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live cinema unraveled

HANDBOOK FOR LIVE VISUAL PERFORMANCE

TIMOTHY JAEGER

PROLOGUE
VJing is a phenomenon that has come to
prominence in popular culture over the past
10 years. Commonly misunderstood as being 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.

ENVIRONMENT
There is not enough of a critical discourse around this new kind of live,
improvised performance. In our posthistorical era, art critic Arthur C. Danto
describes the possibilities (below).
This overwhelming sense of everything is possible permeates in todays
art world. Discourse has turned into
sound bites, market hype, colloquialisms, and tech specs. There are no criteria 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?

SYNTAX

parate elements, such as rhythm, labor, structure, outside references, etc.

are concretized.
The relationship between the Image
and Screen, commonly what most audiences see in a live VJ performance,
lies at the intersection of the basic
projector/screen setup. Labor, both
on the part of the VJ during live performance as well as the dead labor of
software and hardware designers, and
rhythm, the audiovisual patterns that
emerge and grab the audiences attention, intersect both Image and Screen.
Together, they provide a motif from
which to map out this field.

interpretation /
cultural relevancy

Main Elements of VJing

Jockeying is a behavior and role that
facilitates a radically new kind of postcinematic experience. It is an emerging art form that can be analyzed in
a similar fashion to previous art/cinematic movements. However, it has
fundamental differences. For example,
the relationship between screen and
image is a locus of activity where dis-

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ACTIVATION

Jockeying is an appropriate but awkward term (VJ is used all the time, or
video jockey, but rarely just jockeying) 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 many
of the same characteristics. For instance, like their MTV counterparts,
VJs are also making social commentary through remixing and montage.
Like DJs, they are concerned with
rhythm, and oftentimes also use similar laptops, software, and approaches
to mixing.

VJing and Labor

One overarching them here is endurance, 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 number of fields. In one fell swoop a VJ can
provide motion graphics, cinema, audio, and performance. Art has a function as a social catalyst, but oftentimes
disparate elements are kept separate,
such as the actual artwork and reception festivities. VJing is an alternativeto the traditional art world because it
bundles reception, actual artstic content, and after party into one package.
In relation to the commercial world,
VJing challenges the static motion
graphics and commercials that dominate the popular landscape. VJing offers the possibility of infinite changes:
the process is linear in the sense that
there is a very defined flow of controlsource, capture, filter, output,
but the result is completely variable
and non-linear in structure. It is difficult for companies and corporations to undesrstand this challenge to
the traditional model, which relies on
consultations with designers and creatives, tests, samples, mockups, finally 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 imagery. Control and organization are key,
as are being able to navigate crowd
flows, 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.

with an incredible breadth and depth

of knowledge that transcends these
individual domains.

Close Ties with Film

VJing is a radical departure from previous cinema(s). It is a total art form
that encompasses music/sound, visuals, and installation. It draws from a
lineage founded by the Russian Constructivists in not being a pure art
form, but one that has a clear social
function.
Like the artist-engineer
Constructivists,
VJs
innovate
and modify existing tools and
software to suit
their
needs.
They oftentimes
build new custom tools and
software, thus
elevating
the
craft into other
dimensions.

Michail Dlugatsch (Russia)

Lithography from 1929

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,

Hang the VJ

Some of the original MTV Veejays, who are often confused with their contemporary counterparts. From L-R, starting at the top: Adam Curry, Jesse Camp, Downtown Julie Brown,
Kennedy, Martha Quinn, Pauly Shore, Tyrese, Riki Rachtman, Matt Pinfield
photos: Wikipedia

Generative imagery from CHiKA from a live peformance in Brooklyn, NY (7/23/05)

photos copyright Timothy Jaeger

JOCKEYING
AS BEHAVIOR
VJing is something you do. It involves action and response to visual stimuli. Using new tools such as the Putney, Woody Vasulka explored 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 these
total failures and then realized the crux of his interest:

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American m
ovement wa
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ure out wha
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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, which
were shown in ways intending to
evoke a sensational response in the
audience, these early experiments had
other goals. Many of the first interactions 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 particularly affective works emerged through
multiple test situations.
Woody and Steina Vasulka are two artists who, along with friends, collaborators, 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 tangible, 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 experiments 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 thinking that this medium/material actually
had its own unique vocabulary. In fact,
he made a work called Vocabulary that
tried to deal specifically with this language 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, hardware, software, and digital information in a similar way. Programmers like
Flight404 and Futurismo Zugakousaka are also testing the medium, with
web sites acting as laboratories and
new VJ tools like Lemur and Quartz
Composer finding themselves as the
digital equivalents to machines like the
Putney and Video Synthesizer.
Visceral response to audio-visual exploration 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,

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Vello Virkhaus (VJ V2) in the mix

photo copyright Vello Virkhaus

Early video synthesizers - from top, the EMS Putney (1969) and Spectre (1974)
photos copyright Moogulator www.moogulator.com / sequencer.de

beta-software and blog comments are

de rigueur in seeing what clicks.

Early Jockeying and Image Potency

These early investigations into the medium 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 fundamental understanding of this new medium. The early Vasulka experiments
resulted in incredibly powerful, arresting images. Both Woody and Steina labored 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 performance. Because most of the Vasulkas 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 working with visuals and software. Woody

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 like
VJ Central, a new generation of tool
and image-makers is emerging, with
a similar socio-political context fueled
by open-source politics, hacker culture, 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 shifted to a simulation of effects via their
digital siblings.
Hence, many of todays emerging
works look no different save for a digital clarity and anti-aliased feel. Ways
of compensating for this lack of novelty on the part of todays VJs turn out
to be things like cross-media promotion, bigger screens, longer sets, larger-than-life multiple screens, multiple
performers, bigger performance spaces and added 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 MTVstyle VJ who can find different quips or
interesting things to say about a music
video time after time, mixing and remixing are VJs way of commenting
on the visuals. This desire to make different versions of a mix, continuously
update material, and collide old clips
with new software, is crucial to VJings

growing relevance as a type of activity.

DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller realizes that this is part of how rhythm develops. He notes in his book Rhythm
Science about the changing same
and how Jamaican Dub musicians and
Silicon Valley engineers work to counter the cultural entropy of the same
beat day after day, night after night.
There are iterations and versions of everything. For him, sci-fi is a way to create an alternate zone of expression.
VJing works this same way, offering
iterations and versions, processing the
past and present into the future, offering an alternate zone of expression
in a culture of the changing same. It
is none other than the potency of images, sounds, and their combinations
that can create new sociocultural mediascapes.
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 flourishes 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.

JOCKEYING
AS ROLE
Some of the t-shirts that can be found on VJ Central explain the current state of the video jockey as
a
role
or
identity
to
be
assumed

Currently, the role of VJing is often confused with that of a DJ.

Certainly over the last 10 years
DJing has become an art form of
its own, partially due to DJs such
as Spooky and Shadow, who
have popularized the art form as

turntablists who use the record

player as an instrument in itself.
In the history of DJing, there have
been key moments where certain
techniques were discovered. Figures like Francis Grasso, one of
the first disco DJs, turned a sim-

ple activity into a social role by developed the technique for slip-queuing
and overlaying 2 records together to
maintain a continuous flow of energy
throughout the night.
More importantly than just the techniques themselves, however, were the
reasons for developing them in the
first place. This is how DJs morphed
into a specialized role in popular culture. Discos were havens from the
work week and outside world where
those on the margins of society could
go to affirm their existence through a
kind of shared abandon - the dance.
It is still no surprise that popular culture is suspicious of all but the most
mainstream club forms as a form of
social release. Even though today it is
possible to download any type of music with iTunes, there have been police
crackdowns on places like New
York Citys Twilo, Limelight, and
Tunnel clubs. There is a discrepancy between societys acceptance of music and their disapproval of the ways and forms in
which people gather to expresses
a collective affinity for a particular
social outlet.
As these techniques were being perfected by DJs in discos
and other outsider spaces, they
soon became shipped industry-standard into later turntable
models. Now new kinds of DJs
were emerging that had more
of an affinity for art gatherings/
happenings than dance clubs.
Turntablists like Christian Marclay, Spooky, Otomo Yoshihide,
ErikM and others would bring
Francis Grasso

photos copyright VJCentral.com

image copyright http://ped111251.tripod.com/francis.

about a new type of consciousness in

the capabilities of the turntable that is
still evolving to this day. There are now
many different types of DJs as well as
VJs, such as gallery-based, nightclub,
stadium, festival, etc. Today VJs like
AlexetJeremey from the Netherlands
are identifying with the same social
struggles as early DJs in finding new
spaces and social outlets.
Similar to how the modern-day DJ
came into existence, VJs have an
identity crisis. Can a VJ exist without a
DJ? Does a VJ serve a purpose other
than a support act for the music? Are
VJs there just to serve superstar DJs?
When Sasha and Digweed choose
VJ Kriel, or Eminem chooses Johnny
DeKam to provide the visuals for a
concert, what kind of role does the VJ
serve?

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 conference held in Berlin, in conjunction with
AVIT and Chaos Computer Club.
Panels with titles like Hang the VJ, Pixels Dont Need No Money, and Pixels
Want to Break Free all 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 discussion 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 technologies, 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 auteur dictated the evolution of film and
film culture in the 1950s.
Like the Cahiers, events like AVIT are
signs 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 Promoters?

Another role and persona which has
emerged over the last 5 - 10 years is
that of the superstar VJ. Today, VJs
like Benton Bainbridge, Kriel, and V2
have elevated the VJ into a prominent
enough position where they are regarded 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 limits
for 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 Apple website - and subsequently reveals
how Apple technology makes it easier
for his studio and live workflow.

VJ as Software Designer
New hardware and software innovations propel the rise of superstar VJs.
Because of the influx of new tools
(both commercial and freeware) out on
the market, there are increased opportunities 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 addition to offering up live visuals. Artists

like Netochka Nezvanova who wrote

Nato.0+55 or Miller Puckette, author
of pd, are becoming influential due to
the popularity of their software and
resulting online discourse that results
from its use and interpretation.

formance-based VJ community there

is no gold standard for a VJ performance. Should it last one hour or eight
hours? How much does endurance
play a factor? What type of presence
should the VJ have?

VJ-as-Pidgin Language

Instead, VJs appropriate and adopt

roles and standards found in other
areas, such as theatre, video editing,
DJing, and software design to constitute this new identity and act as a
type of standard. Superstar VJs like
Kriel are 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 controlling the mix much like a non-linear
video editor, software designer, or airtraffic controller.

