Abstractions: A New Visual Language Webseries

[Music] [Music] one of the best things about finding new webseries is the feeling I get when I discover something really different I love narrative storytelling but there are so few series that actually deliver on it and even fewer who engage in really mysterious autistic forms of relaying a story or an idea finding content that feels like a territory of David Lynch and Donnie Darko is difficult finding anything abstract that really speaks to a person a conveys emotion with engaging methods not commonly used as difficult and yet the latest night vision entry appropriately titled abstractions does exactly that what is an abstraction by definition it's known as the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events as well as freedom from representational qualities and arts thoughts and feelings visualized are what lay at the core of abstractions and it's up to the viewer to figure out what its creator is attempting to convey abstractions is like no other series that I've ever covered this channel is one that poses a very different challenge to a viewer can you solve the psychology memories and focus of the uploader through a puzzle box of mixed media and in exploring the uploaders heart in mind what emotions feelings and thoughts are raising yours those are the goals in this realm of YouTube see if you can find the core mystery by deciphering the language of the uploader and see the results of exploration graded in yourself the series opens with a video titled disinclined uploaded in September the description reads to climb again to fall again and already there's a challenge inherent in breaking through to the full concept of the video watching it through the first time you'll hear some very interesting audio samples followed by a raised bridge tuggin Blais statements flash by the screen jitters and were shown the YouTube video loading icon' a truck passes below were given another statement flashing through against a shot of some cranes and were shown the message from the description below a power line poll the words fade out and were provided one last message over a flashing screen zero zero zero eight six four zero zero anyone who's been through the Ring of web series a orgies and online storytelling knows the routine here download the video pull it into a program and go frame-by-frame to catch the words that flew by however by doing this you'll only be catching half of the message the challenge in this video isn't about reading all the quick frames but making an important decision provided by the uploader this video has closed captioning there are subtitles you can turn on and by doing so you'll see the rest of the words that are meant to be presented it's not so much a secret as it is a symbolic gesture by turning on the closed captioning you're making a decision to listen to this person you're choosing to hear what they have to say this is even reflected in the first few closed captioning messages are you listening do you hear it the rest of the videos full message now that we have it goes like this it could be so easy it's all around you water or bridge the video pauses the buffer the uploader is now thinking or hesitating stop waiting another pause including an apology for hesitation sorry for the delay we go down a street level away from the race bridge a truck passes by an object that's in motion which reveals an instruction start moving in the dark against the first crane we see a word of warning falling then back to the power line tower with all of its rungs on the sides which a person could easily use to climb into very dangerous territory to climb again to fall again the video holds on to this image for a while longer than maybe necessary the uploader is hesitating or just thinking about their decision the captioning comes back relaying a promise your patience will be rewarded a little bit more time is spent on the power line poll and we receive our numbers when it comes to the concept of this video it took no time to see what I believe to be the message but the numbers at the end are mystery that took some thinking and researching to break down the presence of three zeros at the beginning led me to believe this might have been a code but hex code didn't work and none of the other methods we've usually seen with web series applied what I did find in terms of coding is that it can produce a result using CMYK color coding the standard for print media number values for CMYK range from zero to one which stops in between a decimal values 0 0 0 8 6 4 double zero is the number we have to work with comprised of 8 digits seem like 8th route's decimal system can be seen to use two numbers each this led me to type in number pairs of absolute zero zero point eight point six for an absolute zero again the result is a type of dark pink stationed almost exactly between absolute magenta and absolute red my reason for bringing this up will make sense a bit later but I know it doesn't seem to apply right now what does fit in regard to the video for the meaning of this number is a more easily discovered interpretation there are 86,400 seconds and 24 hours 86,400 seconds is a full day this is a reminder about the time a person has in the span of seconds a message that falls in line with the rest of the video this inclined and my eyes presents the inner struggle of a person to move forward there is a serious sense of doubt and hesitation in the uploader to do something which they equate to climbing towards a height the risk of climbing is of course falling a nightmare scenario for any climber which is captured in the image of the word against the screen in a dark version of the shots climbing and the danger of doing so is most easily relay through the electrical pole it has rungs all up and down the sides easy to grab hold of and work your way up I'm not sure there's ever been a person who looked at one of these and didn't think about climbing