live cinema unraveled
TRANSCRIPT
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live cinema unraveled
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live cinema unraveled
PROLOGUE
VJing is a phenomenon that has come toprominence in popular culture over the past
10 years. Commonly misunderstood as be-
ing on-air talking heads for MTV, VJing and
VJ Culture are not properly understood.
VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled investigates this
new medium, both in its own terms as well
as its historical precedents.
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There is not enough of a critical dis-
course around this new kind of live,
improvised performance. In our post-
historical era, art critic Arthur C. Danto
describes the possibilities (below).
This overwhelming sense of every-
thing is possible permeates in todaysart world. Discourse has turned into
sound bites, market hype, colloquial-
isms, and tech specs. There are no cri-
teria to judge work, and any rigorous
discussion around aesthetics, labor,
and visual impact has been reduced to
paraphrase. In short, how do we speak
of what we participate?
Main Elements of VJing
Jockeying is a behavior and role thatfacilitates a radically new kind of post-
cinematic experience. It is an emerg-
ing art form that can be analyzed in
a similar fashion to previous art/cin-
ematic movements. However, it has
fundamental differences. For example,
the relationship between screen and
image is a locus of activity where dis-
parate elements, such as rhythm, la-
bor, structure, outside references, etc.
are concretized.
The relationship between the Image
and Screen, commonly what most au-
diences see in a live VJ performance,
lies at the intersection of the basicprojector/screen setup. Labor, both
on the part of the VJ during live per-
formance as well as the dead labor of
software and hardware designers, and
rhythm, the audiovisual patterns that
emerge and grab the audiences atten-
tion, intersect both Image and Screen.
Together, they provide a motif from
which to map out this field.
everythingi
spossible,n
othing
ishistorically
mandated:on
ething
is,sotosay,
asgoodasa
nother.
Andthatinm
yviewisthe
objective
condition.
-ArthurC.Danto
ENVIRONMENT
SYNTAX
ACTIVATION
IMAGE POTENCY
interpretation /
cultural relevancy
immediacy (time &
space) + realness
(candidness)
affect
labor / endurance
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with an incredible breadth and depth
of knowledge that transcends these
individual domains.
Jockeyingis an appropriate but awk-
ward term (VJ is used all the time, or
video jockey, but rarely just jockey-
ing) to describe what VJing and VJ
Culture is, and what VJs actually do.
Jockeying as behavior: This has to
do with how VJs conduct themselves,how they respond to stimuli, and their
performance techniques.
and
Jockey as role: This has to do with
socio-cultural roles of the VJ, how they
situate themselves within the broader
film, art, and DJ worlds.
Commonly, people confuse VJs with
their MTV on-air counterparts, or DJs,
both of which actually share manyof the same characteristics. For in-
stance, like their MTV counterparts,
VJs are also making social commen-
tary through remixing and montage.
Like DJs, they are concerned with
rhythm, and oftentimes also use simi-
lar laptops, software, and approaches
to mixing.
VJing and Labor
One overarching them here is endur-
ance, and issues associated with labor,
performance, and VJing. The VJ has to
be on for a given time period. Hence,
VJing is time-based, and shares many
codes with that of traditional cinema.
Jockeying is radical in the sense that it
allows for a synthesis of elements that
have been heretofore distinct from one
another.
As a synthesis engine, VJing prepares
the potential obsolescence of a num-
ber of fields. In one fell swoop a VJ can
provide motion graphics, cinema, au-
dio, and performance. Art has a func-
tion as a social catalyst, but oftentimes
disparate elements are kept separate,such as the actual artwork and recep-
tion festivities. VJing is an alternative-
to the traditional art world because it
bundles reception, actual artstic con-
tent, and after party into one package.
In relation to the commercial world,
VJing challenges the static motion
graphics and commercials that domi-
nate the popular landscape. VJing of-
fers the possibility of infinite changes:
the process is linear in the sense thatthere is a very defined flow of con-
trolsource, capture, filter, output,
but the result is completely variable
and non-linear in structure. It is dif-
ficult for companies and corpora-
tions to undesrstand this challenge to
the traditional model, which relies on
consultations with designers and cre-
atives, tests, samples, mockups, final-
ly resulting in a finished product. VJing
turns this production model around on
its head: usually the variables before
the performance are set in some way
although the VJ is in complete control
to tweak, modify, and create unique
content live.
Live control over media is one of
the most important characteristics of
VJing, and manifests itself in mixing
and the creation of generative imag-
ery. Control and organization are key,
as are being able to navigate crowdflows, environments, and body move-
ments of the audience. In addition, VJs
improvise by altering the pace, color,or
theme of the visuals. The VJ riffs with
the audience and notices what flows.
Jockeying embodies a meta-level of
organization in this way.
Close Ties with Film
VJing is a radical departure from pre-
vious cinema(s). It is a total art form
that encompasses music/sound, visu-
als, and installation. It draws from a
lineage founded by the Russian Con-
structivists in not being a pure art
form, but one that has a clear social
function.
Like the art-
i s t -eng ineer
Constructivists,
VJs innovate
and modify ex-
isting tools and
software to suit
their needs.
They oftentimes
build new cus-
tom tools andsoftware, thus
elevating the
craft into other
dimensions.
They are at the cultural forefront, easily
able to straddle the experimental film/
video/music and commercial worlds
quite easily. They navigate between
environments all the way from mobile
media to stadium-sized concerts. They
are walking encyclopedias of media,
Michail Dlugatsch (Russia)
Lithography from 1929
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Hang the VJ
Some of the original MTV Veejays, who are often confused with their contemporary counter-
parts. From L-R, starting at the top:Adam Curry, Jesse Camp, Downtown Julie Brown,
Kennedy, Martha Quinn, Pauly Shore, Tyrese, Riki Rachtman, Matt Pinfieldphotos: Wikipedia
Generative imagery from CHiKAfrom a live peformance in Brooklyn, NY (7/23/05)photos copyright Timothy Jaeger
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Howdoyouencodethisimageonthisnewcanvaswhichisconstructedintim
eanddrawingonlines,andsoonafter,inthe
samedecade-the70s,howtodefinethedigital inwhichthehorizontalandve
rticalterritoryofthescreenisthendividedinto
binarynumbers-thecoincidenceoftimeproducesanimage.Thiswasthemos
tradicalthoughtwhichisnever mentioned.
WoodyVasulka
JOCKEYING
AS BEHAVIORVJing is something you do. It involves action and re-
sponse to visual stimuli. Using new tools such as the Put-
ney, Woody Vasulkaexplored video in the late 60s and early
70s as a camera-less medium. In an interview, he recounts
the dilemma about working with video in the abstract, then
going into making quasi-narrative films. He called thesetotal failures and then realized the crux of his interest:
We tried to do it through tools- the
dialoguing with tools - which was
sort of true- simply trying to find the
least or the most generic images to
describe the medium itself, including
the behaviour.
Unlike many of the first films, whichwere shown in ways intending to
evoke a sensational response in the
audience, these early experiments had
other goals. Many of the first interac-
tions with tools that could manipulate
video were conducted often in solitary,
personal laboratories where the goal
was to commune with the medium, the
technology, and notice how particu-
larly affective works emerged through
multiple test situations.
Woody and Steina Vasulka are two art-
ists who, along with friends, collabo-
rators, and other technologists, were
some of the first to jockey video.
In a Februray 15, 2005 interview on
MonteVideo in the Netherlands, Woody
Vasulka shared many of his insights
about the historical context of VJing.
Because the technology was tan-
gible, artists could work with circuits,
build tools, use gadgets, and get their
hands dirty while exploring these new
media. He reflected that the results of
playing with the medium became his
signature style. These early experi-
ments involved using tools inherited
from the world of sound and audio.
It was common to use waveforms to
manipulate the visuals, for instance.
After some time, Woody began think-
ing that this medium/material actually
had its own unique vocabulary. In fact,he made a work called Vocabularythat
tried to deal specifically with this lan-
guage of video. He tried to articulate
this language of video as lines across
a canvas.
Just as Woody attempted to access
the language of the medium through
experimentation, numerous artists
today are tinkering with code, hard-
ware, software, and digital informa-
tion in a similar way. Programmers likeFlight404and Futurismo Zugakousa-
kaare also testing the medium, with
web sites acting as laboratories and
new VJ tools like Lemur and Quartz
Composerfinding themselves as the
digital equivalents to machines like the
PutneyandVideo Synthesizer.