Like speakers of pidgin languages,

which are based on simplified usage
of different languages as a means of
communicating with speakers of different tongues, VJs currently find themselves 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 communication, 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, creating weird syntheses, festival names
that refer to the relationship between
film and sound while still adopting a
Proscenium model for performancebased work.
The confusion between television /
MTV style VJs and performancebased VJs emerges as the dominant
question of identity in mainstream culture. Music television has been around
much longer in the mainstream eye
than performance-based VJing, so the
meme of music-television jockey continuous to dominate. Within the per-

Addictive TV (UK) live at the National Theatre, London, as part of the Optronica Festival. VJs
have recently become as popular as DJs in some venues, as these club flyers show.
photos copyright Addictive TV

S Y N TA X
VJing
fuses
imagery,
rhythm,
technique
and
software together to form a new
language

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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 understanding how every element in each frame
relates to the ones surrounding it. He
formulate 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.

work of hardware / software creators

working for companies like Edirol, Vidvox, and Cycling74 give birth to the
tools that allow for VJing to flourish.

This language is not scientific. Instead,

it is quasi-scientific and technical, and
combines and draws from software
terminology, terms left-over from traditional 20th century cinema (both popular and avant-garde), DJ culture, motion-graphics, the Internet and web,
and new mobile viewing devices.

Audience Leisure Money - The budget

that allows for VJ events to happen.

Elements that give rise to

VJ Syntax

Audience / Leisure Time - VJing is

a social phenomenon, and this is a
changing variable: how much time
people are willing to spend investing
their leisure time, and dollars, into going to VJ events is similar to the ebbs
and flows of people going out to the
movies, purchasing DVDs, playing video games, etc.
Audience Taste - What kinds of images
/ scenes / events people are into

There are 6 syntactical codes that are

unique to VJing, 5 that are shared between 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

Its all how you play with the variables that

creates the art

Cinemas predecessors - Milpiece

itary and media technologies
Paul D. Miller
from the 19th and 20th centuries that isolated and split
human action into mechanically discrete movements that were
that is in the codes, the syntax, and
recorded in time.
the nuts and bolts of this form.
Software / Equipment - The Lumiere
brothers, as well as others, built many
of the first machines and devises used
in cinema. Today, a decentralized net-

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 cinema 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 (antinationalism). Such a view privileges the image itself and the concepts
it signifies to be of primary importance for understanding cinema.

PREDECESSORS

SOFTWARE

LEISURE

TASTE

MONEY

Other theorists, such as Gilles

Deleuze, Jacques Aumont, and
Sean Cubitt, who wrote groundbreaking works, find movement
to be the primary characteristic of
cinema - that of images moving
across the screen, but also movement within the frame, and the
very level of light hitting the retina.
Breaking down the production
and reception of film into discrete units, they arrive at distinct
conclusions about the movement-

image, one of which is the perfect

point 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 contradiction poses one of the most
fundamental problems of cinema:
the problem of starting and stopping. - Sean Cubitt

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) borrow heavily from older analog synthesizers
and graphic design software in both flow-of-control and visual layout

Surya Buchwald (Momo the Monster) (USA) uses new interfaces such as the Sony
Glasstron to engage with visuals in performance settings
photo copyright Sonia Paulino

This problem of starting and stopping 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 forgrounded, 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 characteristics
from cinema, though, but there are
things happening in VJ performances
that are entirely. To understand VJing,
and its relevance in contemporary society, 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 Duchamp coined a phrase

in the 1920s to describe the distinctly retinal phenomena of
optical illusions: precision optics. Duchamps illusions, works like
Rotoreliefs, and the Green Box, all feature this sense of, as Michael
Betancourt puts it, multiple interpretations which cannot be true
at the same time, but we read as being correct, as being as real.

Whatever mix you make of it, it

can only be a guess - you have
to make your own version, and
thats kind of the point.think of
this as a mix lab - an open system where any voice can be you.
The only limits are the game you
play and how you play it.
Paul D. Miller

This aside forms the basis of how

mixing operates. From a continuous flow of clips, images, samples,
and animations, entirely new temporary worlds are created, and all
of them are viewed as being just
as real as the original material. If
cinema is a history of illusions,
then mixing is illusions-squared,
or illusions-cubed. Combining different sources together over time,
and with different techniques of
additive or subtractive synthesis,
allows for an infinite number of image variations by which both VJs
and audience are seduced.

Anticipating the Mix

Mixing is different from montage, which
is a very particular type of filmic assemblage theorized by filmmakers like
Sergei Eisenstein around the 1920s.
Montage supposedly creates a third
meaning, while mixing, however, is live
and 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 crucial to the mix, while it is only a secondary concern to montage.
Mixing relies on thinking in 2d, 3d and
4d - screen, space and time, taking
into account the past, present, and future of the mix, how the mix is interacting 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 reflexes are required, working in 2d,3d,
and 4d at the same time, that VJ mixes

often have heavily charged syntagmatic relationships. The film directors ability 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 community or journals have formed around
VJ culture - VJ culture is a whole different breed of image making, one where
meaning emerges and dissipates fast
and furiously.

Mixing and Destination/

Predestination
According to film theorist Andre Bazin, 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 already scripted, mixing involves being
in the ever-present now.
This might be the crux of what makes
mixing unique to VJing. According to
Italian philosopher Mauro Dorato,
the present of one person becomes
the past of another. The present becomes spatialized in live visual performance, depending on the beam of
the projector and willful observations
of the audience which shape its distributed existence. Mixing is the act
of crafting an as-of-yet unforeseen future cinema. The sheer endurance of
iterating through the possibilities and
constructing a meaningful mix on the
fly is one standard which VJs are held

up to.

Mixing is a Narrative

the course of the performance. The

narrative and dynamics of rhythm in
the mix becomes the narrative of the
performance itself.

There are tutorials on mixing online.

Different software packages allow for
different types of mixing and compos-

the future
re in cinema because
ra
e
ar
ds
ar
rw
fo
h
e
las
F
- the script preexists th
en
itt
wr
en
be
dy
ea
alr
either has
not exist.
film - or, bluntly, does
- Sean Cubitt
iting of clips, live camera feeds, and
other elements into a coherent final
image - However, the unsaid principle
of mixing relies on the history of narrative 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 projector without signal, the mix always
implies future images. And it is the
labor of both the performer and audience that gives it life: the eye and body
work at frenzied paces to keep up with
the rhythmic changes of a given performance. 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 the
visual rhythm one has developed over

CODES: SAMPLING

Arguments against the creative appropriation of other source

materials, whether its how unoriginal Vanilla Ice was for ripping off Queen / David Bowie, Negativlands controversy 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 Commons actually
encourage the creative plundering of songs.
Mike B
anks of
UR
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ght UR w
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The sam
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T
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- Kodwo
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nt care
in
g
who you
are.

Thankfully, most of the spotlight

and controversy over sampling
is happening in the music industry, 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-

terial to draw from. It is possible to

stop producing and just re-use existing footage, which is what many
VJs do. Content is re-contextualized 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 embrace.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 another spin on American politics 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 motionmachine. It is the playing
and performance of our collective media memory that
demonstrates how the past
is always capable of becoming the preset again. Lance
splits apart the connotations
we associate with certain
images into different fragments that are reassembled
in realtime by the VJ.

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 music 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.

The way a VJ uses certain

recognizable samples is simShots
from
a
ilar to how New Zealand film
Blisters
theorist Sean Cubitt describes Lance
performance
the cut, or when the audience separates the rush of
the pixelated screen into objects and
distinguishes objects from their movement. With a new mobile, perpetually
distracted audience, the sample is a
way of framing the audiences reverie
into moments of re-cognition.

Individual samples can be

used and re-used with the
transfer of digital files between computers and servers. Sampling allows one
to think global and act local 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 compared to the original - where
connotation slips and slides
into new configurations via
the deployment from the library/arsenal of a VJ.

CODES: GENERATIVE IMAGERY

The ability to dynaimcally generate in realtime various 2d and 3d

shapes is one aspect of this new field, enabled by technologies such
as Open GL or Apples Quartz Extreme. Sites like Generative.Net
give an overview of some of the possibilities of computer-assisted
/ programmable media. Software such as Jitter and Pd/Gem have
made these possibilities available to a much wider range of users.
Via programming and instructions, a computer can generate pixels
live, whereas previously one was limited to videotaping the outside
world or altering a physical filmstrip to produce certain effects.

New rule sets for successful audiovisual performance soley from

software code have been developed by groups like TopLap. Generative Imagery has a long history
in conceptual art and algorithmic
art, but in VJ culture, the generative work is also often improvised.
Sol Lewitt popularized these techniques for contemporary art with
his instructional drawings.
What is the lure of creating generative imagery? Mastery of software and code, unpredictability,
close ties with rhythm, or the suc-

cessful syncing of audio and visual

material so that relationships can
emerge are a few of the reasons.
The methods used for generating
the imagery can also be useful in
determing how successful the resulting imagery is. For instance,
VJ Fleet, a mobile car project in
Vancouver by Julie Andreyev
has sensors that reads information from moving cars to produce
video and effects.

C O D E S : F I LT E R S

One of the more interesting codes specific to live media / VJ culture

is the ability to filter source material (video and data) in a variety of
ways.

A variety of algorithms exist

that transform the image in
very specific ways. The Video
History Project has an extensive collection of essays and
resources as they apply to the
development of analog equipment that perform functions
such as keying, colorization,
and other waveform synthesis.
Sherry Miller Hocking expands on the history of Electronic Image Processing in a
series of papers written be-

tween 1978 - 1980.

The process basically
involves a system that
has a source, processor, and controller.
What does a processor actually do? Miller
Hocking notes that:

A processor is a device which either changes the parameter of the incoming signal (e.g. gain, polarity, wave
shape) or combines two or more signals and presents them to the output
(e.g. mixing, switching, wiping). Video
processors include keyers, VCAs, mixers, 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 specific to the digital realm, especially that
of VJing. Certain software, such as
Nato.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 increasingly growing range of ways to
effect the incoming signal. The paradox is that in contemporary culture
one oftentimes views filters (especially

performance, one can easily recognize

when images are being blurred, or inverted. In high art, it has to be the right
artificiality to resonate to discriminating 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 different than what we normally see. It is
the connotation that still rules, not denotation; it is meaning, not signal that
permeates.
Using todays digital filters, not older
processors such as the Hearn Colorizer, allow us to remove ourselves from
the process of seeing the actual waveforms and having a more tuned-in role
to 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 using culturally accepted and understood
filters versus innovating ones own use
of computer vision techniques? Where
is the line between excessive

e both
filmic techniqu
extreme life,
as
underis
so
g
al
in
t
bu
ew
ciousness,
ers act of vi
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an
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As sickness
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tualizing wha
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ac
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th
an
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describes
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s
at
th
ad
le
e

dg
le
ow
e states
taken in the kn
tion of extrem
t.
g the descrip
in
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El
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an
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n, withou
its assimilatio
itt
ub
- Sean C

re c o g n i z a b l e
ones, such as sepia or solarize) as
an ornament or an addition to a preexisting signal. For instance, in live VJ

ornamentation and technical

prowess blurred? Understanding the
nuances of both analog and digital fil-

ters can answer some of these questions, 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 images, filter as ornament, and the paradox
of the filter in an age of digital system
design.

