VJam Theory |
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Date published: 06/08/07 Collaborative writers |
Misplaced VJsauthorship, collaboration, DIY, identity, meaning, technologies, visibilityOne of the elements that differentiate VJing from most other forms of real time media is that there are some elements of performance in the work. This can be further differentiated from, for example, performance art or theatre. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that it’s technologically mediated in some way. This technological mediation places the performer in a different space to the performance artist or the actress. [1] Few VJs like to be seen performing, many choosing to hide behind a laptop. Even when the VJ chooses to be seen, many clubs and other spaces hide the VJ behind a screen. In this way the images appear to be the product of the DJ. [2] References[1] A circular argument but we think it works. |
Misplaced and dislocated. But maybe the dislocation comes from the fact that the VJ, as a performer who hyper-improvisation-ally jams with their technological / socialized environment, is never really there when performing and is somehow already lost in the unconscious flow of images being generated in / through the "session". These are some very interesting comments around the images VJs present. I wonder if anyone has done research to see whether VJs consistently include personal signatures, tags or names that appear throughout their work? Are there common ways to give their personal touch and circumvent the typical screen setup? To posting: It should be noted that technically behind the screen would be on a good day. Usually they are shoved off to the side somewhere. Secondly if it is the choice of the VJ then hiding is optional. Maybe most of them want to be hidden. To Professor VJ: There is a sci-fi book out there and it's name escapes me... human beings connect themselves to machines and their souls or essences are projected into the space as part of a performance. Doesn’t sound that much different. If it's out there, someone wrote about it beforehand. Amen. To Urbanant: If there is no personal touch happening on the screen then one might as well run a DVD. One need not look further than a guitar player to see how an audience makes a connection between the finger and the fret board. Keep on thinking about Star Wars I when Darth Sidious says to his master "Our moment has come, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi." Dumb quote... yes... but there is HUGE difference between being shoved off to the side and having an actual physical presence where people see you pressing a button and connecting that with an image being triggered on the screen, or whatever creative means one finds to be present. It's a choice. Personally the play on 'dis-presence' is quite interesting. Especially with the way technology acts as a wall of both representation and mis-representation. It's such a gooey, gooey thing without being physically messy. And that in-itself is a thing. The interaction between the performer and screen in many ways resembles the Wizard of Oz paradigm where the activities on screen can be disassociated from the performer, this is true of much technologically derived performance, fostering an illusion of action at a distance, of magic. How often does one see a demystification of technology, as opposed to the much more dominant assertion of illusions of autonomy, magic, etc. -- the aura of the digital? This thread contains all the major issues concerning theatre (in the broad sense of ‘artistic’ performance involving a performer and audience) and the new media, raised by a large literature on the matter. The major questions are: (1) Does the VJ have to be present and interact with the clubbers? (in the sense that they are aware of each other and influence each other’s behaviors); (2) Is this presence physical or not and (3) What is the position of the performers and public in between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’ worlds? My answers would be: (1) Yes, but since not everybody knows what a VJ is, and since video is only one of the several ‘visual stimuli’ of the party, this is not always true for the clubbers. They may not get that the visuals are live and that someone is creating them according to all other live elements of the party (behaviour of clubbers and DJ, music and other visual stimuli), but they ‘read’ the party as a ‘live’ whole anyway. People know that they are creating an event (or ‘text’) as performers and spectators at the same time; (2) I distinguish the performer’s body as a medium (his behaviors, gestures, etc. which can be meaningful) and his ‘role’ as a performer. If he does not use his body as a medium, he does not need to be ‘visible’. His role and presence as a performer appear in his work. In theatrical forms, the performer has to be present in his role of communicator/creator (being the mutual awareness with the public necessary to define the ‘text’ theatrical), not necessarily in his body as a medium. (3) The ‘degree’ of ‘virtuality’ concerns both the performers’ and the spectators’ experience in ‘reading’ the text. Some critics distinguish: (a) ‘immersive’ modes of representation, where the ‘reader’ forgets about his body and himself and loses himself in the ‘fictional’ narrative. For instance classical cinema; (b) ‘trompe l’oeil’ modes of representation, where the ‘virtual’ space is integrated in the real one, and the reader is present with his body and his vantage point in this space (for instance 19th century panoramas, virtual reality, etc.). Of course these are two extremes and many gradations between the two are possible. Pulling the threads: a club party is a ‘theatrical’ performance, where performers and spectators (as roles that can be fulfilled by the DJ/VJ and by the clubbers as well) create a live ‘text’, in a symbiotic way. The participants are ‘present’ not only as ‘characters’ of the fictional world, but also in their ‘real’ role as creators and readers of that world. They ‘act’ a role, but they are also being themselves in an event of their lives. They are creating and looking, dreaming and socializing etc, this ambiguity and in-betweenness of performance is its most intriguing and fascinating feature! |