Visceral response to audio-visual ex-
ploration was the way to tell what work
clicked in the Vasulkas case. Now,
the essence of the medium tends to be
networked, so Internet collaborations,
coding experiments,
ThewholeAmericanmovementwastryingtofigureoutwhatmakesthepic-ture.Howisitscanned?
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7/56Vello Virkhaus (VJ V2)in the mixphoto copyright Vello Virkhaus
Early video synthesizers - from top, the EMS Putney(1969) and Spectre(1974)
photos copyright Moogulator www.moogulator.com / sequencer.de
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growing relevance as a type of activ-
ity.
DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller real-
izes that this is part of how rhythm de-
velops. He notes in his book Rhythm
Science about the changing same
and how Jamaican Dub musicians andSilicon Valley engineers work to coun-
ter the cultural entropy of the same
beat day after day, night after night.
There are iterations and versions of ev-
erything. For him, sci-fi is a way to cre-
ate an alternate zone of expression.
VJing works this same way, offering
iterations and versions, processing the
past and present into the future, of-
fering an alternate zone of expression
in a culture of the changing same. It
is none other than the potency of im-ages, sounds, and their combinations
that can create new sociocultural me-
diascapes.
The Vasulkas labored in a studio with
their machines while todays event
spaces and clubs are the laboratories
of contemporary VJs. Bypassing the
changing same with different flour-
ishes and new ways of reworking the
same material, are just some of the
ways they go about investigating how
a mix fits in ways that havent been
discovered yet.
and Steina had a close-knit group of
friends and technologists, such as Bill
Etra and Steven Rutt, that built and
shared tools and resources and were
into experimenting. They were just
playing.
Today, propelled by web-sites likeVJ Central, a new generation of tool
and image-makers is emerging, with
a similar socio-political context fueled
by open-source politics, hacker cul-
ture, rave and electro scenes around
the world. However, because many
of todays experiments are the digital
equivalent to what was happening in
the analog 70s, the impact and power
of the image is different. The work of
inventing these analog tools has shift-
ed to a simulation of effects via theirdigital siblings.
Hence, many of todays emerging
works look no different save for a digi-
tal clarity and anti-aliased feel. Ways
of compensating for this lack of nov-
elty on the part of todays VJs turn out
to be things like cross-media promo-
tion, bigger screens, longer sets, larg-
er-than-life multiple screens, multiple
performers, bigger performance spac-
esandadded interactive elements.
Part of what makes VJing distinct from
other visual art forms is the fact that
no mix is ever the same. Like the MTV-
style VJ who can find different quips or
interesting things to say about a music
video time after time, mixing and re-
mixing are VJs way of commenting
on the visuals. This desire to make dif-
ferent versions of a mix, continuously
update material, and collide old clipswith new software, is crucial to VJings
beta-software and blog comments are
de rigueur in seeing what clicks.
Early Jockeying and Im-
age Potency
These early investigations into the me-dium of video dealt with finding the
potency of an image. Woody Vasulka
used the phrase most generic then,
but that term could be also mean most
interesting, intrinsic, or powerful.
From these experiments, the hope
was to arrive at a deeper, more funda-
mental understanding of this new me-
dium. The early Vasulka experiments
resulted in incredibly powerful, arrest-
ing images. Both Woody and Steina la-
bored over these images continuously,for months and years, days and nights,
There was a candidness and real-time
response to the work (these were tools
that had just been made by some of
their friends). There certainly was an
affect. The images (and oftentimes
sounds) were highly visceral.
Audience response often plays a part
in determing the potency of a VJ per-
formance. Because most of the Va-sulkas works were made in artist-run
studios, it is difficult to determine their
effectiveness in a larger context.
Contemporary Jockeying
and Image Potency
One of the similarities with early video
exploration and todays is the desire
to get your hands dirty while work-
ing with visuals and software. Woody
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VJ as Public Intellectual
One of the first public places where
the VJ and hacker communities came
together in a conference setting was
December 2004 at the 21c3 confer-
ence held in Berlin, in conjunction withAVIT and Chaos Computer Club.
Panels with titles like Hang the VJ, Pix-
els Dont Need No Money, and Pixels
Want to Break Freeall show the role of
the VJ as a public intellectual eager to
frame their own discourse and have a
future apart from that of the DJ. In other
words, rather than relegate the discus-
sion and frameworks of visual meaning
to corporations like MTV, or leave it on
a whim for dancers at a club to decide
what looks good, VJs are discussing
the merits of using certain technolo-
gies, ways of framing performances,
and the role of corporate sponsorship
of festivals. This is similar to the way
that French New Wave directors rallied
around the journal Cahiers Du Cinema
in discussing the ways that the film au-
teur dictated the evolution of film and
film culture in the 1950s.
Like the Cahiers, events like AVITaresigns of novelty and concern over the
image in todays society. While the role
of the contemporary VJ is becoming
closer to that of the intellectual, it is
an intellectual of the club and dance
floor.
Superstar VJsas Pro-
moters?
Another role and persona which has
emerged over the last 5 - 10 years is
that of the superstar VJ. Today, VJslike Benton Bainbridge, Kriel, andV2
have elevated the VJ into a prominent
enough position where they are re-
garded on their own terms. In fact, a
Google search for superstar VJ turns
up Kriel, who has branded himself as
the worlds first superstar VJ while
touring and working as in-house VJ for
the BBC. Corporate sponsorship and
the superstar VJ are inseparable. The
VJ assumes a role that pushes certain
companies technologies to new limitsfor waiting audiences. In 2004 Kriel
announced his deal with Pioneer and
the new DVJ machine that allows for
the seamless integration of audio and
visuals.VJ V2 was featured on the Ap-
ple website - and subsequently reveals
how Apple technology makes it easier
for his studio and live workflow.
VJ as Software Designer
New hardware and software innova-
tions propel the rise of superstar VJs.
Because of the influx of new tools
(both commercial and freeware) out on
the market, there are increased oppor-
tunities for VJs looking to network with
companies. However, VJs also program
and code their own tools, making them
available for others. The VJ becomes a
software developer/toolmaker in addi-
tion to offering up live visuals. Artists
like Netochka Nezvanovawho wrote
Nato.0+55or Miller Puckette, author
ofpd, are becoming influential due to
the popularity of their software and
resulting online discourse that results
from its use and interpretation.
VJ-as-Pidgin Language
Like speakers of pidgin languages,
which are based on simplified usage
of different languages as a means of
communicating with speakers of differ-
ent tongues, VJs currently find them-
selves speaking pidgin. They are not
quite at home in the world of fine art,
graphic design, software / open source
culture, or motion graphics, so there is
subsequently an incredibly simplified
vernacular to VJ culture. Unlike other
new roles and identities that form and
create complex systems of communi-
cation, VJs do not have a particularly
rich background to draw from at this
point in history. Instead, they have
to borrow metaphors and meaning
constantly from other areas, creat-
ing weird syntheses, festival names
that refer to the relationship between
film and sound while still adopting a
Proscenium model for performance-based work.
The confusion between television /
MTV style VJs and performance-
based VJs emerges as the dominant
question of identity in mainstream cul-
ture. Music television has been around
much longer in the mainstream eye
than performance-based VJing, so the
meme of music-television jockey con-
tinuous to dominate. Within the per-
formance-based VJ community there
is no gold standard for a VJ perfor-
mance. Should it last one hour or eight
hours? How much does endurance
play a factor? What type of presence
should the VJ have?
Instead, VJs appropriate and adoptroles and standards found in other
areas, such as theatre, video editing,
DJing, and software design to con-
stitute this new identity and act as a
type of standard. Superstar VJs like
Krielare there to pump up the crowd
through highly gesticular movements
throughout an entire performance,
while performers such as NiceDisc
(USA/NY) simply sit in front of their
computers, pushing buttons and con-
trolling the mix much like a non-linearvideo editor, software designer, or air-
traffic controller.
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Addictive TV (UK) live at the National Theatre, London, as part of the OptronicaFestival. VJs
have recently become as popular as DJs in some venues, as these club flyers show.photos copyright Addictive TV
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SYNTAX
VJing fuses imagery, rhythm, technique andsoftware together to form a new language
VJingisanAmalgamationEarlyoninthehisto
ryoffilm,asearlyasthe1920s,whentheItalianFuturistRicciottoCanudodescribedhowcinemaistheSeventhArt,anamalgamationofarchitecture,mu-sic,painting,sculpture,poetry,anddance,peoplet
riedtoformulateaspecificterminologytodealwiththisnewmedium.