Baroque style used ex

aggerated
motion and clear, easily
interpreted detail to
produce drama, tensio
n, exuberance, and
grandeur

-Sean Cubitt

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 performance utilizing custom software that queries a database of spam email
and transforms it into OpenGL text and images
photos copyright Sonia Paulino and Mathieu Marguerin

CODES: GRAPHICAL
U S E R I N T E R FA C E
(GUI)

users interact with these tools as one

would use a program such as Photoshop, instead of the route that artists
like Woody Vasulka, Nam Jun Paik,
and others took back in the 1970s
when they were engaged with the creation of both tool and content.

Screen-Negating Space

What guides the production of much new VJ / Live Media is a graphical user interface that dictates the parameters and flow of control in
how images move from hard drive to screen.

Home is w
here my lap
t-Bop is

jork, as quote
d in Empire E
Space (Rudo
verywhere, o
n the Politica
lf Maresch)
l Renaissanc
The
GUI has its roots in developments at places like Xerox
PARC, and Vannevar Bush and
Doug Engelbarts inventions of
mouse-driven cursor and multiple
windows from the 1940s. The GUI
is particular to most laptop VJing in
that all aspects of the performance
are graphically driven. Icons and
gifs represent lines that connect
modules and effects what happens

e of

on both the performers

screen and projected surface. The
GUI is a macro that abstracts the
various labors of others into icons
and graphics. Complex code becomes easily-clickable buttons
and sliders. In the case of prepackaged software, this makes it
difficult for one to understand the
underyling processes. As a result,

flow of control, and as VJs find themselves in new, multiple environments,

the types and methods of control that
they use will change as well. The VJ
that produces her/his own unique software takes on the role of Interaction
Designer, and faces usability challenges that are similar to those that authors
of other commercial software face.

In live VJ performances, the VJ is most

often not engaged with the audience
in a visceral bodily manner due to the
complexity of controls that they have
to administer/administrate. Instead,
the viewer winds up facing the back
of a laptop - the performer is sucked
into the screen and its controls, negating the multiplicity of events happening around them. We are in a situation
where the screen miniaturizes the various controls that
were once run
Alan Ka
on much larger
y, Dougla
sE
g
raphical
systems.
The
user inte ngelbert, and Iva
rfaces
m
o
re
p
screen causes
rofound
.but wha n Sutherland pio
than tha
n
t they ac
world its
t,
complish eered
th
the performer
elf.
eir work
ed was e
let us mo
-DJ Spo
ven
ve into th
oky
to negate real
e screen
three-dimensional space for
the
miniature
world of the
computer.
Another aspect of the GUI as a medium-specific code is how it augments
the human intellect. In other words, the
increasingly complex and adaptable
software are examples of the human
mind finding better, more specialized,
and more complex algorithms to produce visual effects. Realtime Visual effects increasingly depend on a precise

CODES: AUTOMATION

incrementation, permutation and random number generation. These were

first used by a number of experimental
filmmakers in both the pre and postWorld War II era. Some of the reasons
noted in the desire to use computers
as artmaking tools are:

that are becoming automated? One

is the control and selection of content
based on the logic of the database.

to explore aspects of art which would

not be possible without computers,

Databases exist as data elements that

are organized in a structured, systematic way. They are able to be consulted 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 into
formed sets based on certain shared
characteristics of the media that can
then be recalled in live performance.

and:
to produce work more easily, which
could nevertheless be made without
the use of a computer.

Automation, or the use of computers to replace certain human functions, plays a part in VJ culture. Where humans once made decisions
about which parts of a film reel to cut, computers now perfom
the same tasks.

While automation removes elements from the human process of

decision-making, it adds certain
things as well. The human becomes more like a conductor or
curator than creator, ordering the
various mechanized processes in
realtime, examining the patterns,
and deciding which iteration becomes the final version. Another
phrase used to describe this new
process is rule-based. This is what
artists like Sol Lewitt, Donald
Judd, and other Minimalist / Con-

ceptualist artists of the 1960s and

70s, used as a means of creating
their own art. Rule-based processes favored the rules governing the
construction of works of art rather
than the end artifacts.

Aesthetic Criteria
The web archive LuxOnline devotes a section to some computer
processes that result in this new
kind of automated art. They are:

The explosion of interest in VJing over

the last 5 - 10 years has resulted from
both of these conditions. It is becoming increasingly easier to produce live
visuals due to the availability of lowcost software and hardware, and much
of the content generated could not be
produced without computers.

(Relational)
Narrative

Database

VJ software often acts as a replacement for other non-realtime, non-linear

editing programs, such as AfterEffects, Final Cut Pro, and Premiere.
Clip-based VJs place an emphasis on
the role of the database, or paradigm
in semiotic terms, in the creation of realtime imagery. Because many of the
processes in a realtime performance
are automated, the visible labor of performance 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.

While not offering the kind of complex

queries and returns that modern-day
databases have (with the exception
of live coding tools), clip-based databases allow for the creation of narrative. VJs produce a database cinema
that relies on the intuitive grabbing and
shuffling of clips, sounds, and software
in 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 contemporary art form that comes the closest to
revealing rule-based systems of narrative constructions in time.

So what are the particular elements

Lev Manovich argues in his essay

Screenshots of work-in-progress by Futurismo Zugakousaku (Japan)

photos copyright Futurismo Zugakousaku

Robert Hodgin (Flight404) in live performance (top) with Griffin Powermate knobs and
Processing (software). Middle: NatzkeRibbon. Bottom: planetoid.
photos copyright Robert Hodgin

Database As Symbolic Form that the

guiding principal of new media is the
projection of the ontology of the computer onto culture itself. Another viewpoint, made by Andrew Orlowski in an
article about Creative Commons, that
supports a backlash of the computerization of culture itself.

CODES: SHARED

s, or
e
p
i
c
e
ame
gr
s
n
i
r
e
e
h
t
e
Engin ode, arent
ec
sourc s of art.
i
rk
as wo w Orlowsk
-Andre

VJing inherits elements of both arguments. While the VJ is traversing clips

and code, they are also paying attention 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 as
an interface between cold database
and warm human, somehow aligning
themselves between the two.

In the
hidden unrolling of the
fro
fi
insert th m sight: what lm, the photog
the spe
ra
emselv
es
ctator re ms which co
- Thierry
nc
tains is
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only the ern us pass th
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ent with
Film a
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f bir
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art beg
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at
assume
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gat the
ic.
web. Th
is

Technological innovation is occuring 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, semiotics, superrealism, remix, and special f/x allow VJing to flourish in
our mediated environment.

CODES: MONTAGE

The history of montage in both filmmaking and VJing have much in

common. For one, Eisensteins theory of the Montage of Attractions uses various machine metaphors to construct how images
function dialectically:

The principal characteristics of the

radical montage that Eisenstein, Vertov, Meyerhold, et al produced are

purpose of montage, and subsequently, how meaning is constructed. This

debate is ongoing. Numerous VJs still

still evident in VJ culture, although the

rhetoric of collisions and dialectics
has been dropped. Montage in VJing
is not radical. It is not necessary to describe it in the same frenzied way that
the Russian Constructivists had.

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?

Even Eisenstein himself, one of the fathers 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:
The term montage, meaning assemblage, was adapted for the
theater by analogy with the industrial assemblage of machine parts.
The guiding concept was typically
Futurist-Constructivist: the theater
must be broken down into its basic and most potent elements, just
as if it were a machine, a machine
for producing attractions mathematically 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.

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 juxtaposition 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

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 but
still linked through time. Contemporary
VJs are using similar strategies. Oliver
S o r rentino,
aka VJ
Anyone,
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 energy of the music horizontally across

Montage of clips from Eisenstein and Vertov movies

the page like a musical score.

The energy level of the music is the
barometer that determines which elements along the visual staff are triggered 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 appears, and when things become more
intense, Anyone uses clips of sparkling steam, shaking fire, and red lightning when the musics energy is at its
peak. This system is similar in nature
to the one that Eisenstein pioneered
60 years ago.

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 assemblages of portable computing that
have taken place at such venues as
the Tate Modern, Sonar Festival in
Barcelona, and Transmediale in Berlin?

Timothy Druckrey, a New York-City

based media-critic favors a move away
from the surface in favor of the situaVJ Anyone has established a system
tion, the narrative in favor of the event,
that solves many of the problems that
a n d
i
m the
been evolved in
ve
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(A
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mpositional mov
facing the audio
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Th
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He
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n
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argues
that
tions
in
-Sergei Eisenste
the principles
of montage are
moving off of the screen in this new
Eisenstein was facing in the transition
culture, and out into the world around
from silent to audio/visual film. Perus. As traditional eyes-forward cinema
haps were in a similar transition today
is becoming supplemented by other
between audio/visual film and the new
forms of viewing, montage as an arVJ movement.
tistic technique is becoming supplemented by other off-screen ways of
Situational-Spatial Mon- creating meaning. Some of these are
the relationship of image to screen,
tage
bodies to each other in space, and
code to performer.
Montage is a technique that produces
meaning through certain juxtaposiWhat the Constructivists thought of as
tions, but what happens when there
montage has become subsumed into
are 10 - 30 screens all showing differthis many-to-many situation. Because
ent images in a large stadium packed
of advances in technology, people
with fans of a certain DJ? This is difhave access to tools that allow the

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 montage is SHARE in the East Village,
NYC. The programming team recently
released an OSC (Open Sound Control) client which allows for networked
data to be shared in a variety of situations.

Sound and Montage

Paul D. Miller accurately sums up the
synaesthetic qualities of sound in an
era of montage in his book Rhythm
Science. He notes that:
Rhythm science is a forensic investigation of sound as a vector of coded
languagesound is a product of
many different editing environments,
an end result of an interface architecture that twists and turns in sequences overlaid with slogans, statistics,
vectors, labels, and grids.
Today, sound is overcoded and interlaced with brands, download sites,
formats, and software in a decentralized 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.