shaman or magicianauthorship, collaboration, DIY, identity, performance, techniques, technologiesIs the performer a magician who is constantly rehearsing the set and at the moment of the performance, must make everything fit into place for the visual magic, in front of the audience, to actually happen? The performer allows creation to take place during the performance and it feels like everything is easy and fluid, but sometimes there is a lot of hard work involved in imagining a set and in its construction. Perhaps, like a magician, ‘special hats’ need to be made, by other professionals, or perhaps by the performer herself who, when not on stage, is known by the everyday name of Maria. |
It is interesting how live performance so often ties into complex intuitive fields of information and feeling. To perform sometimes can mean to be in tune with other performers and the audience in a way that is ebb and flow and recall. I am sometimes amazed at things like a friend who had no live performance experience and no real skill in percussion coming into sync with me and some other folks in an improvisational music performance and how with subtle cues I was able to shift tempo (I started to lead this team around) complexity and speed and how we were all in unison until it broke. I can't explain it. I used to play with a friend and we were at our best when some random connection came about and we just kind of knew and there was an interplay and weave on old analog synthesizers that we could never replicate. Teaching can have this too (something we were never told in school). Often I have pages of notes and outlines and the best example, metaphor or discussion just pops up while "live" and steers it all into a deeper and clearer context and or even into more interesting yet relevant territory. To perform live and edit on the fly is something that is really hard to fully explain. The satisfaction and exhaustion after those rare moments when it all really clicks is really hard to put into words: elemental, fluid, free of time (time sometimes can be totally out of whack and distorted when so in the moment), like some sort of human psychological collaborative circuitry and then it is over, and you want it again and can sort of remember. |
performance as shamanismAlthough there can be found some basis of support for this line of thinking, it is an argument which is tenuous at best. Shamans arise for the most part directly from the community in which they inhabit, and it stretches the limits of syntax to call their societal role performance. In fact they are usually medicine healers and "seers”. Most of their public activity involves participation from the "audience" which is simply feeble or inactive in most artistic expressions relative to western culture in our present epoch. |
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The Wizard Of OzI have been really intrigued by the ideas of the 'invisible performer' that have been discussed here. It raises questions of when (or whether) the VJ should be seen at all. It also reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. Here we have a character that hides behind the grand machinery and illusion of his creations. Behind the spectacle however there is nothing much that extraordinary - just a little man. Which is the real Wizard of Oz? The spectacle, or the operator? Purely from my own experience of VJing with a band (Kinetic Fallacy), I have wanted to be as much on show as the rest of the elements: musicians: and visuals. This is simply for people to understand that there is someone behind the spectacle, an ego thing and a process thing. However, even then I’ve often been asked if it was a DVD that was playing! People miss the relevance of what my digits are doing on the laptop. In short, there's not much to see when a VJ VJs! The times when I’ve used a live feed, the camera has begun to open this up, but still, it’s never as rock ‘n’ roll as being the lead guitar. I often joke that I’m the drummer. Truth is I’m even lower in the hierarchy. Performatively, at the moment, the VJ sits alongside the sound technician! I'm sure this is already not the case though for many people, just my own experience. Are there any examples of VJs using their process much more as part of the performance and taking centre stage? Or should that be centre screen? |
Presence ought be dictated by the content, as should the use of a video artist in the context of a performance... or video in general. This reminds me of when Macromedia Flash was the answer to all solutions during the 90's. I was thinking of the Wizard of Oz in the context of God in the last few days. This of course is a deeper question but the project in mind does require video and plays with this idea of the amplification of the performer rather than the amplification of the medium itself, which could be interesting depending on the context in which this concept would be expressed. I was really impressed by a video on the site of 'The Big Art Project' with the way they used video: probably the most exciting use of video in a theatrical setting in recent memory. Well, I was a drummer too, and when I screwed things up, it really made a difference! Instead, when a VJ screws up, the band can continue playing. Anyway, this is not important. As Ilan said, I also believe that deciding whether the VJ should be visible or not depends on the content, and also the context. And, if the VJ wants to appear next to the lead guitarist, well, she/he will have to come up with some rock star poses. Gesture is everything; a lead guitarist can be a hero even if the guitar is unplugged! Check this out: http://lividinstruments.com/instruments_viditar.php Pretty cool, although not my cup of tea. Presence is a really a hot subject, but