In the mid-20th-century Christian
Metz, began to draw from semiotics,
or the study of signs, and pioneered a
new vocabulary with which to discuss
cinema. Metz devised syntagmatic
categories, or ways of understand-
ing how every element in each frame
relates to the ones surrounding it. Heformulate a theory of cinema by using
the analogy of a sentence to arrive at 8
different ways of describing narratives
of time and space. So, while Metz
used terms borrowed from linguistics,
literature, semiotics, and other fields in
order to describe this new moving art,
we have to draw from other fields in
order to describe Vjing.
This language is not scientific. Instead,
it is quasi-scientificand technical, andcombines and draws from software
terminology, terms left-over from tradi-
tional 20th century cinema (both popu-
lar and avant-garde), DJ culture, mo-
tion-graphics, the Internet and web,
and new mobile viewing devices.
Itsall howyouplay withthevariablesthat createstheart
piece
Paul D. Miller
Elements that give rise to
VJ Syntax
Cinemas predecessors- Mil-
itary and media technologies
from the 19th and 20th cen-
turies that isolated and split
human action into mechani-
cally discrete movements that were
recorded in time.
Software / Equipment - The Lumiere
brothers, as well as others, built many
of the first machines and devises used
in cinema. Today, a decentralized net-
work of hardware / software creators
working for companies like Edirol, Vid-
vox, and Cycling74 give birth to the
tools that allow for VJing to flourish.
Audience / Leisure Time - VJing is
a social phenomenon, and this is a
changing variable: how much timepeople are willing to spend investing
their leisure time, and dollars, into go-
ing to VJ events is similar to the ebbs
and flows of people going out to the
movies, purchasing DVDs, playing vid-
eo games, etc.
Audience Taste- What kinds of images
/ scenes / events people are into
Audience Leisure Money- The budget
that allows for VJ events to happen.
There are 6 syntactical codes that are
unique to VJing, 5 that are shared be-
tween VJing and other media, and 2
codes that exist in the cultural sphere
and are not medium-specific. In order
to begin to speak of VJing as both an
art form and craft, there has to be a
place to begin, a place to start, and
that is in the codes, the syntax, and
the nuts and bolts of this form.
VJingisanAmalgamationAsearlyasthe1920s,when
theItalianFu-
turistRicciottoCanudodescribedhowcin-
emaistheSeventhArt,anamalgamationofarchitecture,music,painting,sculpture,poetry,anddance,peopletriedtoformu-lateaspecificterminologytodealwiththisnewmedium.
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SOFTWARE LEISURE TASTE MONEYPREDECESSORS
CODES:
MEDIUM-SPECIFIC
In 1965, Pier Pasolini, an Italian film theorist and director, wrote
an essay entitled The Cinema of Poetry, where he spoke of cin-
ema actually being able to communicate to us due to a common
set of signs, or relations between a signifier and signified concept.
He calls these image signs. These image signs could be things
such as a burning flag one sees projected onto a screen, which
consists of the signifier (the flag on fire), and the signified (anti-
nationalism). Such a view privileges the image itself and the conceptsit signifies to be of primary importance for understanding cinema.
Other theorists, such as GillesDeleuze, Jacques Aumont, and
Sean Cubitt, who wrote ground-
breaking works, findmovement
to be the primary characteristic of
cinema - that of images moving
across the screen, but also move-
ment within the frame, and the
very level of light hitting the retina.
Breaking down the production
and reception of film into dis-
crete units, they arrive at distinct
conclusions about the movement-
image, one of which is the perfectpoint for beginning to describe
VJings particular codes:
The fragmentation that was
intended to produce attentiveness
also produces the oneiric trance.
The trance is a timeless mode
constructed in time. That con-
tradiction poses one of the most
fundamental problems of cinema:
the problem of starting and stop-
ping. - Sean Cubitt
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Surya Buchwald(Momo the Monster) (USA) uses new interfaces such as the Sony
Glasstron to engage with visuals in performance settingsphoto copyright Sonia Paulino
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) borrow heavily from older analog synthesizers
and graphic design software in both flow-of-control and visual layout
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This problem of starting and stop-
ping that film grapples with is often
ignored by VJing. It is a form where
the audience can wander in and out,
not necessarily missing chunks of
relevant information. Instead, as we
see in its medium-specific codes, it is
wrapped up in its own unique devices,where narrative isnt necessarily for-
grounded, but protocols of control and
automation, the essence of the loop,
particle generators, being in the mix,
and the graphical user interface (GUI)
are. These eclipse cinemas concern
with starting and stopping. In VJ sets
there are infinite numbers of starts and
stops along the way.
Vjing is not movie-making. It derives
certain functions and characteristicsfrom cinema, though, but there are
things happening in VJ performances
that are entirely. To understand VJing,
and its relevance in contemporary so-
ciety, how it mobilizes the gaze, how it
recognigures the image and the screen,
how labor and endurance function in a
VJ performance, we need a common
terminology.
CODES: MIXING
Mixing is Precision Optics for the 21st Century
The French conceptual artist Marcel Duchampcoined a phrase
in the 1920s to describe the distinctly retinal phenomena of
optical illusions:precision optics. Duchamps illusions, works like
Rotoreliefs, and theGreen Box, all feature this sense of, as Michael
Betancourt puts it, multiple interpretations which cannot be trueat the same time, but we read as being correct, as being asreal.
Whatevermixyoumakeofit,it
canonlybeaguess-youhave
tomakeyourownversion, and
thatskindofthepoint.thinkof
thisasamixlab-anopensys-temwhereanyvoicecanbeyou.
Theonlylimitsarethegameyou
playandhowyouplayit.
PaulD.Miller
This aside forms the basis of how
mixing operates. From a continu-
ous flow of clips, images, samples,
and animations, entirely new tem-
porary worlds are created, and all
of them are viewed as being justas real as the original material. If
cinema is a history of illusions,
then mixing is illusions-squared,
or illusions-cubed. Combining dif-
ferent sources together over time,
and with different techniques of
additive or subtractive synthesis,
allows for an infinite number of im-
age variations by which both VJs
and audience are seduced.
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Anticipating the Mix
Mixing is different from montage, which
is a very particular type of filmic as-
semblage theorized by filmmakers like
Sergei Eisenstein around the 1920s.
Montage supposedly creates a third
meaning, while mixing, however, is liveand open-ended. While montage is
usually thought of as a combination of
two clips into a third, mixing has no
limit on how far it can go. Precision
optics is to mixing as third meaning
is to montage: and anticipation is cru-
cial to the mix, while it is only a sec-
ondary concern to montage.
Mixing relies on thinking in 2d, 3d and
4d - screen, space and time, taking
into account the past, present, and fu-ture of the mix, how the mix is interact-
ing with the environment, and the 2d
GUI interface the VJ is usually working
with. It is a form of visuo-mechanical
acrobatics.
Perhaps it is because lightning fast re-
flexes are required, working in 2d,3d,
and 4d at the same time, that VJ mixes
often have heavily charged syntagmat-
ic relationships. The film directors abil-
ity to think and rethink shots and their
significance is absent in VJ culture. In
live performance environments, there
are too many variables to juggle at the
same time to be wholly concerned with
the quest for focusing on connotation.
Perhaps this is why no real critical com-
munity or journals have formed around
VJ culture - VJ culture is a whole differ-
ent breed of image making, one where
meaning emerges and dissipates fast
and furiously.
Mixing and Destination/
Predestination
According to film theorist Andre Ba-
zin, it is cinema and movement that
are of one essence only if stasis is
not threatening to overthrow it. Unlike
traditional film, where everything is al-
ready scripted, mixing involves being
in the ever-present now.
This might be the crux of what makes
mixing unique to VJing. According toItalian philosopher Mauro Dorato,
the present of one person becomes
the past of another. The present be-
comes spatialized in live visual per-
formance, depending on the beam of
the projector and willful observations
of the audience which shape its dis-
tributed existence. Mixing is the act
of crafting an as-of-yet unforeseen fu-
ture cinema. The sheer endurance of
iterating through the possibilities and
constructing a meaningful mix on thefly is one standard which VJsareheld
Flashforwardsarerareincinemabecaus
ethefuture
eitherhasalreadybeenwritten-thescrip
tpreexiststhe
film-or,bluntly,doesnotexist.
-SeanCubitt
up to.
Mixing is a Narrative
There are tutorials on mixing online.
Different software packages allow for
different types of mixing and compos-
iting of clips, live camera feeds, and
other elements into a coherent final
image - However, the unsaid principleof mixing relies on the history of narra-
tive in cinema. Even with intercutting
and still frames that were prominant in
silent films, the film always continues.
