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Liners is a performance that revolves around a simple graphical idea: a line which starts and never ends. Custom software seamlessly mixes together a large series of live and pre-recorded linear expression into a ceaseless, evolving, whimsical landscape, in which one line leads to the next. From a line of simple pixels, to a hand drawn line, to a horizon line, to a line of text, liners is not at all about getting to a final destination, but completely about the delight of traveling.

paul klee says "taking a line for a walk", we want to take it for a run.

Liners is created by zach lieberman and theo watson, along with the help of a huge group of amazing collaborators

You can see liners performed at OFFF festival, barcelona, and in Madrid at LaDinamo (as part of the interactivos workshop):

As we were working on the project, it became clear to us that we would love to involve other people in the process, so we emailed a ton of people and asked them for help. The first performance of Liners was at the OFFF festival, and these amazing people rushed to get us line movies under a very, very tight deadline. We are completely indebted to their generosity and amazing creativity:

erik sjodin / meng-han ho / evan harper / gabor papp / antony kitson / jacqueline steck / jeff robin manalo / nae han / chris sugrue / geraldine / pacucci jb / miguel rivero / dietmar suoch / claudio midolo / andrea lira / sven travis / emily gobeille / beatriz viñas gudin / claudio midolo / cynthia solomon / pongpan suriyapat / jaime munárriz / tanner wheat / monia / andre goncalves / yuko mohri / oxmox / miriam parchwitz / andrea di lupo / fiezi / e edwin jones / philipp steinweber / dot&ikeuchi lab / malu teodoro / wolf - berlin / andrea di lupo / tine / kanta horio / Yolanda Spínola / gema alba / Woeishi Lean / gabor papp / Sofie Schweizer / javier candiera / ricard marxer / hernâni & loida / carlos ruiz balaguera / rainer kohlberger / jesus cao

corrections? omissions? --

answers to some questions. If you have any, just ask!

What makes it a performance?

Well, perhaps performance is the wrong word. Maybe demo is better? We are controlling some aspects of the movement live (how zoomed in the camera is, how fast the line advances, how the camera moves along the line, etc) but for the most part the software runs on it’s own. It’s also a kind of social performance, since the work is completely based on the work of a wide group of people. We do like the idea of running it live, even if it doesn’t require much input on our end. In the future we may expand on live-performed ideas in addition to the content people provided.

How does it work?

We have written software in c++, using openframeworks (openframeworks.cc) that mixes the movies live. The software consists of two parts, one is called the "annotater" and what it does is annotates line movies, allowing us to quickly mark the motion of the line across the movie. The anoation is saved as xml. The second piece of software takes the movies (along with their annotations) and mixes them so that the line continues from movie to movie.

Is it opensource?

Hell yeah! Currently you can download the "screensaver" version of the software, (with movies - approx 85mb): pc | mac

What’s up with the narrative?

In the OFFF performance, we just finished the code / tagging movies minutes before performing. It was really a ton of work. So when we performed, many of the movies were in fact in alphabetical order as opposed to some kind of choice. In later performances, we organized them movies a bit more thematically.

Did you use all the movies people sent you?

Unfortunately we couldn’t. Some of the movies we couldn’t play and some we just couldn’t organize in time. We used about 90-95% of what was sent. If you sent something and it didn’t appear in the performances so far - it's completely accidental. Likely it will work it in to later versions of liners.

Will you still accept movies?

Yes ! the project isn’t over - we are planning future performances of liners. You can still upload movies: here . In the future we will likely just use a tag for youtube/blip/veoh that allows you to upload footage on those sites.

Can I run liners at home?

Yes! This version here runs like a "screen saver" and picks a completely random order for movies. It’s a huge download, so please take care. You can download the apps here: pc | mac