Stacks of mini-dv tapes of footage from Vello 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 events
copyright Melissa Ulto

CODES: SCREEN /
IMAGE RELATIONSHIP

More often th
an not, the rela
tionship betwee
age and the sc
n the imreen is not cons
idered in contem
VJ performance
porary
: the image an
d screen, wheth
projector beam
er
it be a
ing onto a wall,
a gigantic plasm
or other variatio
a screen,
ns of this, are co
nsidered one-an
same. Screen
and image have
d-thebeen, and cont
one and the sa
in
ued to be,
me.
-Simon Payne
There is often an ambiguity in a
VJ performance between what the
audience sees and the VJ is actually doing. The transparency of labor in both content, software, and
the VJs physical presence is a resensitizing experience. Rhythm is
what unites these elements, and
unifies the performance itself withthe numerous interpretations that

the audience will bring.

Live Screen, Live Image

The French theorist Paul Virilio,
who has written on technology,
war, and speed, thinks that the

live screen is what will threaten writing and reflexivity, not the image. The
screen is merely an apparatus until it
is imbued with specific cultural references. However it is the under-explored relationship between the screen
and image that holds the key to a new
logic of perception. He notes that
images have been around for centuries 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 apparati that contain / enable them. Speed
matched with labor dictates which
mixes become noteworthy. The ability 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 technologies, lost in the huge vortices of energy created by our media. Electronic
media like television broadcasting
allow for a support system for community, 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 immediacy in its form as live performance.
The screen is merely the backdrop for
images replete with cultural references

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 Malcolm 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 Wilhelm Hein (whose works such as Raw
Film also 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 tradition continues in the work of Pointless
Creations 3d VJing and Blinklights
(Berlin) usage of entire buildings as
screens. At events and conferences
such as Generator.x, in Norway, panels such as Sexy Displays Pt. II allude
to the new types of display technology that thwart easy recuperation into
traditional film image/screen setups.
More and more of these emerging devices will continue to problematize the
assumption that image and screen are
one and the same.

CODES: SEMIOTICS

of both creator and user.

New Media Paradigm

In Database as Symbolic Form, Manovich writes about the design process of
these New Media objects in terms of
paradigm and syntagm:

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 Metz and Umberto Eco, among others, developed
ways of isolating elements of filmic scenes into categories. Magazines like
Cahiers Du Cinema and Cinethique surfaced in the 70s where the semiotic tradition of film criticism resulted in unique reviews of contemporary
film.

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 meaning. Accordingly,

create syntagmas.

New Media such as CD-ROMS,

DVDs, hypertextual artworks, etc. also share
this same relationship
with semiotics. Lev Manovich takes us from an
understanding of how
traditional cinema and
language are comprised
Kriel demonstrating the Pioneer
of signs into our new daDVJs at ISEA 2004
tabase reality. It is here
In language, phonemes
that the creation of New Media
and morphemes are combined
objects can be understood in seto create sentences, while film is
miotic terms from the standpoint
comprised of image and sound to

New media reverses this relationship.

Database (the paradigm) is given material 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 design process. The design of any new
media object begins with assembling
a database of possible elements to be
used. (Macromedia Director calls this
database cast, Adobe Premiere calls
it project, ProTools calls it a session, but the principle is the same.)
This database is the center of the design 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 paradigms that users can choose from
and experience in New Media. If New
Media takes interacting literally (in the
form of clicking on buttons for choosing the next step in a hypertexutal journey), VJing, an essentially syntagmatic
art where viewers see only the succession of images rather than the totality of choices, differs from these New
Media Objects. It is an overcoded psychological 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/her
technological prowess to work the
database. Relegated to CPU memory, Quicktime movie speed and video
card processing power, they have little
recourse to adjust the raw technical
specifications live. They are also always locked into the time-domain. On
the other hand, as VJs such as Kriel
and Anyone have noted, there are numerous other ways to structure such a
sequence of events. Kriel, at the new
media festival ISEA 2004, talked about
the 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 denotations. For example, at climax points
in the music the VJ can show footage
of 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.

VJ Responses to Semiotics: Visual Music, Borrowing from Earlier Musical

Traditions
Recently, VJs such as Anyone came
up 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 crescendo and diminuendo in structuring
a visual performance over the course
of a night. The score is one way of alleviating the pressure of endless possible variations for the VJ. It dictates
the way a piece is to be played by
the performer, and is the written representation 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

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 collection, and also new forms of sociality in the form of mix tapes and bootleg
DVDs.

Remixing / VJing / Social Commentary

What is it about remixing that
seduces people to take others
source material and comment
about politics and society? One
only needs to look back as far as

the Dada art movement of the early 20th century to see how collage
and remix became a relevant art
form. By juxtaposing images cut
out from newspapers and maga-

zines, Dada artists liked Hugo Ball

and Hannah Hoch created a very different kind of meaning with interpretations slipping out of the control of the
original creator.

tions of memory, and extend our prosthetic memory into other dimensions.
New services are arising that serve the
interest of cataloguing and assimilating all human interests, and then subdividing 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 photographs have become de rigueur in
digital design, clip repositories have
blossomed in the VJ community, allowing people to remix others content
for a price.

The VJ is a social critic / commentator.

We live in a media-rich society, and having access to clips from on-line, television, and movies, allows for a wide
breadth of possibility in commenting
on various media. In VJ culture, projects 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 riffing
with the image in a variety of ways that
new technologies make possible. The
e
nger th
o
l
VJ now has an increased
o
n
s
ct i
uability to make
ic obje . It attains a er
t
a
m
e
cin
rath
nce
large-scale
politan ut the audie
ilating s, to
o
m
i
m
s
s
s
o
a
impacts
t
The c r a world, b
sts by to all interes hem
e
r
e
t
n
due to the
i
o
t
world, from human opens itself t by picking
nuanced
t
s
I
y
a
.
t le
tonom cting them
gestures
sts, no picked
e
r
e
j
e
t
e
r
n
i
n
f
tha
that they
can be
ality o
t
s
r
a
e
h
v
i
w
can prothe un ry tradition
ve
duce with
from e ean Cubitt
-S
their tools,
and
the
VJ Image Bank, one such seravailable
vice, offers open source content for
content
that
VJs. Paul D. Miller describes how:
can be remixed ad infinitum.

Remix the Archive

Archiving and Remix culture have a lot
in common. Both play with our percep-

rhythm science is not so much a new

language as a new way of pronouncing the ancient syntaxes that we inherit from history and evolution, a new
way of enunciating the basic primal
languages that slip through the fab-

ric of rational thought and infect our

psyche at another deeper level.Taking elements of our own alienated consciousness 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 unconsciousness.
Remixing triggers our collective unconsciousness into a prism of reflection and refraction where images once
familiar are defamiliarized, and other
images speak
more clearly
than they did
in their original
context.
Remixing
is
about freeing
content from
its
context,
allowing
the
desires of the
VJ to intersect
with the untapped meanings of source
images, and
VJIMAGEBANK homepage (http://www.vjimagebank.com)
synthesizing
new connotations out of an infinite number of combinations. Places like VJImageBank
make this easier via their metatagging
and categorizing of the moving image.

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 our
cultural codes.

Special F/X-as-Fix
There is a predisposition people
have towards special effects and
their ability to contribute to altering our consciousness, if even for
a short while. It is an intrapsychic
event where the individual psyche
and make-believe world come together in a type of union. Certain
VJ groups, like OVT Visuals which
creates digital playgrounds of salvation, take part in the religious
undertones of special F/X as a way
of reaching a divine union. The desire is a freedom from merely being a fixed body in space. Special
F/x is the means towards achieving that end, and achieves a new

morphology of body and spirit .

In 1916, the actor Paul Wegener
is quoted as wanting an increasingly synthetic cinema in which
totally artificial scenes would be
created by the abilities of the camera. 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.

CODES: CULTURAL

Realists vs. Imagists

Theorist Andre Bazin grouped 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 certain characteristics.
* Imagists - Base their integrity in the
image (subjective approach, distortions of space/time)
* Realists - Base their integrity in reality (long take, on-location shooting,
objective approach)

There are numerous cultural codes that shape VJing and help determine
its trajectories, content, and styles. These are often deep-seated modes of
communication that have become established over a number of years.

As VJing becomes a global movement, 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 sub-groups for the Imagists are:

The City

*Plastics - Concerned with lighting,

decor, composition, acting

New York City, Los Angeles, London,

Tokyo, Mexico City: these global megalopolises 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, subways and buses, and an ever-changing, always charged atmosphere are
inspiration for contemporary VJs. Influenced by their environments, VJs
like Scott Brown, Dino Lava, and VJ
Sergio Brown use clips of cities in
their sets, working the local dynamics of place into larger sets. Trying to
capture as much of the flavor of a particular place is still a relevant means of
expression that people can instantly
connect with.

* Montagists - Those who use editing

to distort time
The sub-groups for the Realists are:

e and
is confidenc
l
o
o
C
l.
o
o
c
ome
e of
ne with it. S
just one typ
fi
t
g
o
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e
is
b
l
d
o
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o
C
ou are a
cool beuess, what y
and theyre
s
rd
e
n
ll
a
knowing, I g
c
y are and
ple
ow what the
be what peo
n
n
k
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c
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h
le
T
p
.
o
s
e
p
makes
rd
w theyre ne
are that that
o
y
n
e
k
th
y
e
t
a
th
h
e
w
s
cau
nowing
, because
onfident in k
be like them
to
s
e
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p
s
theyre so c
a
y
w.
nd somebod
nce, you kno
e
them cool, a
d
fi
n
o
c
s
It
with it.
theyre fine
- Andre Bazin

Either the software and actions of the

VJ should be completely transparent to the audience (Amy Alexander,
TopLap, etc.), or the VJ should operate with an opaque window into their
world. Else, the VJ should simply be
an accomplice, providing a visual
soundtrack for a musician or DJ.

* 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 supposed to present reality accurately, or
bring about new, unforeseen worlds
that only special F/X could realize.
Todays VJs are taking similar stances.

Branding, and the similarity of VJ identities with corporate identities, is a result of

VJs adopting both the business practices and marketing stragies of corporations

Modern Architecture
Lines and forms of everything from
the Guggenheim Bilbao to a an office
building down the street contain motionless patterns that, when put into
the hard drive of an adept VJ, become
motion graphics. VJs and software designers like Canadian artist Ben Bogart and 242 Pilots all 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

It is the most
important thing
for a film to be
of the moving
running...the st
sequence wou
opping
ld be the end of
cinema
Speed is the m
other of cinem
a...it is not by ch
invented at the
ance that the ca
same time, the
r was
aeroplane, the
radio. Everythi
telephone, and
ng that has de
the
termined this ce
was invented ar
ntury of accele
ound the same
ration
time, the transi
two centuries.
tional period be
tween
- Edgar Reitz

ACTIVATION

Through rhythm VJs activate space and audience. Today, in the 21st century, the image becomes more valuable as it is intertwined with rhythmic
elements, and likewise, rhythm is embodied in the form of images and
visuals that guide its trajectory.

and desire to create movement out of the unmoving.