The same thing can be said for the mix.
Other than a The End projected onto
the screen or the blue light of the pro-
jector without signal, the mix always
implies future images. And it is the
labor of both the performer and audi-
ence that gives it life: the eye and body
work at frenzied paces to keep up withthe rhythmic changes of a given per-
formance. But for the performer, there
has to be a method to this rhythm that
dictates when certain images occur in
a performance.
VJs have to keep the mix going and
work with the logic of the mix itself.
There is often no chance to insert
freeze frames and stills into the mix
because doing so means losing thevisual rhythm one has developed over
the course of the performance. The
narrative and dynamics of rhythm in
the mix becomes the narrative of the
performance itself.
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Thankfully, most of the spotlight
and controversy over sampling
is happening in the music indus-
try, while VJing and VJs are more
adept at learning from others
mistakes (and successes). New
DVDs, libraries, and archives of
public material pop up overnight.Theres no shortage of source-ma-
CODES: SAMPLING
Arguments against the creative appropriation of other source
materials, whether its how unoriginal Vanilla Icewas for rip-
ping off Queen / David Bowie, Negativlandscontroversy with
their found sound plundering of U2s songs, or numerous rap
groups ripping rhythms from all sorts of sources, are still on the
rise. New rules and licenses like Creative Commonsactuallyencourage the creative plundering of songs.
MikeBanksofURthought4Herowerewhite.Kevin
SaundersonthoughtURwerewhite.Nobodyescapesthe
waymachinesscrambleidentityatthepushofabutton
Thesamplerisamandatetorecombinate-soitsuseless
lamentingappropriation.Resistingreplicationislikedoing
withoutoxygen.Thesamplerdoesntcarewhoyouare.
-KodwoEshun
terial to draw from. It is possible to
stop producing and just re-use ex-
isting footage, which is what many
VJs do. Content is re-contextual-
ized in new ways - a wacky dance
scene from an 80s movie can be
reinvigorated if played at a club at
just the right time. The sample is a
form of prosthetic memory that groups
like Lance Blisters, Animal Charm,
and TV Sheriff wholeheartedly em-
brace.Lance Blisters, for example,
makes MIDI-triggered breakbeats to
politicized footage of George Bush,
Dick Cheney, and various other scenes
ripped from television.
Lance runs a set where he makes
songs with themed components -
noisecore music puts an-
other spin on American poli-
tics via an adroit triggering
of samples - sampledelic
percussive banks of bombs,
faces, and clip art eagles
are sped up and electrified.
What was once motionless
becomes a rhythmic mo-tionmachine. It is the playing
and performance of our col-
lective media memory that
demonstrates how the past
is always capable of becom-
ing the preset again. Lance
splits apart the connotations
we associate with certain
images into different frag-
ments that are reassembled
in realtime by the VJ.
The way a VJ uses certain
recognizable samples is sim-
ilar to how New Zealand film
theorist Sean Cubitt describes
the cut, or when the audi-
ence separates the rush of
the pixelated screen into objects and
distinguishes objects from their move-
ment. With a new mobile, perpetually
distracted audience, the sample is a
way of framing the audiences reverieinto moments of re-cognition.
One of the most recent examples
of how prominent sampling in VJing
has become is the REV USA project.
The premise involves taking samples
from recent media events, mixing
them with UK hip-hop duo Coldcuts
audio loops, remixing both into a mu-
sic video, and then uploading them
back to the website. They are then
organized for people to download
and see for themselves the
unique ways the samples
where mixed together.
Individual samples can be
used and re-used with the
transfer of digital files be-
tween computers and serv-
ers. Sampling allows oneto think global and act lo-
cal in the sense that Paul
Miller talks about: renewing
the cloth by repurposing the
fabric. It allows one to take
a confluence of images and
make them their own. It is an
interrogation of meaning or a
repurposing of meaning that
becomes dialectical when
the sampled work is com-
pared to the original - where
connotation slips and slides
into new configurations via
the deployment from the li-
brary/arsenal of a VJ.
Shots from a
Lance Blisters
performance
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A processor is a device which ei-
ther changes the parameter of the in-
coming signal (e.g. gain, polarity, wave
shape) or combines two or more sig-
nals and presents them to the output
(e.g. mixing, switching, wiping). Video
processors include keyers, VCAs, mix-
ers, colorizers, sequencers, SEGs and
frame buffers.
In other words, it modifies the input
signal into a different output signal
that we recognize as having been
changed.
The Paradox of the Filter
Filters are becoming increasingly spe-
cific to the digital realm, especially that
of VJing. Certain software, such asNato.0+55 and Auvi can be thought
of as specially developed filters for the
digital era. In one mouseclick you have
sepia, keying, solarize, tint, and an in-
creasingly growing range of ways to
effect the incoming signal. The para-
dox is that in contemporary culture
one oftentimes views filters (especially
recognizable
ones, such as sepia or solarize) as
an ornamentor an addition to a pre-existing signal. For instance, in live VJ
performance, one can easily recognize
when images are being blurred, or in-
verted. In high art, it has to be the right
artificiality to resonate to discriminat-
ing cultural consumers. The paradox
exists in that one could add filters ad
infinitum, but the end result will still be
a signal. It is our cultural awareness
that thinks of a signal that has been
altered by a filter to be something dif-
ferent than what we normally see. It is
the connotation that still rules, not de-
notation; it is meaning, not signal that
permeates.
Using todays digital filters, not older
processors such as the Hearn Color-
izer, allow us to remove ourselves from
the process of seeing the actual wave-
forms and having a more tuned-in roleto what was happening at the level of
signal - now, everything is abstracted
so we only see it as a macro.
What are the differences between us-
ing culturally accepted and understood
filters versus innovating ones own use
of computer vision techniques? Where
is the line between excessive
ornamentation and technical
prowess blurred? Understanding thenuances of both analog and digital fil-
Assicknessanduncons
ciousness,butalsoasextremelife,filmictechniqu
eboth
describesandrisksactua
lizingwhatitshows:thev
iewersactofviewingisu
nder-
takenintheknowledgeth
attheflickeroftheprojec
tionmightinstigatethee
pilepsyit
recounts.Elidingthedesc
riptionofextremestates
leadsustothebaroques
ecstasy,
itsassimilation,withoutw
ill,intothetranscendence
ofart.
-SeanCubitt
ters can answer some of these ques-
tions, and investigating filtering/CGI
techniques in mainstream movies as
well as new VJ sets can bring about
some awareness of both the technical
and cultural response to filtered imag-
es, filter as ornament, and the paradox
of the filter in an age of digital system
design.
Baroquestyleusedexaggeratedmotionandclear,easilyinterpreteddetailtoproducedrama, tension,exuberance,andgrandeur-SeanCubitt
(USA) MIDI i i l d i hi li f
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Lance Blisters(USA) uses MIDI guitar to trigger samples used in his live performances
photos copyright Timothy Jaeger
RESPAM(Timothy Jaeger & Alex Dragulescu - US / Romania) is a perfor-
mance utilizing custom software that queries a database of spam email
and transforms it into OpenGL text and imagesphotos copyright Sonia Paulino and Mathieu Marguerin
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CODES: AUTOMATION
Automation, or the use of computers to replace certain human func-
tions, plays a part in VJ culture. Where humans once made decisions
about which parts of a film reel to cut, computers now perfomthe same tasks.
While automation removes ele-
ments from the human process of
decision-making, it adds certain
things as well. The human be-
comes more like a conductor or
curator than creator, ordering the
various mechanized processes in
realtime, examining the patterns,
and deciding which iteration be-
comes the final version. Another
phrase used to describe this new
process isrule-based. This is what
artists like Sol Lewitt, DonaldJudd, and other Minimalist / Con-
ceptualist artists of the 1960s and70s, used as a means of creating
their own art. Rule-based process-
es favored the rules governing the
construction of works of art rather
than the end artifacts.
Aesthetic Criteria
The web archive LuxOnline de-
votes a section to some computer
processes that result in this new
kind of automated art. They are:
incrementation, permutation and ran-
dom numbergeneration. These were
first used by a number of experimental
filmmakers in both the pre and post-
World War II era. Some of the reasons
noted in the desire to use computers
as artmaking tools are:
to explore aspects of art which would
not be possible without computers,
and:
to produce work more easily, which
could nevertheless be made without
the use of a computer.