one once in their life to see something like this or crane or an old bridge stuck in the air produces the fantasy of climbing to a great height but in this fantasy there is the fear of falling and being seriously injured or much worse this fears the reason for delay and it seems to coincide with the temptation to quit any thoughts of making progress entirely water and bridges all around great heights it could be so easy these bring to mind the idea of suicide our uploader is facing a situation in which they're deciding whether to quit and take themselves out of their pursuits or face their fear and move forward climbing towards the height they fear climbing due to the risk of falling this is a concept that speaks to pretty much any creator with an idea who's ever lived but can also easily apply to so many other situations especially in the wake of for loss hesitating staying in place delaying on purpose these are all of the little moves that a person can make just to stay afloat in times of struggle but it gets them nowhere the end message 86,400 seconds is the grim reminder that the price of just staying afloat is the loss of time that could be used to make actual progress the next video motion be point 1 is a deeper kind of mystery the description reads moment to moment the motion is interrupted white lies or broken promises there's really no difference all we have our death and taxes reads the message we receive followed by seagulls standing on a post we watch for only a moment before it spreads its wings to take off and then the video distorts the seagull frozen and the image around it destroyed along with the audio here's a sample of it for you let's see if you can guess what it's trying to convey with the video have you heard that noise before if you've ever had a computer DVD player or game console overheat on you then I'll bet you have this is usually what you'll hear when that happens as the entire machine freezes and carrying out its operations just like The Seagull that we saw on flights the distortion may be an extension of this idea showing how the image is ruined while playing we did see in the description moment-to-moment the motion is interrupted and that appears to be what's happened for the uploader in this video their progress is interrupted whatever journey they were about to set on after the first video has been halted and it may have to do with a white lie or broken promise all we have our death and taxes is a variation of the quote by Benjamin Franklin nothing is certain except death and taxes this also may be indicating what's with the uploaders forward movement on hold the next video passing is easily understood by anyone who watches or listens closely and their comprehension is assisted by the video description he held her head kneeling on the concrete he held her body as the blood pooled and stained he held her hand there beside the coffin he turned away but the memory remained I'll play what seems to be the memory the uploader is alluding to for you there aren't any built-in subtitles so I've made some myself in case you can't hear Renison daddy daddy he's from saris hurts she's hope battery danny peaceful but when i ran towards ratios she was bent over covering her right eye but blood was just pouring off little face if you didn't catch it at the end the distortion shifted the scene away from the pier into a to stone we've travelled from the water to the grave is it a death that broke the momentum of our uploader or is this a memory that's haunting them the next video disrepair contains a warning in the description when visiting a location such as this you should always be accompanied some may look better some may look worse never go alone and indeed the location seen in the video can easily be described with the word disrepair the home is old with its dark wood trim radiator heater and faded torn wallpaper the walls can be seen falling apart in sections and so much more of the house decaying it feels almost as if something haunts this place and we aren't sure what our uploader is doing here more can be seen in the following video which is part of a series titled study study 1 encapsulate has no video description but there is something interesting to be found in the tags it's cold and she's not alone in the house we explore more territory including a room with a woman standing by the window a message in red runs across the screen if she were like you would you watch would you stay her would you care and in the middle of these questions a string of code the video ID for a link to an unlisted upload s 1.2 110 to 121 we're told that the devil is in the details a clue to look deeply and focus the video itself is short and only contains footage we've already seen from disrepair at first glance there's nothing unusual about it but when you apply the numbers in the title you'll hit a breakthrough 110 to 120 1 is an odd code to figure out while considering how to use it for the first time you might guess that it's directing viewers to watch the video from 110 seconds into 1:21 but the video isn't long enough to do that trying to apply to the disrepair video doesn't give us anything we can work with either obviously it has to be a system of measurement going from 110 to 121 like pages on a book but we're not giving a book to use just the video but if a video were like a book and we're not going by seconds then what would the pages be in a video the frames those still images that make up each second of a video if you go from 110 frames in to about 121 you spot something very significant the image of a shallow person standing in the door on the rights it's difficult to catch unless you really stop to examine the scene between the span of frames this is what the on tag on study 1 was trying to say someone else is in the house with the uploader and if you go to the video this footage comes from this repair we find another tag that helps us a shadow in the hall the following