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 historians in contemporary culture,
and Jonathan Crary is one of the
foremost excavators of attention
in Modernity. He writes:

al truth of
Once the empiric
ined to lie in
vision was determ
nd similarly
the body, vision (a
) could be anthe other senses
lled by externexed and contro
manipulation
nal techniques of
and stimulation.
-Jonathan Crary

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 retinal
stimulation, go to the movies, for aural
stimulation, visit the club.
This division of labor can only hold for
so long. Crary notes that:

of people working on a film, audiences 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 disciplined 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 modernize both the production and reception
of cinema, which has brought about
a crisis.

of
to be in a state
en and continue
to
be
id
ve
sa
ha
be
es
n
iti
sion ca
tual modal
e of crisis. If vi
0 years percep
during
ht claim, a stat
ig
m
at it has no en
for the past 10
e
th
m
is
so
it
,
or
y,
ur
n,
nt
io
,
at
ce
rm
th
fo
tie
ns
re
en
logical lations
in the tw
perpetual tra
y to new techno
lit
aracteristic with
bi
e,
ch
pl
ta
g
ap
am
rin
ad
ex
du
r
of
en
fo
,
y
refer to
have an
in a pattern
t we familiarly
it is embedded
quence
peratives. Wha
im
accelerating se
ic
features. Rather
an
om
in
on
ith
ec
w
d
ts
an
,
en
ns
em
tio
el
tio
ra
nt
transie
oderniza n.
social configu
d television are
operations of m
an
us
y,
io
lir
ph
ra
de
e
og
th
ot
as film, ph
ence, part of
ts and obsolesc
of displacemen
-Jonathan Crary

Now,

EXIT CINEMA
(and memory.)
Cinemas most important convention
is its relationship of consent between
audience and producer, capital and
consumer. Aside from certain developments 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

the changing configurations of capitalism continually push attention and

distraction to new limits and thresholds, 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-

ies at their very convenience. Today

the mobile subject can download
podcasts on iTunes and listen to a
random playlist. Capitalism favors the
consumer, and this perpetual mode of
multitasking and schizophrenic reception spills over into VJ environments.
Exit cinema, enter mobility. Enter reintegrated synaesthesia. Exit division
of sound and image. Exit polarities.
Along with this new hyper accelerated, perpetually distracted consumer
of both sound and image emerges the
reconfiguration of memory, especially
in contemporary VJing. Unlike plotdriven mainstream films, which have
an emphasis on causal relationships,
VJ performances are usually driven
by other factors. If movement is one
of the first special effects in cinema
(circa 1895, when the Lumieres demonstrated 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.

us a key to understanding how audience, 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 alwayspresent unconsciousness of crowds
that shape their reception to what is
around them.
The crowd is in a state of expectant attention and full of imagination.
Whatever strikes it at the right moment in a clear form has the power of
suggestiveness that images viewed
by one man or woman alone do not
have. Emotional, theatrical images
have the best effect as people enter a
domain controlled more by sensation,
affect, and their nervous system.

wever

like or

ter,
, ho
VJing provides this constant re-pixpose it their charac d
m
o
c
t
,
rme
tions
elization of the image, a
ls tha
transfo tive
ividua heir occupa
n
d
e
e
in
b
e
th
ve
,t
ollec
constant anticiver be mode of life that they ha a sort of c r
e
o
h
W
f

ir
o
ct
ne
pation of what
be the nce, the fa ossession ct in a man would
p
unlike
a
ige
m
d
ll
in
e
n
e
h
t
t
a
m
f
may originate
,
in
e
k
h
lo
ir
or the rowd puts t em feel, thin h individua .
c
at any given moth
h eac
lation
into a ich makes
in whic state of iso
t
a
h
h
t
w
ment.
d
min
e in a
nt from
ere h
iffere
quite d k, and act w
in
h
feel, t
n
-Le Bo

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

Audience and performer, screen and image, mobility and attention, all combine into one performance environment
photos collaged together with Pix Picks (http://www.signwave.co.uk)

Experimental Narrative
Flow
The new subject of the twentyfirst century can surf through these
crowd environments - just look at
open air festivals like Coachella
in California, Sonar in Barcenlona,
or MayDay in Berlin as examples
where crowds have the opportunity
to choose when and how they want
to be affected. Crowds in VJ performances 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 undergo 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) LINEAR
R E S U LT
The 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 fundamental aspects of how film, digital video, and the motion graphics that we see
in theatres and television are produced.

We have seen that in the process of remembering there are two very
essential stages: the first is the assembling of the image, while the second consists
in the result of this assembly and its significance for the memory. In this
latter
stage it is important that the memory should pay as little attention as possible to the first stage, and reach the result after passing through the stage
of
assembly as swiftly as possible. Such is practice in life in contrast to practice
in art. For when we proceed into the sphere of art, we discover a marked
displacement of emphasis. Actually, to achieve its result, a work of art
directs
all the refinement of its methods to the process.

-Sergei Eienstein

In a non-linear process, one has

the ability to line up clips in a variety of ways, color correct certain
parts, endlessly tweak the audio,
make layers upon layers of composite images, add endless ef-

fects, and trim or extend the time

that one section dissolves into another one. Time is indeterminate.
Sound and video are at our mercy,
and we have the ability to lengthen, shorten, or embellish, a given

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 motion graphics spot for as long as it runs.
You have the ability to fast forward or
slow down the film, but the work only
appears different momentarily. The basic 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 inert, because a fixed-length film presupposes a relationship between the
audience and screen.
On the other hand, VJing inverts this
paradigm of film and video technologies. Because VJing is a live, non-reproducible activity that is comprised of
human labor, technological infrastructure, and an audience, there is a rigid,
time-based structure from which VJs
can perform their material. Unlike conventional non-linear filmmaking, VJs
cannot undo something. There is a
clear flow of control that digital technologies necessitate when jockeying
live, moving images. Breaking a link
or changing the structure of the flow
of 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-ORIENTED
VIEWING

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 characterizes the older cinematic tradition. The shared expectation, of
both filmmaker and audience, in a
goal. This teleology drives people
to sit in dark theatres, oftentimes
through slow or lagging moments,
to arrive at a final destination from
where they can determine if and
how what they saw met their expectations.

Meanwhile, VJing is left to figure

out what, exactly, its goal is, which
is an equivalence of product and
process. The process is driven
by the desire to create something
potent and arresting, rather than
guiding an audience through a
series of events that ends so they
can hierarchize these images according to their masterful gaze
in order to successfully, describe
these series of images as a fixed,
Imaginary World.
Instead, in VJing, there is the unbounded loss of mastery at describing this Imaginary World.

The world envelops the audience rather than being determined by the audience. These are a few distinctions ofhow VJing, rhythm, and the audience
combine resulting in an interesting experience.

Attraction is the Method

How does a VJ begin creating these
arresting images when there is no explicit agreement between the audience
and the performers? Sergei Eisenstein, wrote an essay in 1923 that was
originally published in the magazine
Lef titled Montage of Attractions. This
essays main theme revolves around
theatre, and the role of the spectator in
a play that was being produced at the

If VJings goal is attraction and speaking to the audience on a sensual level

to awaken their unconscious senses
and create an experience, what are
the means? Its codes, both mediumspecific and shared, dont shed much
light on the problem. In fact, the very
openness and novelty of the field still
suggests that almost anything is possible.
Eistenstein makes it clear that there is
a difference between tricks and attractions.
The goal of the VJ is to produce attractions, and the goal of the audience is
to react, just as in theatre.

Tricks are accomplished and

The attraction has nothing in common with the trick.
tricks, for example) and include
completed on a plane of pure craftsmanship (acrobatic
circus slang, selling) ones
in
(or
the kind of attraction linked to the process of giving
exclusively on the
based
is
which
ion
attract
the
self.it is absolutely opposite to
ce.
reaction of the audien
-Sergei Eisenstein

time by Ostrovsky
called Enough Simplicity in Every Wise
Man.

Interpretation vs. Affect Experience Design

He notes that the main goal of theatre

is creating a way to connect with the
audience at the most common denominator - and that single ideal is
attraction. This involves finding a way
to spark the senses that influence the
audiences experience and produce
certain emotional shocks.

Sometimes a VJ can only use this new

mobile, often decentralized audiences
response as a way of determining the
success of their set. The paradox lies
here: because the audience thinks
with their spinal cord and feet, the
strategies of both avant-garde and
mainstream film to create an arresting, powerful sequence of events do
not necessarily apply to VJing. Yet

this same audience that goes to VJ

performances, clubs, and raves has
been exposed to the codes of mainstream narrative film, reality television,
and plot-driven shows. Their sophistication at recognizing certain cultural
codes, filmic conventions, branding,
and semiotics is relatively advanced.
How can an audience so accustomed
to conventional film
and television be
brought under the
sway of the live VJ?

out of view, blurred and slowed down

in speed. The natural movements of
the cogs, wheels and levers gently pull
the viewer into the work. A series of
lines moves in and out of view, until the
visuals pan out to reveal the machine,
an oil pump slowly working away. The
combination of sound and image create a particular mood of foreboding
and anticipation with the
exaggeratedfeatures
of the machine and its
sounds.

Close-up parts of the

The VJ has to stradmachine stand for the
dle the line between
whole machine. The oil
creating images that
pump acts not just as
are to be interpreta signifier but also as a
ed and those that
symbol that has broad
are purely affective.
Still from REQOIL by Johnny Dekam
and arbitrary connotaOnly in going back to
tions, depending on the
psychoanalysts such
viewer. The pump could be located in
as Freud and Lacan can we see how
the United States and represent this
traces of the Symbolic interpermeate
countrys dependency on oil, but what
with the conscious self. There are nuif the pump is in China? How does the
merous interplays between the primiworlds dependence on oil figure into
tive and conscious self. VJs that can
the pump? Can it also be denotative,
find images or performative triggers
and not have any other connotations?
that hit at both the gut-level symbolic/
How does the sound operate with the
affective and the conscious interpretavisuals? Possibly the low rumbling
tion of a subject are at an advantage.
connotes our growing reliance on oil
through the pervasive sound.
In fact, Reqoil by artist Johnny Dekam
lends itself well to the interplay beWhether you engage the clip through
tween affect and interpretation.
its affect or interpret it through standards of conventional film, one thing
The low rumbling sounds of machinery,
remains clear: you dont have to watch
gears, and motors at work combine
it from start to finish to arrive at the
into a drone, with barely distinguishsame conclusions. DeKam is aware
able higher pitched gurglings ebbing
that he has to create an experience
faintly in and out. The visuals have a
quickly for a new mobile audience. He
sepia, solarized look to them, where
has to design the experience so that
only certain features of the machinery
the audience can enter it at any time.
areapparent. Close-ups flicker in and

Image Potency
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, an art historian, summarized a way of determining the potency of the images in
our contemporary mediascape while
analyzing an image of George W. Bush
landing on a U.S. aircraft carrier after
the war in Iraq was declared a victory
in 2003. In an article entitled Remote
Control for Artforum, Summer 2004,
Solomon-Godeau refers to how an image becomes an event, which is what
VJing in its current formation strives
for - to become something larger than
the mere passing of images in time.

ams photograph of A Viet Cong guerilla with a shot to the head. These are all
unstaged events documented in such
candid ways to create small ruptures
in our everyday realities. VJing has to
capitalize on the knowledge of how
images become events, the natural
slippage of meaning, and how things
become iconic.