The explosion of interest in VJing over
the last 5 - 10 years has resulted from
both of these conditions. It is becom-ing increasingly easier to produce live
visuals due to the availability of low-
cost software and hardware, and much
of the content generated could not be
produced without computers.
VJ software often acts as a replace-
ment for other non-realtime, non-linear
editing programs, such as AfterEf-
fects, Final Cut Pro, and Premiere.
Clip-based VJs place an emphasis on
the role of the database, or paradigmin semiotic terms, in the creation of re-
altime imagery. Because many of the
processes in a realtime performance
are automated, the visible labor of per-
formance becomes privileged. Hence,
spectators and other VJs understand
that much of a live set can now be
automated. The standard for creating
something uniquely interesting keeps
moving higher and higher.
So what are the particular elements
that are becoming automated? One
is the control and selection of content
based on the logic of the database.
(Relational) Database
Narrative
Databases exist as data elements thatare organized in a structured, system-
atic way. They are able to be consult-
ed by a user, who issues queries to the
database in order to produce a result
of specific data. Databases, especially
relational ones, are governed by rules
such as set theory, which is a way of
using an abstract container to govern
a set of objects. It is this theory that
informs the working practice of most
VJs, who organize their content intoformed sets based on certain shared
characteristics of the media that can
then be recalled in live performance.
While not offering the kind of complex
queries and returns that modern-day
databases have (with the exception
of live coding tools), clip-based data-
bases allow for the creation of narra-
tive. VJs produce a database cinema
that relies on the intuitive grabbing and
shuffling of clips, sounds, and softwarein realtime. While Hollywood produces
movies that offer rule-based stories
and scenarios such as Groundhog
Day, Usual Suspects, and Memento,
VJs can develop an infinite amount of
rule-based works on any given night
of performance. VJ is the contempo-
rary art form that comes the closest to
revealing rule-based systems of narra-
tive constructions in time.
Lev Manovich argues in his essay
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Robert Hodgin(Flight404) in live performance (top) with Griffin Powermate knobs and
Processing (software). Middle: NatzkeRibbon.Bottom:planetoid.photos copyright Robert Hodgin
Screenshots of work-in-progress by Futurismo Zugakousaku (Japan)photos copyright Futurismo Zugakousaku
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Database As Symbolic Form that the
guiding principal of new media is the
projection of the ontology of the com-
puter onto culture itself. Another view-
point, made by Andrew Orlowski in an
article about Creative Commons, that
supports a backlash of the computer-
ization of culture itself.
VJing inherits elements of both argu-
ments. While the VJ is traversing clips
and code, they are also paying atten-
tion to other non-computer things,
such as rhythm,audience response,
sound, and the environment. There
are numerous human processes that
cant be automated so easily, and it
is the contemporary VJs role to act asan interface between cold database
and warm human, somehow aligning
themselves between the two.
Engineering
recipes,or
sourcecod
e,arentthe
same
asworksof
art.
-AndrewO
rlowski
CODES: SHARED
Technological innovation is oc-
curing at a rapid pace, but many
of the same ideas and attitudes
towards what constitutes a good
movie still exist. This is where
shared codes emerge. VJing is an
outgrowth of cinema and theatre,
and now is beginning to share
many similarities with gaming and
software culture, with an increas-
ing emphasis on superrealism and
algorithms. The shared codes of
montage, screen/image, semiot-
ics,superrealism,remix, and spe-
cial f/x allow VJing to flourish in
our mediated environment.
Intheunrollingofthefilm,thephotogramswhichconcernuspassthrough,
hiddenfromsight:whatthespectatorretainsisonlythemovementwithinwhichthey
insertthemselves-ThierryKuntzel
Filmartbegatvideoartbegatcomputerartbegatinteractivitybegattheweb.This
cycleofbirthanddeathhasnowassumedafamiliarlogic.
-RichardWright
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CODES: MONTAGE
The history of montage in both filmmaking and VJing have much in
common. For one, Eisensteinstheory of the Montage of Attrac-
tions uses various machine metaphors to construct how imagesfunction dialectically:
The term montage, meaning as-
semblage, was adapted for the
theater by analogy with the indus-
trial assemblage of machine parts.
The guiding concept was typically
Futurist-Constructivist: the theater
must be broken down into its ba-
sic and most potent elements, just
as if it were a machine, a machine
for producing attractions math-
ematically calculated to have the
strongest effect.
and
if montage is a collision and
from the collision of two given
factors arises a concept,8 then
montage is a [concept] that arises
from the collision of independent
shots.
The principal characteristics of the
radical montage that Eisenstein,Ver-
tov, Meyerhold, et al produced are
still evident in VJ culture, although the
rhetoric of collisions and dialecticshas been dropped. Montage in VJing
is not radical. It is not necessary to de-
scribe it in the same frenzied way that
the Russian Constructivists had.
Even Eisenstein himself, one of the fa-
thers of this radical new cinema, gives
different accounts of what montage
accomplishes. In Film Sense, he talks
about how montage works in relation
to developing an overall theme:
Representation A and representation
B must be so selected from all the
possible features within the theme that
is being developed, must be so sought
for, that their juxtaposition- the juxta-
position of those very elements and
not of alternative ones - shall evoke
in the perception and feelings of the
spectator the most complete image of
the theme itself.
There are competing visions of the
purpose of montage, and subsequent-
ly, how meaning is constructed. This
debate is ongoing. Numerous VJs still
struggle with these same principles
with their banks of clips and f/x. How,when, where, and why to juxtapose?
What is the intended effect? Does it
relate to an overall theme?
Scoring the Visuals
Eisenstein developed a theory in the
early 1940s of vertical montage. He
uses the metaphor of the different
parts of an orchestral score operating
independently from one another butstill linked through time. Contemporary
VJs are using similar strategies. Oliver
S o r - rentino ,
aka VJ
A n y -
o n e ,
h a s
c o n -
structed a sample visual score in the
same manner for a performance with a
DJ. He runs clips, effects, and the en-
ergy of the music horizontally across
Montage of clips from Eisenstein and Vertov movies
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the page like a musical score.
The energy level of the music is the
barometer that determines which ele-
ments along the visual staff are trig-
gered at certain points of time. The
content follows the energy level of the
music, so when things are just getting
started a movie clip of blue ice ap-
pears, and when things become more
intense, Anyone uses clips of spar-
kling steam, shaking fire, and red light-
ning when the musics energy is at its
peak. This system is similar in nature
to the one that Eisenstein pioneered
60 years ago.
VJ Anyonehas established a system
that solves many of the problems that
Eisenstein was facing in the transition
from silent to audio/visual film. Per-
haps were in a similar transition today
between audio/visual film and the newVJ movement.
Situational-Spatial Mon-
tage
Montage is a technique that produces
meaning through certain juxtaposi-
tions, but what happens when there
are 10 - 30 screens all showing differ-
ent images in a large stadium packed
with fans of a certain DJ? This is dif-
ferent from the single-screen setup
of conventional movie-theatres. With
an increasing number of screens and
dome projections that companies like
Eluminati (America) are producing
which completely engulf the viewer,
does montage factor into a concern
for todays VJs? What happens at as-
semblages of portable computing that
have taken place at such venues as
the Tate Modern, Sonar Festival in
Barcelona, and Transmediale in Ber-
lin?
Timothy Druckrey, a New York-City
based media-critic favors a move away
from the surface in favor of the situa-
tion, the narrative in favor of the event,
a n d
i m -mersion
in favor
of atmo-
sphere. He
argues that
the principles
of montage are
moving off of the screen in this new
culture, and out into the world around
us. As traditional eyes-forward cinema
is becoming supplemented by other
forms of viewing, montage as an ar-tistic technique is becoming supple-
mented by other off-screen ways of
creating meaning. Some of these are
the relationship of image to screen,
bodies to each other in space, and
code to performer.
What the Constructivists thought of as
montage has become subsumed into
this many-to-many situation. Because
of advances in technology, peoplehave access to tools that allow the
..thelawsofcompositionalm
ovement(A-B-C)havebeene
volvedinthe
practiceofthesilentfilm.The
newproblemfacingtheaud
io-visualcinemais
tofindasystemforco-coord
inatingA-A,;A1B1C1;B-B1
;etc..thisleads
ustotheprimaryquestionof
findingthosemeansofestabl
ishingthepropor-
tionsbetweenpicturesands
ound.
-SergeiEisenstein
collision of a wide variety of sources
in a wider variety of environments.
Montage is just another element in the
visual score of VJs during the course
of a performance.
