VJam Theory |
|
|
Content |
Date published: 06/08/07 Collaborative writers |
Misplaced VJsauthorship, collaboration, DIY, identity, meaning, technologies, visibilityOne of the elements which differentiate VJing from most other forms of
real time media is that there is some element of performance in the work.
This can be further differentiated from, for example, performance art
or theater. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that it is technologically
mediated in some way. This technological mediation places the performer
in a different space to the performance artist or the actress. [1] No wonder VJs don't earn any money.
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 hyperimprovisationally 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"... If we are not THERE when performing, then where are we? In my new book on VJing (META/DATA) I suggest that we may be ideally positioning ourselves to go completely out of our minds and that we know we are in the middle of one of our better gigs when we lose sight of ourselves and become part of the networked space of flows ... Once you go completely out of your mind (i.e. totally lose sight of yourself) then another door opens and you realize that you can quite literally become whatever digital persona you want to become, i.e. you can jam in anyspace-whatever as anybody-you-want ... This is when VJ performance becomes more like fiction. These are some very interesting comments around the image VJs present. I wonder if anyone has done research to see whether VJs consistently include personal signatures, tags or names that appear as 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. To Prof. vj: To ubanant: One need not look further then 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 an ooey gooey thing without being physically messy. And that in itself is a thing. The interaction between 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 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: |
shaman or magicianauthorship, collaboration, DIY, identity, performance, techniques, technologiesIs the performer a magician? One that is constantly rehearsing the set. But differently from the magician, where all must fit into place, the performer allows creation to take place during the performance. The duration of the performance seems like everything is well,easy and fluid, but sometimes there is a lot of hard work involved in imagining a set and in its construction. Perhaps, as with the magician, special hats need to be made, by other professionals, or perhaps by the magician during the hours where instead of Nomostrozetrus, he is called Ferreira. Where he is not on stage. Is the performer a shaman? Is the performer an incarnation of a chosen entity, the one that is already another him or herself? The performance in this case is a result of being there, at that moment, possessed by the music and by the amalgamation of the crowd. The performer/shaman is one with the music and the dancing movements and evokes visually emotions and communicates personal messages in a coded language, (sometimes) (in an apparent) random structure. |
It is interesting how live performance so often ties into complex intuitive fields of information and feel. 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 improv music performance and how with subtle cues I was able to shift tempo (I started lead this team around) complexity and speed and how we were all in unison until it broke. 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 synths that we could never replicate. Teaching can have this too (something we were never told in school). Often I have pages of notes and outline 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 |
performance as shamanismAlthough there can be found some basis of support for this line of thinking
, As well there is a vast difference between say ....Madonna , Cab Calloway
,Pavorotti, or Luca Dalla, or how about John coltrane and Sting......primarily
i feel that a discourse like this must include qualitative differences
to approach validity. Finally shamans have really no relationship at all
to what we call performing per se. And certainly niether dj nor vj fit
the criteria for 2 way social interaction ... basically they impose a
viewpoint which can in no fundamental way be altered by the public experiencing
it. |
|
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 who hides behind the grand machinery and illusion of his creations. Behind the spectacle however there is nothing much that extra-ordinary - 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, 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 even then if it was 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 the live feed camera have begun to open this up but still, its' 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 VJ's using their process much more as part of the performance and taking centre stage? Or should that be centre screen...? |
Presence aught be dictated by the content just as should be the use of a video artist in the context of a performance... or video in general. Reminded of when Macromedia Flash was the answer to all solutions during the 90's. Was thinking of the Wizard of Oz in the context of God the 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 then the amplification of the medium itself which could be interesting depending on the context in which this concept would be expressed. 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! ;) 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 rockstar poses. Gesture is everything, a lead guitarist can be a hero even if the guitar is unplugged! Check this out: Pretty cool, although not my cup of tea... Presence it’s really a hot subject. But what
is presence? It’s to stay on the stage? I agree with Ilan Katin
and Cubo 23 that to be visible depends on the content and also the context.
High spirits. 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 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 moustache 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 bios, 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 and diversions, cross fertilizations from a mistake or feel from the mood and intensity of a moment and 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 a 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... "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 weather 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's 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 AV 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, infra-red, 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 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 background is broad: they combine
several areas of work in their daily life, full time VJ is a rarity. VJ
is can be also,when not VJ, graphic and web designer, net artist, writer,
musician, programmer or many other things. This creates nodded relationship
between areas of work that come to inform the performer's methodologies,
technologies and final results. |
<< Back to TOP |
some questions to throw out thereWhat is the relationship between appropriation and reinterpretation in a live setting and archaeology? 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 and form and pattern in line, curve,color, hue? Isn't vjing like other cross-disciplinary arts a sort of move toward a place of a near synaesthesia? I read about piano or harpsichord performances in the late 1800's where lamps had color filters in front of them that bathed the audience in different light at different parts of the musical scale. As a musician and visual artist this makes a lot of sense to me. Blue is the low end on the piano ...heavy...full....weighty...with hues and shades of semiotic portent of shadow and the ominous...or deep beauty and resonance..and often are played in lingering foot pedal sustain.....deep and full like night sky at sunset or ocean........and mid ranges tones were red......faster...more melodic......yet not for the faster runs as often as high end keys...............deep yet more of movement....feel....combination...........like red symbolism in love...sensuality..deep hue.............and the high notes were yellow.....faster run....accent and bloom.........lighter .....less sustain........like flowers.... this was also done with a live audience.......so it is similar to vjing in a way... Absence is presence. shape has music....music has shape........flow and inter connection in progression exists in music, movement, shape and form and crosses all those boundaries and definitions..... |
These seem to me to be very important, but unrelated
questions: (1) Can I think be answered in a rather simplistic fashion--as 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 reinterpretation 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: synch image-sound and async image-sound. (all sounds played at the same time as an image 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).