what is presence? Is it to stay on the stage? I agree with Ilan Katin and Cubo23 that to be visible depends on the content and also the context. It’s not just a question of humour; there are political and economic interests: the powerful artist in the most visible place. The other question is ego, and the famous ego trips, coming from famous and ordinary people. If the VJ has rhythm, he/she will be seen, will have a presence, and will build this presence through kinetic image on the screen and in the ambience. I’m not talking about loops, or high quality of image, they are interesting, but to change the electric public at night it’s good to mix images to create a movement from stage, to the public, and at same time from the public to the VJ. There is a relation that happens between people, rhythm of color, lights and why not subjects. Isn't it also about absence as presence? The "man behind the curtain" has gone from the wizard to be an almost too familiar way to describe unseen machinations. Also, in live performance there is such weight in the pause, anticipation, in the space before fulfillment or the thwarting of expectation. I’ve been thinking a lot about how there is so much weight in ambiguity, on the more positive end and in mythology, in the cult of personality in the less positive. Isn't Dali branded as a mustache in a way, Hitchcock as his silhouette? How many artists are working the modern sense of mythology in the incomplete and branded image, in distorted biographies, plays on the media etc.. Isn't this unfortunately a form of performance? Back to VJing, sorry for the tangent! The "magic" of live performance with an audience and multimedia can be tangents, intuitive little leaps, diversions and cross fertilizations, from a mistake or feel from the mood and intensity of a moment, the collaboration that hangs astronautic in the air between performer and audience. The wizard in this sense could be the space in between, the space agitated with possibility and its ultimate direction and resolve in a flow. Back to VJing more directly… What's interesting about the question of presence, vis-à-vis the lead in a band is that for a musician, the sound is not the same (sound and visuals are two distinct things) as the visual aspects of the performance, while for a VJ, the visual aspects of the performance (making the images) are the substance of the performance (the visuals), thus making it difficult to be both the visible performer and the visual performance. Perhaps having the visuals projected on the VJ would combine them. While this sounds interesting, in practice doing projections on living performers creates something entirely different (ignoring the technical problematic). This is why I mentioned the Wizard of Oz in the comments in the first place: It is a close operational model for what is the most typical kind of VJ performance. "The spectacle or the operator?" - This is an aesthetic problem that extends to many different electronic performance idioms, laptop performances in particular. In most cases the performer is superfluous to the larger experience whether it be sound, image or both. I have pretty much accepted this as a given and have begun to work with other possibilities. The first is to eliminate the band or DJ in favor of images that generate their own sound. The ear is much more accurate than the eye and is quick to detect minute changes including obvious bad choices or mistakes. This immediately makes the VJ job much more of a challenge, and one could argue, not a VJ at all? I will admit that this brings up a whole new conversational thread relative to new forms of audio-visual performance, but I will stay with the topic at hand. My second area of exploration is to avoid or augment the mouse, knobs, switches, sliders and buttons with interfaces that involve more physical engagement with the body. These could be cameras, microphones, infrared, lasers, ultra-sound, etc. This choice also makes mastering the performance instrument more difficult and less precise, however, it also brings the audience into the shared relationship between performer and screen (image). A third possibility is to use other kinds of visual monitoring that places the monitors in the audience - looking at or into your audience is very difficult for visual performers, but is essential if the "VJ" is to be on stage. A fourth possibility is to rethink the limitations placed on the solo "visual" artist and examine ways in which multiple artists can share in making an image. If this involves the kinds of physical sensor interfaces suggested above the audience is presented with a much more complex relationship between the performers and the screen image(s). All in all, my feeling toward visual machine performance is that it is important to take a step forward and away from being a background support or illustration in favor of being the elemental core of the experience. |
Where do VJs come from?content, DIY, education, politics, techniques, technologiesTechnology comes to inform the attitude of the performer, presence and final result. The technology used by the performer (being software or hardware, computer technology or others) has a reason in the individual's personal and professional background. VJs backgrounds are broad: they combine several areas of work in their daily life; full time VJing is a rarity. A VJ can also be, when not VJing, a graphic designer, a web designer, a net artist, a writer, a musician, a programmer or many other things. This creates a relationship between areas of work that come to inform the performer's methodologies, technologies and final results. The technology chosen to perform with, evidences political attitudes; between proprietary, open source, DIY software and hardware. Are we visual performers and also educators when we make our choices regarding content and ways to produce and perform that content? If so, should we take this role seriously? |