Share
An example of this new type of mon-
tage is SHARE in the East Village,
NYC. The programming team recently
released an OSC (Open Sound Con-
trol) client which allows for networked
data to be shared in a variety of situ-
ations.
Sound and Montage
Paul D. Milleraccurately sums up thesynaesthetic qualities of sound in an
era of montage in his book Rhythm
Science. He notes that:
Rhythm science is a forensic investi-
gation of sound as a vector of coded
languagesound is a product of
many different editing environments,
an end result of an interface architec-
ture that twists and turns in sequenc-
es overlaid with slogans, statistics,
vectors, labels, and grids.
Today, sound is overcoded and inter-
laced with brands, download sites,
formats, and software in a decentral-
ized many-to-many environment. The
writing of software that allows sound
and image to be treated in the same
way and thought of as just bits and
bytes implicates sound in the same
role as the image.
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Stacks of mini-dv tapes of footage fromVello Virkhaus(VJ V2) used in events such as (top-bottom):
Under the Bridge, Purple Stain, Give it Away, and Parallel Universe (Red Hot Chili Peppers)copyright Vello Virkhaus
Melissa Ulto (VJ Mixxy)(USA) produces live visual backdrops for
everything from concerts and theatre to art installation and DJ eventscopyright Melissa Ulto
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CODES: SCREEN /
IMAGE RELATION-
SHIP
There is often an ambiguity in a
VJ performance between what the
audience sees and the VJ is actu-
ally doing. The transparency of la-
bor in both content, software, and
the VJs physical presence is are-
sensitizingexperience. Rhythm is
what unites these elements, and
unifies the performance itself with-the numerous interpretations that
the audience will bring.
Live Screen, Live Im-
age
The French theorist Paul Virilio,
who has written on technology,
war, and speed, thinks that the
Moreoftenthannot,therelationshipbetweentheim-ageandthescreenisnotconsideredincontemporaryVJperformance:theimageandscreen,whetheritbeaprojectorbeamingontoawall,agiganticplasmascreen,orothervariationsofthis,areconsideredone-and-the-same.Screenandimagehavebeen,andcontinuedtob
e,
oneandthesame.-SimonPayne
that allow for a much greater intensity
of experience amongst the audience.
Unlike the deferred time of writing or
static imagery, the live image/screen
relationship is a construct that has
been explored by various artists over
the last number of years, such as Mal-
colm le Grice, David Crosswaite(who
made experiments in works such as
FILM NO.1 (1971 / 10m) where unsplit
film shot in 8mm is split into 4 images
when shown in 16mm),Birgit and Wil-
helm Hein(whose works such as Raw
Filmalso deal with the inconsistencies
and incongruities of random 8mm and
16mm film chosen at random), and
Tony Hill, who has made films that
have been projected onto the floor
and projected via a mirror. This tradi-
tion continues in the work of PointlessCreations 3d VJing and Blinklights
(Berlin) usage of entire buildings as
screens. At events and conferences
such as Generator.x, in Norway, pan-
els such as Sexy Displays Pt. IIallude
to the new types of display technol-
ogy that thwart easy recuperation into
traditional film image/screen setups.
More and more of these emerging de-
vices will continue to problematize the
assumption that image and screen are
one and the same.
live screen is what will threaten writ-
ing and reflexivity, not the image. The
screen is merely an apparatus until it
is imbued with specific cultural refer-
ences. However it is the under-ex-
plored relationship between the screen
and image that holds the key to a new
logic of perception. He notes that
images have been around for centu-ries in books and architecture, but the
image that exists in a non-deferred
time brings about a whole new type
of perception. It is this dromology, or
science of speed, that governs the
interrelations of labor, rhythm, cultural
references, and the physical appa-
rati that contain / enable them. Speed
matched with labor dictates which
mixes become noteworthy. The abil-
ity to produce numerous live events
for extended periods of time where
live, flickering images provide stimuli
for audiences waiting for the latest in
newly assembled retinal data streams
is seen as extremely positive by the VJ
community.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan
says that we are being drowned in the
furious immensity of our own technol-
ogies, lost in the huge vortices of en-
ergy created by our media. Electronicmedia like television broadcasting
allow for a support system for com-
munity, offering up a common content
for multiple minds, and VJing acts in a
similar way.
VJs produce content for people in a
centralized environment, which allows
for a much greater affect and imme-
diacy in its form as live performance.
The screen is merely the backdrop for
images replete with cultural references
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CODES: SEMIOTICS
Everything around us involves semiotics, or the study of signs. Theorists
have developed rigorous systems that help us to understand films in their
complexity. Christian Metzand Umberto Eco, among others, developed
ways of isolating elements of filmic scenes into categories. Magazines like
Cahiers Du Cinemaand Cinethiquesurfaced in the 70s where the semi-
otic tradition of film criticism resulted in unique reviews of contemporaryfilm.
Many film theorists understand film
in relation to spoken and written
language, and can break it down
into a type of grammar.
In language, a sentence
is comprised of words,
words are comprised of
letters, and when you put
them together in different
ways they create mean-
ing. Accordingly,
In language, phonemes
and morphemes are combined
to create sentences, while film iscomprised of image and sound to
create syntagmas.
New Media such as CD-ROMS,
DVDs, hypertextual art-
works, etc. also share
this same relationship
with semiotics. Lev Ma-
novichtakes us from an
understanding of how
traditional cinema and
language are comprised
of signs into our new da-
tabase reality. It is here
that the creation of New Media
objects can be understood in se-miotic terms from the standpoint
Kriel demonstrating the Pioneer
DVJs at ISEA 2004
of both creator and user.
New Media Paradigm
In Database as Symbolic Form, Manov-
ich writes about the design process of
these New Media objects in terms ofparadigm and syntagm:
New media reverses this relationship.
Database (the paradigm) is given ma-
terial existence, while narrative (the
syntagm) is de-materialized. Paradigm
is privileged, syntagm is downplayed.
Paradigm is real, syntagm is virtual. To
see this, consider the new media de-
sign process. The design of any new
media object begins with assembling
a database of possible elements to beused. (Macromedia Director calls this
database cast, Adobe Premiere calls
it project, ProTools calls it a ses-
sion, but the principle is the same.)
This database is the center of the de-
sign process. It typically consists from
a combination of original and stock
material distributed such as buttons,
images, video and audio sequences;
3-D objects; behaviors and so on.
VJing differs from the explicit para-
digms that users can choose from
and experience in New Media. If New
Media takes interacting literally (in the
form of clicking on buttons for choos-
ing the next step in a hypertexutal jour-
ney), VJing, an essentially syntagmatic
art where viewers see only the succes-
sion of images rather than the total-
ity of choices, differs from these New
Media Objects. It is an overcoded psy-
chological domain where the minds of
both VJ and audience are locked into
an open-ended cat-and-mouse game
of possibilities.
Psychological Narratives
The VJ is locked into the possibilities
of the machine, at the mercy of his/hertechnological prowess to work the
database. Relegated to CPU memo-
ry, Quicktime movie speed and video
card processing power, they have little
recourse to adjust the raw technical
specifications live. They are also al-
ways locked into the time-domain. On
the other hand, as VJs such as Kriel
andAnyonehave noted, there are nu-
merous other ways to structure such a
sequence of events. Kriel, at the new
media festival ISEA 2004, talked aboutthe ways that a VJ could structure
the crescendo of music and visuals
throughout the night, leading to either
a few small or one gigantic climax. This
method of developing rhythms and
content over time can work in tandem
with the expectations of the audience,
and the music, to create moments of
overcoded connotations and denota-
tions. For example, at climax points
in the music the VJ can show footageof pounding speakers or sexy bodies,
or produce strobing abstract content
to mirror the perceived psychological
state of both audience and performer
linked virtually. At these moments of
connection the momentum of content
and structure just seems to fit.
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VJ Responses to Semiot-
ics: Visual Music, Borrow-
ing from Earlier Musical
Traditions
Recently, VJs such as Anyone cameup with the idea of a VJ score, similar
to the score used by musicians making
chance-based composition, such as
works by John Cage and Karlheinz
Stockhausen.London-based VJ Kriel
has expanded upon the notion of cre-
scendo and diminuendo in structuring
a visual performance over the course
of a night. The score is one way of al-
leviating the pressure of endless pos-
sible variations for the VJ. It dictates
the way a piece is to be played bythe performer, and is the written rep-
resentation of the music. Dynamics
offer ways of engaging with rhythm,
and structuring rhythms that can turn
a performance into something more
visually engaging.
