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The Contrary of the Movie Theater
Gabriel Menotti
| We usually look for references for live images’ analysis in the history of light shows and visual music, according to a chronological paradigm that associates contemporary club video projections with the color concerts of the XIX century and the psychedelic wet shows of the 1960s, among other artistic manifestations. This approach is related both to the non-narrative appeal of live images in general, as well as to the conditions of rendering of a VJ projection, where the message is generated, edited or composed in real-time – methods traditionally associated with music presentation. The real-time processing of visuals seems to be directly opposed to the most conventional dynamics of moving images’ exhibition, the century-old cinematographic screening. While in real-time processing the message is generated (if not composed) at the same moment it is expressed, in cinema screenings the message (the movie) was generated months before its expression (projection), in a complex process that goes from scriptwriting to post-production, and may take years to be completed. From a practical perspective, however, the difference between both conditions of rendering is subtle. Movie exhibition is not an automatic routine, but an active effort that demands a lot of technical expertise from the operator. It involves changing film rolls, adjusting the audio mix, monitoring and correcting the image’s conditions. The movie projectionist, just like a VJ, must operate in real-time to convey the message. In a certain sense, he is also a performer, but his performance is negative: he must avoid that the feature-length film loses its coherence. The VJ, on the other hand, enacts a positive performance: he creates coherence from distinct visual samples. |
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