1) The image becomes an event if it is

broadcast / reproduced it is reproducibility that helps determine the potency of an image.
2) as my examples indicate, the image is by definition always considered
more volatile, dangerous, and uncontrollable than written or verbal descriptions.
3) the meanings of images may
escape the control of the parties that
deploy them.
4) Image of a man falling to death, vertical in line with the towers at 9/11..As
soon as it appeared it disappeared,
according to Junod, at once iconic
and impermissible
There is something about potency that
cannot be staged - such as the Richard Drew photograph of a man falling
to his death on 9/11, the Rodney King
home video, the surveillance videos of
the Columbine tragedy, and Eddie AdLeslie Garcia and Carmen Gonzalez (Mexico) and their custom Pixel Mixer
and Vector Generator programmed in Max/Msp/Jitter
photos copyright Leslie Garcia

ENVIRONMENT

Disco to Dot-community
Club culture as we know it today has
existed in various forms since the late
1970s and 80s in the form of the discotheque, a
custom-made environment, where
the decor and the ambience were as
important as the music.With the arrival of new technology, the drum beat
and the synthesizer, the disco sound
changes and an electronic feel surfaces. This cleared the room for House,
Acid, and Techno. (Annet Dekker)

New environments are built on the foundation of older ones. New networks
dont replace but instead replicate and mimic older models of community
created space.

Most often in conventional cinema

we are watching the experience of
other characters on the screen acting out various narratives through
their speech, actions, and reactions. Horror movies are scripted
to have specific shock points. In
VJ performances something different is happening. We are no longer

engaged entirely with what is happening in front of our eyes for a set
period of time. Instead, our eyes
skirt across visual surfaces, live
performers, DJs, the VJ, and other
members of the audience. Visual
narratives are no longer the motor
which drives our eyes.

This phenomenon was happening in

Europe and America simultaneously.
Many DJs began spinning records with
live VJs accompanying them, and VJ
culture took off. It is only recently that
it has spread into other areas such as
rock and rap, but VJing is firmly rooted
in electronic music.

space of production and reception has

emerged, as more source material and
software becomes available online,
and audiences thirsty for new work are
drawn to websites and performance
clips.
There is an incredibly multi-layered
density within VJ culture, always looking to expand its horizons beyond
what is known and familiar. These horizons extend into VJing onto buildings, VJing in 3d, and VJing from game
engines. The possibilities are endless.
Electronic culture continues to transmogrify from the 4th dimension (time)
to the 3rd (space) as an area of concern, where it takes on a much more
tactile dimension for both audience
and performer.
In new environments where we are engaged haptically and touching other
bodies, the visuals act as a third eye.
They augment and intensify the experience of being in our bodies, moving and sensing space around us in a
much more intimate way.

Since the advent of the Internet and

subsequent growth of cyber culture,
there has been an increasing number
of bedroom DJs
The film experience is a system of communication
and VJs. They
may
have based on bodily perception as a vehicle of conscious
the
same pression.
tools and -Vivian Sobchak
s o f t w a re
as professionals, but not the same networks
and reputation. Hence, a growing
online community of forums, technology tips, tutorials, and downloadable
movie clips have formed. The club,
event, or festival as the only place to
experience VJing and VJ culture, is
being supplanted by a vibrant, growing online environment. A distributed

ex-

ENVIRONMENT:
THE DANCEFLOOR

music and visuals were seen as being

equally valuable.
Peter Rubin notes that during the late
90s until now there has been a growing commercialism in VJ culture that
has filtered into clubland. VJing has
become just moving wallpaper designed to sell more beer.

Reflex is the Gauge

What role does the dancefloor play in VJ Culture? There are numerous relationships that are constantly being activated with the dancefloor acting
as the primary setting. Some of these are the VJ and the physical space,
VJ and the audience, and VJ with the sound/music.

Todays clubs are all ab

out raw power
and energy with no dire
ction
- Peter Rubin, VJ

Peter Rubin, one of the first VJs

who began performing around
1979, recently stated in an interview that the club had a different meaning during the period of
about 1979 - 1992. Back then, the
visuals that were projected on the

walls were gathered from what

was happening in the streets.
Subsequently, these images had a
large degree of social relevancy to
them. The main incentive to be in
the club was to cultivate the subculture of VJing, to find inspiration,
and to be in a place where both

Rubin is associating the way bodies respond to stimuli with the nature of the
imagery. But, using Abigail Godeaus
criteria from before, images that are
truly potent escape the meaning of the
maker! In fact, star VJs like Kriel and
Anyone have very scripted sets of how
they want the energy directed throughout the night. There is a complex interplay between the dancefloor-as-space,
the VJ, the audience, the music, and
the visuals. Reflex is the gauge.
The French theorist Michel Foucault
argues that the experience of life is
grounded in the most basic of facts:
a raw primitive force that only exists
for a brief period of time, and Rene
Menil said: Thought is bio-logical or
does not exist. Separating thought
from biology and parsing the body in
terms of commercial and non-commercial disassociates it from its primitive elements waiting to be tamed and
taunted by the VJ, moved and grooved
by the DJ.
Dancefloors are still communal spaces
in a time where we are being reduced
to increasingly discrete target markets.
There is a commingling, flows of bod-

ies, and a chance to break free, if only

for a moment, from the subjectivities
we construct and embody.
A dancefloor is defined by Websters
as a bare floor polished for dancing. The relationship between dance
and floor relies on (mobile) people. A
dancefloor is not a dancefloor, actually, unless it stands up to the Symbolic, unless it undergoes a transformation, temporalizing space to become
something other than what it really is.
A dancefloor might be something that,
in relation to how Sean Cubitt quotes
Adorno,
takes up the task of negating the atomism of a divided and individuated
society
A dancefloor is a framework for interaction. A dancefloor for a 1967 wedding of a couple living in the United
States is different from a 2004 Ibiza
club dancefloor. They mean different
things, and their semantic behaviors
ascribe different levels of reconciling
order and chaos, as well as negating a
certain individuality to become part of
a mass of bodies.

ENVIRONMENT:
DISTRIBUTED SPACES
OF PRODUCTION /
RECEPTION

Space and time are important to VJs. The ways that increased modularity and flexibility order our present reality doesnt come about in the form
of a future-oriented cosmopolitanism, but the new electronic capacity to
simulate a landscape that stimulates mans tribal traditions.

Marshall McLuhan wrote about

how the differences between
Western literate man and nonWestern tribal man stems from the
difference between rational and
acoustic (or haptic, tactile) space.
He notes that
Audile-tactile tribal man partook
of the collective unconscious,
lived in a magical integral world
patterned by myth and ritual, its
values divine and unchallenged,
whereas literate or visual man
creates an environment that is
strongly fragmented, individualistic, explicit, logical, specialized

and detached.
It is this tribal, mystical tradition
that is being resurrected in the
forms of drum circles, DJ jam sessions, raves, festivals, and other
events where temporary tribes
form for a duration and then disassemble naturally. McLuhan also
notes:
the man of the tribal world led a
complex, kaleidoscopic life precisely because the ear, unlike the
eye, cannot be focused and is
synaesthetic rather than analytical
and linear. Speech is an utterance,

or more precisely, an outwearing, of all

our senses at once; the auditory field
is simultaneous, the visual successive.
The models of life of non-literate people were implicit, simultaneous and
discontinuous, and also far richer than
those of literate man.
It is precisely this synaesthesia that
characterizes the shift towards networks and spaces where all of ones
senses are activated. Peer-to-peer
file sharing is a way of accessing, and
accelerating, this decentralized tribal
network. Now that the software and
tools we use are increasingly modular,
peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent,
and DC++ allow for a rapid sharing of
movies and data that has been up to
this point archived on formats such as
DVD and VHS. Newer networks like
Open Video Archive and OVA help archive works in slightly more centralized
format. These communities are oftentimes self-organized, and allow for the
rapid dissemination of information, and
connecting, at least potentially, everyone to everyone else. The benefits of
these systems are that everyone gets
more. By sharing, you also have the
opportunity to accumulate. These new
environments also lead to new forms
of production and recption. They offer
a new pipeline for planning, performing, and distributing work to an equally
distributed audience.
Where once one creator slaved away,
creating every unique animation or
video clip themselves, now there is a
many-to-many relationship between
content creation. VJ Image Bank, a
service begun in 2005, makes it easy
to upload clips and share your content

with the world. Also, there are 3 different ways of accessing this source media: by downloading clips to use in a
performance, purchasing a theme DVD
that contains a variety of clips that you
choose, or a Concept DVD that has a
storyboard or timeline involved with
how the clips appear.
What does this mean for content creators? Lev Manovich wrote an essay
Metadata, Mon Amour that characterized the shift towards new scale, new
structures, and new images. There are
subsequently new interfaces for VJs,
similar to software like Photoshop
or Shake in their ability to composite
lifelike images that are indistinguishable from their natural counterparts.
This type of production, complete
with meta-tags and keywords, offers a
new type of production unforeseen up
till now. Creation equals editing, keywords, and automation.
The subtext of this is that VJs have to
work harder in actual performance settings in order to set themselves apart
from everybody else using the same
imagery, since now it is available to
everybody, all at once, all of the time.