In his VJ performances,VJ Anyone (UK) utilizes visual scores, similar to
those used in music
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CODES: REMIX
Remixing is a rearrangement of music, visuals, or other forms of recorded
media into something novel and unique. The 20th century heralded a new
era of recording devices that enabled people to archive and share these
media. It encouraged new subjective relationships around ones collec-
tion, and also new forms of sociality in the form of mix tapes and bootlegDVDs.
Remixing / VJing / So-
cial Commentary
What is it about remixing that
seduces people to take others
source material and comment
about politics and society? Oneonly needs to look back as far as
the Dada art movement of the ear-
ly 20th century to see how collage
and remix became a relevant art
form. By juxtaposing images cutout from newspapers and maga-
zines, Dada artists liked Hugo Ball
and Hannah Hochcreated a very dif-
ferent kind of meaning with interpreta-
tions slipping out of the control of the
original creator.
The VJ is a social critic / commentator.
We live in a media-rich society, and hav-
ing access to clips from on-line, tele-
vision, and movies, allows for a wide
breadth of possibility in commenting
on various media. In VJ culture, proj-
ects and mixes abound that attest to
the value of the remix in contemporary
culture. Social commentary is usually
thought of in different forms such as
public speeches and writing. Acting as
a social critic giving a speech, the VJ
can respond to the mood of the crowd
by triggering, generating, and riffingwith the image in a variety of ways that
new technologies make possible. The
VJ now has an increased
ability to make
large-scale
i m p a c t s
due to the
n u a n c e d
g e s tu re s
that they
can pro-
duce withtheir tools,
and the
available
c o n t e n t t h a t
can be remixedad infinitum.
Remix the Archive
Archiving and Remix culture have a lot
in common. Both play with our percep-
tions of memory, and extend our pros-
thetic memory into other dimensions.
New services are arising that serve the
interest of cataloguing and assimilat-
ing all human interests, and then sub-
dividing them into categories. For the
ephemeral medium of video, storage
has now become an all-encompassing
goal, with new custom-services that
cater to the VJ world. Just as Netflix
have made a name for themselves in
the film/video world and stock pho-
tographs have become de rigueur in
digital design, clip repositories have
blossomed in the VJ community, al-
lowing people to remix others content
for a price.
VJ Image Bank, one such ser-
vice, offers open source content for
VJs. Paul D. Miller describes how:
rhythm science is not so much a new
language as a new way of pronounc-
ing the ancient syntaxes that we in-
herit from history and evolution, a new
way of enunciating the basic primallanguages that slip through the fab-
-SeanCubitt
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ric of rational thought and infect our
psyche at another deeper level.Tak-
ing elements of our own alienated con-
sciousness and recombining them to
create new languages from old. might
be a way of seeking to reconcile the
damage rapid technological advances
have wrought on our collective uncon-
sciousness.
Remixing triggers our collective un-
consciousness into a prism of reflec-
tion and refraction where images once
familiar are defamiliarized, and other
images speak
more clearly
than they did
in their origi-
nal context.
Remixing isabout freeing
content from
its context,
allowing the
desires of the
VJ to intersect
with the un-
tapped mean-
ings of source
images, and
synthesizing
new connota-tions out of an infinite number of com-
binations. Places like VJImageBank
make this easier via their metatagging
and categorizing of the moving image.
VJIMAGEBANK homepage (http://www.vjimagebank.com)
CODES: SPECIAL F/X
VJs sometimes act like magicians, conjuring up patches, software, and
filters. These only develop meaning once they enter the language of ourcultural codes.
Special F/X-as-Fix
There is a predisposition people
have towards special effects and
their ability to contribute to alter-
ing our consciousness, if even for
a short while. It is an intrapsychic
event where the individual psyche
and make-believe world come to-
gether in a type of union. Certain
VJ groups, like OVT Visualswhich
creates digital playgrounds of sal-
vation, take part in the religious
undertones of special F/X as a way
of reaching a divine union. The de-
sire is a freedom from merely be-
ing a fixed body in space. Special
F/x is the means towards achiev-ing that end, and achieves a new
morphology of body and spirit .
In 1916, the actor Paul Wegener
is quoted as wanting an increas-
ingly synthetic cinema in whichtotally artificial scenes would be
created by the abilities of the cam-
era. In between striving for new
narratives in VJing and plunging
further into the synthetic cinema
of pure affect, special f/x are a
constantly negotiated field.
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Coolisnotjustonety
peofcool.Cooliscon
fidenceand
knowing,Iguess,what
youareandbeingfine
withit.Some
peoplecanbewhatpeoplec
allnerdsandtheyrec
oolbe-
causetheyknowtheyrenerds.Theyknoww
hattheyareand
theyresoconfidentin
knowingwhattheyare
thatthatmakes
themcool,andsomeb
odyaspirestobeliket
hem,because
theyrefinewithit.Its
confidence,youknow.
CODES: CULTURAL
There are numerous cultural codes that shape VJing and help determine
its trajectories, content, and styles. These are often deep-seated modes ofcommunication that have become established over a number of years.
Realists vs. Imagists
TheoristAndre Bazingrouped the first
wave of film directors (from around
1920 - 1940) into two groups. These
two groups were then further broken
down into sub-groups based on cer-
tain characteristics.
* Imagists- Base their integrity in the
image (subjective approach, distor-
tions of space/time)
* Realists- Base their integrity in re-
ality (long take, on-location shooting,
objective approach)
The sub-groups for the Imagists are:
*Plastics - Concerned with lighting,decor, composition, acting
* Montagists- Those who use editing
to distort time
The sub-groups for the Realists are:
* Objective Realists - Neo-realism,
documentary-style
* Spatial Realism - Renoir, Welles,
surround-sound, creating space to
the movie
What do these definitions, coined
about 80 years ago, have anything to
do with todays VJ culture? For one,
they are definable cinematic ideals for
a certain era. Cinema was either sup-
posed to present reality accurately, or
bring about new, unforeseen worlds
that only special F/X could realize.
Todays VJs are taking similar stances.
Either the software and actions of the
VJ should be completely transpar-
ent to the audience (Amy Alexander,
TopLap, etc.), or the VJ should oper-
ate with an opaque window into their
world. Else, the VJ should simply be
an accomplice, providing a visual
soundtrack for a musician or DJ.
As VJing becomes a global move-
ment, how do certain cultural trends
figure into the production of visuals?
Certainly the physical environment a
VJ lives in would have an effect on the
visuals (s)he makes.
The City
New York City, Los Angeles, London,Tokyo, Mexico City: these global meg-
alopolises are where many VJs reside,
and often become thematic locations
that translate to audiences worldwide.
Everyone knows the feeling of living
in, or at least visiting, cities like this.
Crowded conditions, streets filled with
people, extravagent architecture, sub-
ways and buses, and an ever-chang-
ing, always charged atmosphere are
inspiration for contemporary VJs. In-
fluenced by their environments, VJs
like Scott Brown, Dino Lava, andVJ
Sergio Brown use clips of cities in
their sets, working the local dynam-
ics of place into larger sets. Trying to
capture as much of the flavor of a par-
ticular place is still a relevant means of
expression that people can instantly
connect with.
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Branding, and the similarity of VJ identities with corporate identities, is a result ofVJs adopting both the business practices and marketing stragies of corporations
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Modern Architecture
Lines and forms of everything from
the Guggenheim Bilbao to a an office
building down the street contain mo-
tionless patterns that, when put into
the hard drive of an adept VJ, become
motion graphics. VJs and software de-signers like Canadian artist Ben Bog-
artand 242 Pilotsall use the natural
patterns of architecture and turn them
into rhythmic, abstract shapes. There
is something fascinating about these
static buildings and their forms that tap
into our subconscious thoughts
and desire to create move-
ment out of the unmoving.
Itisthemostimportantthingforafilmtoberunning...thestoppingofthemovingsequencewouldbetheendofcinemaSpeedisthemotherofcinema...itisnotbychancethatthecarwas
inventedatthesametime,theaeroplane,thetelephone,andtheradio.Everythingthathasdeterminedthiscenturyofaccelerationwasinventedaroundthesametime,thetransitionalperiodbetweentwocenturies.-EdgarReitz
ACTIVATION
Through rhythm VJs activate space and audience. Today, in the 21st cen-
tury, the image becomes more valuable as it is intertwined with rhythmic
elements, and likewise, rhythm is embodied in the form of images andvisuals that guide its trajectory.
What is it about the fixed attention
span of traditional cinema that is
lost in live cinema performance?
Is there a rhythm to vision?
Vision itself is a discipline studied
at length by theorists and histo-
rians in contemporary culture,
and Jonathan Crary is one of the
foremost excavators of attention
in Modernity. He writes:
Oncetheempiricaltruthof
visionwasdeterminedtoliein
thebody,vision(andsimilarly
theothersenses)couldbean-
nexedandcontrolledbyexter-
naltechniquesofmanipulation
andstimulation.
-JonathanCrary
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This makes sense in the division of
labor and leisure within capitalism.
If synaesthesia is the stimulation of
multiple senses, then dissynaesthesia
is the sectioning off of senses into
multiple realms. The DJ provides the
music, VJ the visuals, and rarely the
two shall meet. This has been the way
history has progressed: for retinalstimulation, go to the movies, for aural
stimulation, visit the club.
This division of labor can only hold for
so long. Crary notes that:
EXIT CINEMA(and memory.)
Cinemas most important convention
is its relationship of consent between
audience and producer, capital and
consumer. Aside from certain devel-
opments in experimental cinema, film
has followed a proscenium model,
both in mainstream Hollywood and
various avant-gardes. To pay for the
combined labor of a director and crew
of people working on a film, audi-
ences pay money to sit and watch the
product for a set period of time. It is
a discrete activity that takes place in
specialized locations. There is a disci-
plined set of conventions that dictate
a certain level of attentiveness on the
part of the audience to this form.
From the late 19th century up to now,
capitalism has continued to modern-
ize both the production and reception
of cinema, which has brought about
a crisis.
Now,
the changing configurations of capi-
talism continually push attention and
distraction to new limits and thresh-olds, with an endless sequence of
new products, sources of stimulation,
and streams of information,
as well as the new methods of
managing and regulation perception.
Technology favors the mobile subject,
able to capture and record their own
cinema with a cellphone, burn DVDs,
control down to the frame-per-second
Hollywood movie playback on DVD
players, and even download mov-
forthepast100yearsperce
ptualmodalitieshavebeenan
dcontinuetobeinastateof
perpetualtransformation,or,som
emightclaim,astateofcrisi
s.Ifvisioncanbesaidto
haveanyenduringcharacteristicwithinthetwentiet
hcentury,itisthatithasnoe
nduring
features.Ratheritisembedde
dinapatternofadaptabilitytonewtechnologicalrelati
ons,
socialconfigurations,andec
onomicimperatives.Whatwe
familiarlyreferto,forexampl
e,
asfilm,photography,andtele
visionaretransientelements
withinanacceleratingseque
nce
ofdisplacementsandobsoles
cence,partofthedeliriousop
erationsofmodernization.
-JonathanCrary
ies at their very convenience. Today
the mobile subject can download
podcasts on iTunesand listen to a
random playlist. Capitalism favors the
consumer, and this perpetual mode of
multitasking and schizophrenic recep-
tion spills over into VJ environments.
Exit cinema, enter mobility. Enter re-
integrated synaesthesia. Exit divisionof sound and image. Exit polarities.
Along with this new hyper acceler-
ated, perpetually distracted consumer
of both sound and image emerges the
reconfiguration of memory, especially
in contemporary VJing. Unlike plot-
driven mainstream films, which have
an emphasis on causal relationships,
VJ performances are usually driven
by other factors. If movement is oneof the first special effects in cinema
(circa 1895, when the Lumieresdem-
onstrated their Cinematograph), and
people first experienced movement
abstracted from life in this area, then
VJing reunites this sense: viewing an
ebb and flow of pixels induces trance,
or a timeless mode constructed in
time.
VJing provides this constant re-pix-
elization of the image, aconstant antici-
pation of what
may originate
at any given mo-
ment.
So how does this
constant anticipation
work with a new mobile
audience? Gustave
Le Bon, a Frenchman who studied
crowds in the late 19th century gives
us a key to understanding how audi-
ence, memory, trance, VJing, and our
new multitasking subject all relate to
one another. In his anthropological
study on crowds and crowd behavior,
he observes that crowds are always in
more of an unconscious state than
individuals. This is one of the secrets
of their strength. It is the always-present unconsciousness of crowds
that shape their reception to what is
around them.
The crowd is in a state of expect-
ant attention and full of imagination.
Whatever strikes it at the right mo-
ment in a clear form has the power of
suggestiveness that images viewed
by one man or woman alone do not
have. Emotional, theatrical imageshave the best effect as people enter a
domain controlled more by sensation,
affect, and their nervous system.
Whoeverbe
theindividualsthatc
omposeit,ho
weverlikeor
unlikebethe
irmodeoflif
e,theiroccupations,th
eircharacter,
ortheirintelli
gence,thefa
ctthattheyh
avebeentransformed
intoacrowd
putsthemin
possessiono
fasortofco
llective
mindwhichm
akesthemfee
l,think,anda
ctinamanne
r
quitedifferent
fromthatinw
hicheachindi
vidualofthem
would
feel,think,an
dactwerehe
inastateofis
olation.
-LeBon
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Audience and performer, screen and image, mobility and attention, all com-
bine into one performance environmentphotos collaged together with Pix Picks (http://www.signwave.co.uk)
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Experimental Narrative
Flow
The new subject of the twenty-
first century can surf through these
crowd environments - just look at
open air festivals like Coachella
in California, Sonar in Barcenlona,or MayDayin Berlin as examples
where crowds have the opportunity
to choose when and how they want
to be affected. Crowds in VJ perfor-
mances and festivals oftentimes have
the ability to move from one scene to
another, one environment to another,
pulled by their spinal cord and feet to
which rhythms move them, to which
experiences they want to be a part
of. After all, it is the experience that
crowds of different generations un-
dergo that is one of the more effective
ways to establish truth in the minds
of the masses, according to Le Bon.
(NON)LINEAR
PROCESS /
(NON) LINEARRESULTThe history of cinema, film, and video is complex and turbulent. The
eventual replacement of analog cutting machines by digital workstations
and continued development of special f/x undergirds the basic fundamen-
tal aspects of how film, digital video, and the motion graphics that we see
in theatres and television are produced.
In a non-linear process, one has
the ability to line up clips in a va-
riety of ways, color correct certain
parts, endlessly tweak the audio,
make layers upon layers of com-
posite images, add endless ef-
fects, and trim or extend the time
that one section dissolves into an-
other one. Time is indeterminate.
Sound and video are at our mercy,
and we have the ability to length-
en, shorten, or embellish, a given
Wehaveseenthat intheprocessofrememberingthereare twoveryessen-tialstages:thefirstis theassembling of theimage, while thesecondconsistsintheresult of thisassemblyandits significancefor thememory.Inthis latterstageit isimportantthatthememory shouldpay aslittle attentionaspos-sibletothefirststage, andreachtheresultafterpassingthroughthe stageofassemblyas swiftlyaspossible. Such is practicein lifeincontrasttopracticeinart. Forwhenweproceed into
the sphereof art,wediscover amarkeddisplacementof emphasis.Actually,toachieveitsresult, aworkof art directsalltherefinement of its methodstotheprocess.-Sergei Eienstein
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section of film for as long as we want.
Although, once all the changes are
made and a final version is rendered,
and delivered to a client or theatre
as an unalterable piece of work. You
press play and watch the film or mo-
tion graphics spot for as long as it runs.
You have the ability to fast forward or
slow down the film, but the work onlyappears different momentarily. The ba-
sic structure of the work remains the
same, and will remain the same every
time it is viewed. As a result, to watch
the film, an audience must remain in-
ert, because a fixed-length film pre-
supposes a relationship between the
audience and screen.
On the other hand, VJing inverts this
paradigm of film and video technolo-gies. Because VJing is a live, non-re-
producible activity that is comprised of
human labor, technological infrastruc-
ture, and an audience, there is a rigid,
time-based structure from which VJs
can perform their material. Unlike con-
ventional non-linear filmmaking, VJs
cannot undo something. There is a
clear flow of control that digital tech-
nologies necessitate when jockeying
live, moving images. Breaking a link
or changing the structure of the flowof control means that the entire thing
stops. What is indeterminate about
this scenario is the length of time that
VJs perform. The final product, or
mix, is flexible in how long it is, unlike
conventional film. Nothing needs time
to render, because it is produced live
for an audience.
GOAL-ORIENTED
PRODUCTION /
GOAL-ORIENTEDVIEWING
Viewing and understanding a film
usually involves watching it from
start to finish. This tendency has
become naturalized. To view a film
from start to finish is to see the film
how it was meant to be seen: in
its entirety. This is what charac-
terizes the older cinematic tradi-
t