---

---

---

---

Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds

---

---

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

Film-maker opens the doors of perception

July 30, 2002

Cutting-edge film-maker and artist, Nichola Bruce, has received a NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) fellowship of up to £75,000 to research and create, through digital media, a sketchbook of works looking at the themes of memory and how we see.

Hastings-based Nichola is a skilled film/programme maker who has already created well-researched, challenging and entertaining films. Her first and only feature film to date, I could read the sky (GB2000), was a significant festival success and was described by Screen International as "restoring faith in the artistic possibilities of cinema". Soon after its release she was described as one of ten international digital directors to watch by Variety Magazine.

There have been many scientific advances in understanding perception. With the accessibility of the digital medium, it is now a practical possibility for Nichola to study the subject and express it as it is seen visually, rather than as it is written. She has a rare fluidity with a video camera, which becomes an extension of her hand and eye, and enables her to paint in video.

We are now living in an era of the 'manipulated cinematic image' and there is a substantial amount of experimentation with digital possibilities. The digital media are still a relatively new terrain for artists. Nichola, who has been filming digitally since 1996, can now expand her use of the medium through a considered exploration of all that it offers to artists and film-makers. Her approach enables the expression of the complex and the unusual through the moving image.

The Fellowship, over four years, will enable Nichola to develop a more coherent body of short works alongside the development of a major project, which relate directly to her particular cinematic interests.

Jeremy Newton, NESTA Chief Executive, said:

"In the pursuit of excellence, NESTA will not hesitate to take risks, backing the brightest and the best in the belief that they provide the foundations for all our creative futures."

Nichola will produce a series of films that help define universal concepts of perception, such as the basics of planes, perspective and colour. She will explore complex areas, such as attention spans (number of images possible to injest/closeness of image etc), emotional states (universal images of fear, euphoria), and conditions of seeing such as daydreams, hallucinations, etc. (how we can run parallel visions, or induce perceptions changes).

NESTA is keen to support a recognised artist and film-maker whose experiments with digital technology could create and inspire new work that may have repercussions throughout the sector.

National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA)