LA Film Critics in 2005, enjoying screenings in Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Holland, Hong Kong, MoMa, Lincoln Center, London Film Festival, and Slovenia.

Jacobs holds a BFA in Painting from The Cooper Union. Her videos have screened in festivals at the Jeu De Paume Museum in Paris, Tribeca Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, Maya Stendhal Gallery, SONAR festival at the Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, CalArts Film/Video Cinematheque, The Alejandro Otero Museum, National Cinématheque of Spain, and Manchester Metropolitan University of England, among others. Two videos opened this summer's River-to-River film festival in Lower Manhattan and she and sound artist, Michael Schumacher, shared a commission to create a multi-channel audio and multi-screen video performance at the 2008 'Ear to the Earth Festival' at Judson Church. Schumacher's recent CD release entitled 'Weaves', distributed by En’tract, includes two videos for two tracks on the disk.