STYLE:
PROLOGUE NEO-BAROQUE
STYLE

The Neo-Bato
produce
roque is an
varying states
offshoot
of
of drama, inthe Baroque,
trigue,
and
a style/moveother
emoment
origitional affects.
nating
in
15th-century
The Baroque
Europe. One
style is useof the main
ful as a referunderlying
ence in thinkphilosophical
ing about the
tenets of the
effect of imBaroque
is
agery on the
that represenmultitudes
of
242 Pilots still from their Live In Bruxelles DVD
tational visual
today.
Sean
art should speak to the illiterate
Cubitt describes in his section on
rather than the well-informed usNeobaroque film in The Cinema
ing exaggerated motion and detail
Effect that:

the sudden coherence of sound and

image in sublime moments of performance, to recreate as pure decoration
the melodrama of its most obvious
thematic model, in terms of production
history, stardom, narration, and camp,
the Judy Garland version of A Star is
Born.the film exists as a series of
alternating surfaces: the show, the
fetish, the spectacle, the soundtrack
album, the star, the performance, the
auteur
These are some of the same specific
characteristics of VJing. One of the
shared codes of (anti)-narrative in this
new form is the pleasure of watching
images and events unfold, cascade
over surfaces, and spill out into spectacle.
The German composer Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) wrote out the specifics for a particular kind of gesamptkunstwerk that united a number of
elements together in a rich fusion. This
idealist vision of a truly unified artwork
is now able to be realized on various
scales today: the decrease in the cost
of technology, readily available use of
projectors, DVD players, and other devices that allow for large-scale multimedia productions to take place.
Many of these gesamptkunstwerks
fall into the category of allegory rather
than a direct narrative. Features are
exaggerated enough to portray more
grandiose themes rather than focusing on the details. One of the logical
conclusions VJing nowadays works
through is demonstrated by VJ John

Dekron in the contradictory nature

of television. On the one hand television is an immensely visual medium
saturated with advertisements, text,
sounds, and neo-Baroque commercials of athletes with Gatorade-colored
sweat dripping from their muscles. On
the other, it is supposed to be a source
of information. The piece RealiTV by
Dekron frees the medium from itself
to become something along the lines
of pure image. It becomes an allegory
of excess taken to its extreme, where
everything is sped up and combined
together so that the code of television shines through.
Other groups that exhibit these neobaroque tendencies are 242 Pilots, a
trio of video artists making live cinema,
and Skoltz_Kolgen, a group of video
improvisers from Canada. Skoltz_Kolgens work, such as Cirkus, contains
all faces, lines, blips, electrical charges, and other elements that combine
into free-floating ambivalent space into
which we enter, ambiguous collaborators to an scripted ambience. They
offer up free standing semantic structures for audiences to decipher, enter
into, and either relish as pure surface
qualia or else dismiss as wallpaper.
Such is the effect of VJing and livecinema in an age of triumphant neobaroque cinema. We live in an age
where certain images, removed from
the natural ordering of their occurrence in time are frozen, and can give
the viewer a sense of indistinguishable, isolating dread. For instance, the
image of a man in free-fall from the
World Trade Center. This type of feeling is what groups like Skoltz_Kolgen

are attempting to produce in their neobaroque performances. They createe

moments where these free-standing
signifiers mutate and actually escape
their intended meaning, leaving the
audience to ponder the linkages that
inevitably occur.

views, and other ephemera that come

close to creating a literal translation of
reality suffers in the face of what people really want: escape. For those people who do not wish to continuously
be burdened with truth, there is the
hidden inner world of patterns, nonsequiters, signifiers roaming free and
pure affect: in essence, the world of VJ
mixes. Patterns, loops, and rhythms
become the common denominator,
as human-vision is linked up with machine-execution.

the story was a ritual constructio

n in time that works through
the conflictual structures of reality
and finds for them a magical
resolution. But the baroque form
in its purest form is a purely
abstract construction of time. In this
new mode, stories seek not
to control but to imitate nature....I
n the Hollywood baroque, film
is no longer a time-based mediu
m..but the medium of movement..movement here is sculptu
ral, architectural, or geographical rather than temporal, and spa
ce itself is malleable.
-Sean Cubitt

Pattern is Truth
Maybe the most successful VJ mixes
have nothing to say: no roots in the
social or material world. This might
just be the case, and possibly the very
reality that documentary films throughout history have worked so hard to illustrate. The social conditions, inter-

John deKrons (Germany) RealiTV project takes images from Satelitte

TV as raw material for audiovisual collage
photos copyright John deKron

STYLE:
NEO-BAROQUE STYLE
- AN ARCHITECTURE
OF VISION
Neo-Baroque Aesthetics favor the abstract spectacle. They are largely
based on having an affective relationship with its audience. Theorist Angela Ndalianis sums up one of the most basic facts of digital medias
purpose today in one sentence, comparing artists and filmmakers today
to their those of the earlier baroque period:

[both] consciously produce works

that exploit and often investigate
scientific and technological developments by perceptually collapsing and testing the boundaries
that separate representation from
reality and confronting viewers
with technological tours de force.
In the virtuoso construction of represented realities, audiences are
invited to engage self-reflexively
the works technical and technological process of construction.
She then goes on to articulate how
Deleuze describes an architecture
of vision that configures the audience spatially to the image. This
aesthetic, probing both the VJs
and audiences virtuosity in con-

structing and navigating through

new architectures of vision is one
of the subconscious elements always at play in contemporary VJ
performance.
For those audiences that dont
have access to movie theatres or
live performance environments,
movie trailers are Hollywoods attempt to spatialize the image as
much as possible for a homeviewing audience, attempting to
construct a rhythmical non-linear,
viscerally affective document.

STYLE:
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
AND SPEED AS AN
AESTHETIC
A variety of new externals for the software Max/Msp/Jitter can accomplish
tasks that, in the 1960s, would have taken days, weeks, or months to arrange, and renders them in a split-second. The AUVI externals, written by
Kurt Ralske, contain a bewildering amount of options, such as au.blur,
au.blend, au.ekta, and au.colorneg, which simulate filmic effects. Rather
than mere motion being the effect that is simulated, it is instead,

everything our senses perceive in

terms of communication technology. (Edgar Reitz)

the continuous sequence and the

chronology of the story will vanish.

This is one goal of contemporary

VJing: finding algorithms to externalize our varied perceptions of
the world. Software reconstructs
these perceptions and aestheticizes them. This is one of the core
componenets of the digital aesthetic.

This places narrative in the past

as a vague memory of chronology.
Externals like Auvi allow one to
treat time as a medium itself. Data
becomes part of the parameters
that are manipulated.

What does speed have to do

with this? As theorist Edgar Reitz
notes:
Data are so freely available that
every event can be linked with the
previous event at any moment,

Conventional cinema and movie

theatres actually subjectivise their
audience. It is how cinema largely
speaks to a bourgeois film audience, through a series of edits. At
the end, the first and last cuts determine a gestalt wholeness that
has a sense of unity to it. The audi-

Outer images: Aerostitch (JP)

Inner (inside yellow) images: Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP) - stills from Copynature and Read
photos courtesy of Aerostitch and Ryoichi Kurokawa

ence has to slow down and halt their

everyday lives in order to enter the
slow space of cinema. VJing, on the
other hand, refuses to offer a zone of
contemplation, and moves at a speed
entirely of its own based on the software that drives it.
Kurt Ralske notes how:
Over the past five years, Ive had two
major revelations about the nature of
video. The first occurred in 2000. I realized that the standard way of playing
video frames (display 30 frames per
second -- start at the first frame and
end at the last ) is really only an arbitrary convention. By default, a oneminute video clip is something intended to be experienced in one minute.
But why not consider the one-minute
clip as a collection of 900 still images?
(30 frames per second times 60 seconds = 900 frames.)

data. Time, and shuffling through time,

become aestheticized as a byproduct
of this investigation into the ways software literally treats time and frames, as
data itself to be manipulated at will.

STYLE:
CROSS-MEDIA
PROMOTION
Cross-Media promotion is a staple of this neo-baroque tendency. One of
the characteristics of cinema is immersion in the myth beyond the film.
Vjing, oftentimes, is marketing a mood. In other words, it accentuates
something already defined.
4) New technologies of sound and
image production

Suddenly numerous possibilities appeared. Selected frames viewed as

still images might reveal interesting relations when seen in proximity. The duration that each frame is displayed can
vary in some pattern or other. And most
importantly, the order that frames are
displayed is liberated: frame selection
can follow some type of pattern (eg, 1,
4, 2, 5, 3, 6...), or can be random (22,
726, 698, 204...), or can be controlled
by an external process, such as data
coming from audio analysis, analysis
of the video itself, etc.

Critic Thomas Elsaesser summarizes the attributes of the New

Hollywood under four headings
that are useful in thinking about VJ
culture:

New algorithms and ways of dealing

with time intersect with the mechanims
of the software: digital matrixes and

3) New media ownership and management styles (For instance, see

the Open Media Network)

1) New generation of directors (VJ

- new types of directing, styles of
directing, etc..)
2) New marketing strategies (VJing
has a variety of ways that it is marketed, both commercial and noncommercial).

In Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and

Contemporary
Entertainment,
Ndalialnis mentions how economics gives rise to new aesthetics.
The Hollywood machine has big
money to throw around in the millions of dollars it spends on each
blockbuster movie. What about
the new economics of the VJ
scene? There is a particularly fitting description by Berlin VJ fALk
about his status as a producer and
software creator in Andy Warhol,
The Middle Class, MTV and You,
where he asks:
What is my take in the art of making live video? What do I want to

do different than the tons of advertisement agencies producing music videos. What is it that drives me forward
even so there is no money involved
and I am slowly starving (well not yet
but I am getting there). Its my way to
make clear a message, even subtle
in clubs at parties. Its moving images
that might change peoples thinking.
Its clips that might sprinkle hope. Its
things that might wake up brainwashed
chemojunkies.We are numerous and
we have electronics that are geared toward us - as seen in our own Pioneer
videoturntable. Well all is fine but there
is something missing that was there
all throughout. The message and the
search for it.
This touching passage evokes what
is at the heart of the economics of
this new, neo-baroque entertainment
form. While labor plays a crucial part
in determining what VJ sets, software,
and websites become valued by the
VJ community, there is another, more
brutal side to labor. Much of this work
is done by VJs and producers in the
shadow of the mainstream, for little to
no money, who happen to be working
at the forefront of the genre. Although
fALK might be looking for a message
in a clip, any message is, at best, a
combination of numerous variants.
This yearning for a purity of the image resembles the now historical DIY
punk/music scenes from the 1970s
until today. These scenes sprouted
throughout various cities in America:
New York, Los Angeles, D.C. They
were comprised of bands that played
for little-to-no money only to become
a large part of our (sub)cultural history.

Many of them, while not becoming millionaires, were and are able to make a
living off of their art. They were striving
for a purity of music outside of the
commercial mainstream.
There is currently no HOLLYWOOD
REPORTER for the VJ scene. The art
world has a number of magazines and
web sites that determine value. For
instance, Artnet.com has a Price Database, and the Art Dealers Assocation of America is there to Protect the
interests of those who buy, sell or collect antiques and works of art. There
is no discernable organization like this
to regulate the economics of the VJ
scene. Other than artist-run, Do-ItYourself sites, there are very few professional resources available. Because
VJing has a new generation of directors, new marketing techniques, new
technologies and strategies of distribution, there is no clear cut economic
system in place. This attests to the
vibrancy and newness of VJ culture,
and its current status as a mutant art
form.

