# Unfolding NUXUI **Author:** xsten **Date:** January 14, 2022 **Source:** https://paragraph.com/@sten/unfolding-nuxui **Publication:** Paragraph (formerly Mirror) --- *I began describing Nuxui, but ended up writing about Nic Hamilton's other work.* [Nuxui](https://nuxui.art/), Nic's new NFT series, is made of 333 compositions of strange (yet familiar) objects, mechanic and organic fragments, tactile materials, and thick atmospheres. The arrangements grow and decay across the spectrum of the series. They are overlaid with still and moving blurs and held within the frame of a digital viewport. The pieces are captivating - decorative talismans / liquifying circuitboards. The elements of the compositions - *objects, material, atmosphere, viewport, growth + decay, spectrum* - are common threads in Nic's work. Trying to describe Nuxui means following and unravelling these threads. I scroll distractedly through his retired tumblr to see the 3D forms and visual atmospheres evolve and layer up across a ten year back-catalogue. Nic opines generously on twitter and discord but doesn't talk earnestly about his work, so I open the archives to remind myself. Scrolling right down to the bottom of the page, a video of scratchy 3D and pixels is a visual accompaniment for [IWAAD](https://vimeo.com/41194890), a track by London producer Actress. Nic sent it to Actress like, *hi, I made this*. Since this meeting, his visuals have often augmented Actress' music videos, record art and concerts. ### So, there is another layer here beyond the visual components: Music community and social dynamics, growing a solo creative practice into shared culture, making things and connecting. ### What are the strange objects? Fragments from a rocky wilderness and from an electronics factory. Each piece is a precious artifact or discarded detritus, or both. Some are relics of a hyper-real still life, some are basic forms that have been stretched / squished / fractured / carved. The 3D generated forms are the mechanics of digital model production; the subtractive or additive actions that create concave or convex contours, sharp and rounded terrain, respecting *and* warping the rules of gravity and space. The strange objects have a real-world tactility. Elemental materials �� shiny metal, cool stone, powdery chalk, molten oily plastic, salt, opaque resin, porosity, gloss, rough, matte, liquid, heavy; like you can pick them up in your palm and feel their density and surface. They are born digital, but anchored to the tactile IRL world of urban and natural landscapes. ### Some atmospheres in Nic's work: - A [darkened house](https://vimeo.com/104827607), like a forbidding display home, thick smoke rolls through the rooms and coloured light breaks through, laser-like. - A [forest](https://vimeo.com/359215221), dappled light, mossy rocks, hanging mist, sunlight glistening on stone steps covered in blood. - [Under water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdPmzUJXJRY), a flooded post-modernist atrium, Rodin's *The Thinker* submerged with smooth marble glistening while office-palm fronds move in the current, bubbles bubble and a school of fish flickers. - Golden rays of low-angled light penetrate a [disquieting space](https://vimeo.com/218412785) overlooking clouds and a smoking city. - Kinetic particles synch across giant LED screens on a hot late summer night in a dusty field under a really wide sky. The atmospheres are immersive multi-sensory landscapes from nature, city, and club, with music at their core. Nic calls them *visual accompaniments* because they look and feel like the music. The synchronicity between the visual and the sound is a kind of mutual construction, without one exogenous to the other. (In other words, a collaboration). The origins of most of Nic's collaborations are global, remote, and online, including through social links forged on the music forums of the early 2000s where he was *prolific*. A *screen* is therefore an intuitive 3D/2D viewport device used in his work. Screens are added as frames and surfaces in his still and moving images. They function like a stage-set to control focus and composition within uncontrollable and multiple viewing contexts (printed, on a phone, a computer, various video platforms, in landscape / portrait, in an endless sea of tiny squares). ### The screen contains the image or video and anchors the way it is viewed and understood in the free-flowing all-sharing web. Then, the screen is a surface layered into the composition: a divider, a glass wall, a window, through which we see a landscape; an aesthetic tool that adds depth and perspective to an image; a frame within a frame. ### *Growth + decay* are mapped across the NUXUI spectrum. The 333 pieces develop and diminish: like the wax and wane of an obsessive creative process; or the life cycle of a (digital) organism; or the evolution of a city. Through the spectrum, forms grow complex, multiply, accumulate detail; then simplify, shed, and quiet. From the very first image we're given, we're already aware of the forces at work: growth and decay are embedded within the formal qualities of the work and articulated through its deep materiality. NUXUI unfolds Nic's practice and the many threads that compose it. Its 333 images are more than a series of renders: they are a slow map of a creative arc, and a document of ongoing digital culture.