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some questions to throw out thereWhat is the relationship between appropriation and reinterpretation in a live setting and archeology? What are the inter-relationships between audio and image? What is the weight and presence in absence, in the quiet parts, the place before the next shift of improvisation? What collaborative nature of interpretation occurs in cross-form collaboration in real time or otherwise? Is there a music and formal aesthetic/emotionally hued sort of interface within images and their semiotics, in form and pattern in line and curve, color and hue? |
These seem to me to be very important, but unrelated questions: (1) what is the relationship between appropriation and re-interpretation in a live setting and archaeology? (2) What are the inter-relationships between audio and image? (1) They can, I think, be answered in a rather simplistic fashion: the distinction seems to lie with the difference between using a recording of a piece of music (or a sample drawn from one) for example and actually producing the same series of tones directly, "live". Appropriation in general has come to mean something specific: direct reuse of existing materials. While re-interpretation has an older meaning specific to performers whose performances are always interpretations. (2) Is far more complex in its application, but I think, may be reduced to a simple set of oppositions defining a range based on the audience's perception of sound-image relations: sync image-sound and a sync image-sound. (All sounds played at the same time as images are synchronous, but only some are "included" in the performance, the people sitting behind me at the movie theater talking on their cell phone is not typically a part of the soundtrack).
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More on artifacts and appropriation, sample cultureappropriation, form, remix, sampling, snynaesthesia, sound, vjMichael, |
Perhaps we should think of the music, audience, DJ/VJ dynamic not as a dialogue (which implies conscious interaction and communication via language) and instead consider it as a kind of feedback loop as in a complex adaptive system (such as what John Holland describes) where previous successes provide building blocks and present a structural foundation for future successes. Success leads to greater probability for success and thus making a performance something more like process-based, like learning rather than declarative (like most scripted performances whether theatrical or musical).
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Wizard of OZ / Invisible PerformersSomething has been pecking persistently, since reading this article. Indeed it is an apt and useful metaphor; subsequently I have concluded as follows: whether the projection or the projector are one and the same, the fact that behind the curtain lies a rather pathetic, fairly despicable old man are an aside from another important fact. This being that Dorothy and her cohorts as well as a whole kingdom are entranced, bamboozled, and therefore completely controlled by the illusions generated by advanced technology. Wizard of OZ was released in 1939 at the culminating point of that great corporate globalization experiment which would shortly result in WWII. In lieu of that fact, unlike the film when we pull back the curtain, something more formidable awaits. A sad commentary on that critic and crucial juncture of history much like our own, so few question/ed the untoward march of progress, technology and science. This includes of course, “common people” and maybe especially scientists and artists. Understandable since we are all trained from birth to buy, buy, ad infinitum the products and ideology of the (ahem) ‘free market’ but I digress ... |
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musical imagesThe VJ and VJing is a performance for nightclubs. Live lights around dancing people, drugs: party time. Are watching images the audience’s main idea? The performance is nearest to the music, rather than the image, it is a rhythm. The proposition is to make sense, but not always. Is it the sense that something happens with just icons, with images full of meaning? Some radical performances are those that suggest, that develop abstract images or make ordinary icons become abstract. It’s necessary to control the meaning for audience? Why? To connect “cinema” with the performances? The space is different and it isn’t important to tell a story, to make sense like in cinema. In a way I imagine that our era is a sensory one. We may know the world and think, but sometimes be affected by the rhythm. |
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rhythm et alCertainly the genre of VJing is not cinema. Equally certain is that at present it is an exciting plastic media and does bear relation to alternating current. Rhythm however is a much broader context. One of the main debilitating factors of VJing has been in fact its servitude to the so called modern rhythms of electro – music, which in point of fact are hopelessly mired in antiquated physics and Euclidean equations, thereby insuring an editing/montage rhythm dominated by quite an obsolete concept of musical rhythm. This being quite understandable since music notation itself has not evolved past seventeenth century mathematics and is still based on the misconception of linear time. Firstly, very few rhythms of the universe are binary. In general, human beings always tend to mistake tools of measurement for reality; therefore quantized rhythms (as in electro-music) like the tempered scale are simply quite inefficient and incomplete for describing the present complexities of music. Yet for convenience they are held on to, much the same as the idea that the Earth was center of the solar system long after it was proven the contrary by Galileo. Aside from that I think it’s safe to say that without rhythm there simply would be no existence as we know it: this in no way being a philosophical statement, but a scientific one. |
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