We are going to discuss in this article the projection of manipulated live images which double as audiovisual scores. Sparkles would be: figurative and graphic images, people dancing under strobe lights. At night, in nightclubs, raves and malls, the distribution of screens and the excess of colored lights create experience/space, stimuli/space, create projections/space. The space stimuli presented here promote an inverse experience which approaches other image/space devices, such as the environments found in videogames and interactive virtual reality. On the other hand, they also pull away since they are made up of image/light, of sparkling figurative images or not, in sum, for being structured as audiovisual scores.

We are some kind of
half-time show.
Fernando Pessoa

Names: Lineage and Process

VJ. An acronym for a variety of names. Unfolded, it remits to poetic paths of expressions. VJs have defined themselves through their work itself and found concepts for Vjing, putting into play different ways of creating, of producing representations. The search for their representations extrapolates comforting classificatory exercises, and deals with the poetry of Vjing. Attempts of coining the term brings about underlying problems on the nature and diversity of expressive potentialities of live manipulation cultures, be them accompanied or not by sound. VJ: video-jockey, visual-jockey or video-jam? Depends on the VJ and the place, but it will always be jamming.

The names bear the implicit understanding of what this artistic activity is and traces structural elements of the proximity between expressive means and urban culture. The abbreviation was born in the 80’s to designate MTV anchors. This lineage does not relate to the work of the VJs we are looking at in this text, but is interesting as a first link between image and music. The MTV VJs worked for a young people’s music television channel, “our” VJs play images for DJs, with DJs or in counter-time with DJs. Images and music overlap. VJs working with the production of images in electronic scenarios can be identified with DJs and television as they take place live and are improvised, but are different in that they work behind screens and computers. Differently from MTV’s VJs, they do not offer their personal image, they create a variety of images to provoke concept associations as they are manipulated and projected.

The name video jockey for those professionally working the dance floor relates to disc jockeys. While the VJs play images previously ordered in sequence in computers, DJs organize their work using records and CDs. VJ’s videos count on a support, the video, of course. In the 90s, dance floors used video tapes. Today, images can come directly from the computer or even DVDs themselves. The DVD was initially, a technological substitute for video, its similar in poetic terms. Today, DVD-J’s allows for live manipulation of images with distortions created through “scratches” (the same procedure used by DJs) and non-linear access to images. The DVD-Js and computers allow for timing to be controlled by the VJs. Distinct times and rhythm are then created from the same material. We will not linger on how the construction of temporality comes to propose different meanings as this will be the subject of another article.1 What we are interested in retaining at the moment is that Vjing, within the electronic scenario, a young realization for young people, has a short history marked by the technique’s inscription in a poetic context.

The name “visual jockey” was usually associated by those in the métier with a specific quality of projections where abstract images presented in an accelerated rhythm predominate, or in other words, a flux of images which sparkle in speed. If we amplify visual notions in general, we will be able to better understand a VJ’s activity. Visual has to do with seeing, to the visible, including figurative and abstract images, produced upon an algorithm base without any external material or recorded reference. Visual can be also image/light, image/landscape or a micro-narrative constructed through associations. In this perspective the acronym reaffirms its bonds to the electronic scenario, but is not to be used strictly bound to a support, but to an object produced by the VJ, images.

Outside Brazil the names Visual Performer and Visual Jammer are commonly used. The latter title relating once again to the overlapping between music and image. The sonorous/visual interpenetration when thinking of “jam, jamming or jammer”2 qualifies the VJ’s poetry. The jam sessions, as is very well understood by the fans of this kind of music, are jazz shows based on improvisation, and jamming is the moment in which they improvise. Jamming relates to this characteristic in the events with VJ’s, improvisation, live.3 In summary, VJ’s activities relate to the manipulation of fixed or moving images, figurative or abstract, which are presented in art galleries, in raves, at parties or discotheques, based on the improvisations coming from a previously selected image bank. These images, independent of their technical origin, exist accompanied by music. Accompany or are accompanied? Both, as we will see shortly.

Experiences with the projection and manipulation of images are not something confined to current events. On the contrary, in the history of cinematographic vanguard, as revealed by Peter Weibel, Gene Youngblood and other authors, work done with multiple projections are not unusual. Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson and the concerts given by the Vortex Group carried out experiments with multiple screens in the sixties, as well as experimenting with the division of screens. Gregory Markoupoulos created multiple projections with different films experimenting with breaking with the central perspective as an alternative mode of narration. (Weibel. 2003:117). The couple Steina and Woody Vasulka, besides exploring space with diverse projections, touched on the VJ’s poetic sphere by working live. They create sounds and images which are channeled through synthesizers. To not make the mentioning of these works a tiring and extensive citation I will mention, in conclusion, that experiences like the panoramas in the XVII and XVIII century, or even diverse vanguards in the 20’s including artists such as Lásló Moholy-Nagy who developed a poetic sphere similar to that of the VJs. By breaking down the fourth wall in Italian theater they create multiple projections impossible to be visualized with only one glance, or in other words, with more than one hundred and eighty degrees with some of their performances being live. The proximity between poetic spheres of the aforementioned experiences and that of the VJs does not annul particularities in the nature of these means of expression. Electronic culture, experimental environments and images in relation with sounds and techniques of their visual materiality guarantee poetic characteristics to the VJ’s work which deserve to be explored.

A few pacts

Space/time, projection and experiential: sentient4 and feeling, visible and visionary are part of the experience. Parties, multi-sensorial nights. Spaces as something which demarcates the between, exists here with material visualization. The space between is visually perceptive, and is usually white, due to the large amount of smoke, resulting either from cigarette or stage smoke. Smoke is a resource widely used in theater and cinema to materialize light, it diffuses the light, forcing its ray to occupy the environment, providing it with density. Well dosed, smoke is an ally for constructing a scenario, to give space volume and weight, to diffuse people and objects, modify standards of distance, as one losses the depth of field through it. Smoke, lights, projections and sounds create a party’s environment, an environment which involves and stimulates spectators, reduces space by limiting fields of vision, creating a circumscriptive environment even if there are hundreds of people in the room, and thus produces a sort of smoke screen . It is an elemental environment and one that creates pacts with the audience.

Delving into a fiction book, a film, an exhibition, a videogame or piece of interactive art presupposes a few pacts. Some prioritize illusionistic aspects, others physical and intellectual manipulation, others revolve around strictly comprehensive aspects. There are still others which propose and promote feedback between structural intellectual games and illusionistic fruition. The elements which structure this pact in books are represented by the plot and/or language. Some readers abandon themselves to this proposed world, their immersion/plunge into the story, passing through the acceptance of a pact constituted through the concentration of their senses in the narrative. In this sense, the immersible property of a text is one of the intrinsic elements of its composition5.

-----------------------------------------------

Notes

1 This issue was discussed in a text presented at the Compôs 2004 by the author entitled: The VJ’s scenario: between optical and physical stimulation”

2 Vjamm is also a software from audiovisualizer as well, developed for vjing.

3 In this article we do not intend to get into improvisation, I have mentioned it as a reminder of this poetic manifestation, of live poetic manifestations, in the VJ’s work.

4 A notion proposed by Merleau-Ponty. Productive paradox in which he who feels and thinks is part of the encounter, in the perception of a determined space/time.

5This is said as an analogy with proposals such as the Model Reader and Implicit Reader presented by Eco and Iser. Both are elements to be found in the text.

Other text extracts