|
More on artifacts and appropriation, sample cultureappropriation, form, remix, sampling, snynaesthesia, sound, vjMichael, Thank you for your very interesting answers to what I threw out there. I think I also wonder about the nature in Archeology and remix culture of the "artifact". I met an eminent Archaeologist and observed a dig a few years ago. The artifacts came in layers, both in their depth in the soil and in different times. The artifacts were native american artifacts so nothing could be moved or taken offsite by law. The compromise was to under observation by native american leaders put it in a 360 degree 3d scanner and make a computer based "artifact" of the artifact. The artifacts were then placed back in exact position. As a musician/artist I thought how it was interestingly a form of sampling. And it made me think of how in electronic music there are those delineations often fluid or argued over the line between a stolen snippet and appropriation. The decision to alter a pre existing artifact live was what had to be done on the dig so it was in that instant a sort of intuitive move made live with an audience. I also have to admit that at times I have an almost mild synathesia and
as a kid could see classical music (with a little effort so not quite
...) as animations of shapes, colors, sizes, movement patterns , hierarchies.....and
when years later I found the films from the 20's on of visual music translations
it made total sense....how symbolic,hierarchical,formalistic, I have made some sound art/electronic compositions that were in a few
exhibitions and broadcasts that were experiments in building a soundscape
by the shapes and textures of certain sounds,gates,volume levels, durations,
etc as composed by what anyway.....just my personal interest.... I like your take on audience interaction......very straight forward boiling down of something complex.... what is the dialog between the vj, the music, the pacing, the sequencing and sort of narrative that music takes over time with changes and shifts, the crowd reaction and anticipation...? it is so fascinating complex and yet something so sort of primal in a way ......especially those absolute peaks when it all really syncs in a deep way for a while.....hard to describe it without sounding corny you know? like everything simplifies for a while even with all that is going on ....and some non verbal communication and exchange takes over......amazing |
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 (so success leads to greater probability for success) thus making a performance something more like process-based, like learning rather than declarative (like most scripted performances whether theatrical or musical).
|
Wizard of OZ / Invisible PerformersSomething has been pecking persistently,since reading this article. Western culture is replete with examples of the invisible performer and
has been for sometime.Consider the symphony orchestra essentially an extremely
expensive music making machine with basically nameless and faceless interchangeable
pieces. Usually by the way compositions of long dead composers .Thereby
of course bypassing any annoying problems such as actually paying someone
for thier creation. The discourse on invisible performer accurately reflects our current in which even the usefullness of the human body is in question, via ideas relative to transhumanism, genetic body design etc.These concepts being frightengly close to 19 and early 20th century eugenics. And as old and hoary as the greco-roman tradition.The major difference is that now these concepts can and are being actualized. Very interesting to ponder what the effect that say the availibility
of true 3-d projection will have on the genre of vj and entertainment/art
.In general I suspect that the vj at that time will be quite more visible Maybe it would be good for example each time you open your laptop( pc
or mac) to recall that the very first use of IBM calculator was to locate
and then "relocate" persons of jewish origin whithin the third
reich... hardly |
<< Back to TOP |
musical imagesThe VJ and vjing is a performance for nightclubs. Live lights around dancing people, drugs: party time. Watch images is the main audience’s idea? The performance is nearest of music than of image, it is rhythm. The proposition is to make sense, but … not always. Is the sense something that happens just with 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 sense one. We may know the world and think, but sometimes be affected by the rhythm. |
<< Back to TOP |
rhythm et alCertainly vj genre 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 vjìng has been in fact its servitude to the so called modern rhythms of electro -music. which in point of fact are hopelessley mired in antiquated physics and euclidean equations. thereby insuring an editing /montage rhythm dominated by quite an obselete concept of musical rhythm. this being quite understandable since music notation itself has not evolved past seventeenth century mathematics either. 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 the 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 was long after it was proven the contrary by galileo. aside from that i think its 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. we are certainly not in an epoch of sense. in fact i believe we are in one of the most sense isolated periods in history. corporation propoganda has successively reached the point where all disasters are the same and all news carries equal weight. art is more then ever a matter of brand names and logos. how many people after all believe that the internet is public and unlimited . in fact it s not and has never been. vj ing in fact has a powerful potential for social awareness especially because it is a non didactic medium....and as stated a large part of its power is that it does not follow outdated measurements of linear time (at least in its image sense). but how pathetically few vjs utilize any music except the typical pc loops or the equally mundane dj concept of music which in passing has always been a parasitic industry from its inception in 1950s america. at least in that epoch people at least preferred live music versions of the discs. and certainly did not yet confuse the fact that the dj was not the creator of the music. and in fact it always amazes me how in general such a small representation of musical rhythm is considered danceable. so „ a sense era“? im afraid i disagree. in spite of the ballyhoo about present tech bringing people together it is in fact isolating them more and making them quite numb and therefore senseless to the world around them. |
<< Back to TOP |