DESIGN: VJING
AND DESIGN

One of the larger questions that runs through the new roles of VJing and
VJ culture is similar to ones that other artistic movements in the 20th century have provoked: is VJing more an art form or a design form?

VJing-as-Template
One way to approach this question is to consider VJing as a
cultural template. A template is
some form of device to provide
a separation of form or structure
from content.
Because contemporary VJing
straddles so many different realms
(from commercial high-end visual
backdrops for large pop/rock/
electronic music acts, to fashion
shows, art galleries, underground
parties, AV sets, motion graphics,
and music videos) it is becoming increasingly difficult to think
of VJing as a stand-alone activ-

ity that doesnt cross borders. It

is also difficult to think of it as a
unique art form of its own removed
from the bounds of other cultural
experiences and forms. Vjing currently acts as a kind of template
that structures the delivery of a
certain kind of live visual content
into an environment where there is
a receptive audience.

DESIGN:
VJING AND BAUHAUS

The Staatliches Bauhaus was an art and architecture school in Germany

that came into existence shortly after WWI. It pioneered a new approach
to thinking about craft, art, and design. It was started by Walter Gropius who wanted to establish a new form of architecture that would reflect
the changing world, and subsequently offer goods that were functional,
cheap, and consistent with mass production.
VJing is an art form that is a
byproduct of advances in machine design and miniaturization
of components. It is similar to

dent, self-indulgent, and non-essential for the commercial realm,

but it also exists in an area foreign

d craft to
to re-unite art an
d
te
an
w
us
pi
ro
G
sions.
To these ends,
ith artistic preten
w
ts
uc
od
pr
l
and
na
functio
to unify art, craft
as
w
us
arrive at high-end
ha
au
B
e
t and
objectives of th
a positive elemen
ed
One of the main
er
id
ns
co
as
mpomachine w
were important co
technology. The
gn
si
de
t
uc
od
pr
l and
therefore industria
nents.
the advances
that sparked the PC, laptop, and
mobile device revolutions. VJing
has never existed exclusively in a
fine arts arena, nor that of a purely
commercial end-product. It has
always been slightly too deca-

to contemporary art galleries that

sell non-reproducible or limited
edition artworks to collectors and
museums. Because of this, it is
too ephemeral and difficult to
market to collectors.

Light Space Modulator

Many different kinds of objects, paintings, architecture, and graphic designs were made during the Bauhaus
movement. One of them stands out
as exemplary of the relationship that
Bauhaus work and thinking has with
the new VJ culture of today. The Light
Space Modulator, built by Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, is a kinetic sculpture,
finished in 1930, and an apparatus
for the demonstration of the effects of
light and movement.

wall. This type of automation of lights

and visuals is becoming increasingly
common in VJing. Even more important than the types of automation that
the Light-Space Modulator pioneered,
was its planned installation in a
contemporary room in Hanover. This
is a setting that VJs encounter when
they prepare for their sets. They work
to change the visual dimensions of a
room, most often exclusively via light
beamed out from projector bulbs.
Creating contemporary rooms and
particular spaces for live visual performance is a current challenge for
VJs. Shuffling between
festivals, commercial
venues and galleries,
perhaps VJ culture
needs multiple visionary architects like
Moholy-Nagy and the
Bauhaus group in order to define particular
spaces for itself.

It consists of a cubic box with multicolored lights

that are activated
at different places
according to a plan.
There are other
cut-out materials
that create different
types of shadows
on a rear wall. It was
meant to be part of
a Raum der Gegenwart (Contemporary
Room) in a museum
in Hanover, but was
Moholy-Nagys Light-Space Modulator
never installed there.
This Light-Space
Modulator has been written about
and discussed extensively, and was a
long-scale project that Moholy-Nagy
took upon himself as a labor of love
in the pursuit of a kinetic art. It is emblematic of a gesamptkunstwerk that
unifies diverse disciplines and ideas
into a solid artifact. The relationship
it shares with contemporary audio-visual performance is represented best
by its predetermined patterns of bulbs
and lights that it throws onto a back

DESIGN:
VJING AND DJ CULTURE:
KISSING COUSINS?

such book is the Process Color Manual.

This book contains elements that can
be tweaked, combined, and otherwise
manipulated to suit the needs of a client. Similarly, new DJ software allows
for the advanced manipulation of audio that 50 years ago was only done
in laboratories of elite computer music
institutions. It is a means for massproduction of once specialized techniques in sound manipulation.
Some of these shared characteristics
between modern-day graphic design
and DJing / VJing are:

If VJing isnt exclusively design or fine art, maybe it functions in a similar

way to that of DJing, but with a number of notable differences. Is DJing
design?

With new techniques for automation and interfaces, such as Final

Scratch, that bring modern DJing
into the realm of graphical music
design, current DJ practices are
mutating. Nowadays, DJ culture is
becoming increasingly influenced
by software design. Companies
like Ableton and Ixi Software
make both commercial and experimental products for modern
music producers to craft their
sets with. Software made by Ixi
Software (image right) called The
Slicer allows users to create beats
and musical textures from almost
any possible sound. A graphical
interface contains a palette window where one can select from

a number of tools and change

the content on the screen. The
changes one makes are reflected
both graphically on the screen and
sonically in the form of audio.
Just because modern musical creation now shares identical interfaces to graphics programs doesnt
mean that its a process similar to
design. Part of unlocking this aspect of DJing, and subsequently
VJing and design, is to understand
design process in greater detail .
Designers will often use source
books that have pre-existing layouts, fonts, and color schemes,to
assist in their end project. One

Modularity and repeatability:

Fonts, typesets, clip art
graphics, and vectors
in design. Samples,
and drum kits in DJing.
Clips, filters, and code
in VJing.

Common graphic
interface:

IXI Softwares The Slicer

Both allow for deletion,

cut, undo, and other common commands.

Realtime response to manipulations

Design and contemporary DJing share
the same ontology rooted in software
design. VJing also shares the same
ontology. Hence, it is no surprise that
DJs, graphic designers, and VJs have
interchangeable skills.

DESIGN:
SIMILARITIES VJING
SHARES WITH DESIGN

design, but contributes to the generation of a whole new type of meaning

for a rapidly mobile audience. Tools
like Processing have been used as
generative design for companies such
as ART+COM, as well as videos for
R.E.M. and ads for Metropop Magazine.
When artists write software that
allows for the realtime creation of
images, they are practicing a form of
realtime generative design. VJing is a
mind-map of the design process.

A project where VJing and design concide was produced by VIDVOX, a

company that makes various VJ software tools, and the Ferrari Store in
Italy. VIDVOX was asked to design multiple channels of video that could
be triggered and changed depnding on the customers position within the
space.

VIDVOX Store Design

producing work for a particular

commercial entity. Groups like
London-based D-FUSE often
operate as R & D for the commercial sector while simultaneously
maintaining a distinct
artistic pratice.

This type of project involving sensors that effect video images is

not unique, but one
particular difference is the intent. In
traditional art instalVJing as Live
lations the work is
admired for its own
Design
inherent characteristics. However, the
VIDVOX projects
Strukt, a Visual Design
emphasis is on using
Collective in Austria
the technology to
alludes that VJing can
VIDVOX Ferrari store project
embellish the conbe a type of generasumer experience.
tive design . This type of VJing
One similarity between this and
expertly generates not only live
graphic design is the method of

ENDING /
CONCLUSIONS
After watching a demo at a Los Angeles Video Artists session of Quartz
Composer, a new application at the time of this writing, I began to wonder
about the fascination with this tool. After all, a tool itself is only so interesting.

On the other hand, for all of this effort

into pushing the paradigm of live visual
performance, the results themselves
are not often enduring. They sink into
the memories of audience and performer, whose jobs are to activate the
space of performance.
This labor also involes working to understand the language of science and
technology, if only to use it for artistic
purposes. The desire to create those
moments of blinding energy that
emerge by chance when the images
become charged with new meanings
is evident in this rush to control and
manage this new technology. Creating new and varied styles of affects
with their multiple resonances in artistic communities is a common goal for
VJs.

can be a force that liberates expression. When an artist masters new

techniques, there is an expansion of
possibilities, not a contraction.
While we are still living in an era that
separates technique and artistic vision, it is the role of VJs to showcase
their synchronicity in hopes of creating
nuclear fission on the grandest scale
possible - a worldwide party that never
ever ends.

As Kurt Ralske notes in a short essay

called The Pianist:

I was reminded of the various failures and successes of George

Melies, who conjured up fantastic
new cinematic worlds and landscapes, but lost his audience due
to the overarching emphasis on
special effects. Other filmmakers
would utilize these same technologies in the service of narrative,
rather than visual showmanship,
and win over audiences worldwide. Narrative had won out, and
beaten special effects.

There is something revealing about

artists fascination with a tool rather than artistic content. At a certain point I realized that VJing, with
its own successes and failures, is
structured around labor and endurance in contrasting ways. Seeing someone sweat to deliver live
images, as in a club or festival
setting, can be a re-sensitizing experience. As part of an audience,
watching someone work provides
an immediacy to the image.

There is perhaps even a prejudice that

digital technique and artistic vision are
mutually exclusive: an individual can
have one or the other, but not both.
Thus a complete division of labor between artist and technician is seen as
desirable.

Science and technology multiply around us.

To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we
use those languages, or we remain mute.
-J.G. Ballard
This
attitude could change. Technique

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VJ : live cinema unraveled is one of the first books to offer a fresh perspective on VJing and VJ culture. Probing
into topics such as technological mobility, audience, environment, and codes of the medium, it explains the various
dimensions of this emerging practice. Part design-book,
speculative theory, reference, and practical guide, this
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describes the various offshoots and branches that are occuring now in the twenty-first century.
Timothy Jaeger is a media artist and Visual Art graduate
student at the University of California, San Diego. He has
performed and presented work at various venues internationally, including ISEA 2004, PixelACHE, and the Museo
Reina Sofia in Madrid, and his writings on performance
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K?

thanks to:
Jordan Crandall, Lev Manovich, Roberto Tejada, Miller Puckette, Printworx, Sonia Paulino,
Alex Dragulescu, Todd Thille, B.J. Barclay, and
everyone that contributed photos, ideas, or
helped out in any way possible.

With contributions by:

Vello Virkhaus, Addictive TV, Flight404, Futurismo Zugakousaku, Melissa Ulto, DreamAddictive, Ryoichi Kurokawa,
Aerostitch, and more

Produced with funds from UCSD Russell Grant.

McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel.

War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Ban-

copyright 2005 Timothy Jaeger

cover image by Ryoichi Kurokawa