study video is titled an interloper resides with a description marking a set of frames used to find the shadow person our interloper who is residing in the decaying home or perhaps it's the woman standing by the window in this shot where the camera seems to move on its own we may be standing apart from whoever it is that entered the house in disrepair our narrative observation position seems to have shifted the thoughts that spill across the window when read might be this woman's or the uploaders maybe they're the same and our new position is filtering their emotions and thoughts again through the video you have yet to extend your helpful read hand and when at last you exceed demand their waiting is someone encapsulated from the outside and in words the label applies cocooned by the wall lost in the days a stranger is hiding inside of her face from the wording of this poem the appearance of the woman in the house and the revelation that something else is living here we may judge that she's not doing all right and study 3 presents even more evidence for it I don't want to ruin the experience of going through abstractions it's far too good to give it all away right here like most night vision entries I will tell you to keep an eye out for videos that have captions like the one that follows study for portions make sure you turn them on and really listen to what the uploader wants to communicate past this point though I do want to mention one more video + magenta I brought up seemed like a coating earlier and while I do believe the 86,400 number was meant to stand for seconds in a day there is an interesting relation to a color theme that's now coming through whoo I wasn't able to find anything that relates to the phrase plus magenta or has the same title but you might remember though the seemed like a coating for the number from disinclined gives us a reddish pink color it's sitting as close as it can to a spot halfway between true magenta and true red while maintaining its meaning as the seconds in a day plus magenta could be a sign of change from the halfway point to a polar point that true magenta color reflecting an act of moving forward and making progress after standing in place for a while it could all be entirely coincidental of course but I find it very poetic that it can stand for the situation that was presented in the first video the uploader was at a halfway mark staying in place and now they have made their movement whether it's a good movement or bad remains to be seen but some of the images seen in the video four plus magenta to come across as positive like I said I don't want to ruin the experience for anyone else so while draw the line on interpreting videos here abstractions is too good to spoil it's a very different very engaging artistic experience that utilizes visual language as often as I can and even takes advantage of YouTube's video tools to generate its art and communicate ideas I have seen clever use of the closed captioning tool before but never like this and the idea of using frame referencing the hind clues instead of time codes that's a tactic that have never come across before speaking of things I've never come across one of the elements of abstractions that strikes me the most is the awesome cinematography the West record still holds first place for run-and-shoot Adventure style video quality but for projects like abstractions this is the best camera work I've ever seen if all I ever got out of watching the videos was great cinematography I'd still be heavily invested because I loved how clean and sharp and professional it looks it's so engaging and interesting and you want more have you ever seen a shot like this and something I've covered because I certainly can't remember finding anything like it and I seriously wish I had and of course the editing is absolutely wild I know some good tricks but this is master work in action pulling off some effects that have to do some serious research to understand abstractions might not be for everyone it's not a fear fest but there are definitely some dark and paranormal elements and even without them it doesn't need to be scary what we have already is so valuable and interesting and it makes you think and feel and question how much further we can go in doing new things with YouTube as a platform it is a mystery it does have codes and cryptic elements but without all the usual alternate reality series aspects it's incredibly fascinating do yourself a favor and go through these videos see what it stirs in you come back and let me know what you think is going on what they mean anything that comes to mind I hope you enjoy your trip to this new territory and online storytelling I'd like to thank all of my supporters on patreon who make it possible for me to make more content on a wider variety of topics and to do some very cool secret things for the channel that I'm currently working on stick around to see their names at the end of this video and if you like abstractions give it the same kind of love we show our other night vision entries and subscribe to the channel thank you all for joining me in the darkness evening once more I'm Nick Nocturne and I'll be seeing you again real soon sleep tight [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Night Mind

Views: 152,665

Rating: 4.9499655 out of 5

Keywords: night mind, abstractions, webseries, night vision, arg, new

Id: Lm9mlc338SU

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Benlarge1]

I'd really like a follow up video where NightMind explains the story, I'm not the best at following all the different clues and it's why I really like NightMind; my favorite videos are the ones where he breaks down stuff like this in detail.

[u/5benfive5]

The "portions" video is my favorite. I really like how the message was portrayed there.

[u/pringerx]

I really hate that it doesn't go into the ending. I really REALLY enjoy stuff like this but I am really scared. :/