VJam Theory |
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Date published: 09/09/07 Collaborative writers |
A momentart, audiece, moment, objectThe point at which it all comes together is the moment, the reason why it all started and came into existence. The performance is parallel to the object as art (not in conflict with it); it's the momentary existent artwork. The work can't be repeated because spaces have differences: spatial, visual, acoustic, cultural, and emotional. Audiences also make each performance a unique moment, by the way they collectively engage with the work and how the performer(s) engage(s) with the audience. Does the work exist before this moment: is the pre-existent material for the performance (the videos, objects or author based software) by itself art (objectified in most cases) or is it when used in a performative moment that objects are used to create art (moment, ephemeral)? This takes me to another question which, as the above, intrigues me: how about the recorded material of a performance, is it artwork. |
These are interesting questions, but I have a feeling the answers really depend on how specifically they are framed. The "performance" is a very broad topic, and the right answers for VJing may not be the same as for music or for theatre due to the differing nature of the performance. I suspect that asking if the performance is art or not may be asking the wrong question entirely: in the contemporary art world almost everything/anything can be, or is art. Theoretically at least it is potentially possible for a VJ performance to repeat a previous one exactly. Especially when it is driven by pre-programmed sequences and synchronized sound-image "events". (In actual practice the likelihood of repeat may be very small, but it does exist). I imagine the only way to actually prevent such a repeat would be to build a system that incorporates each performance into itself as part of the database (just as a living actor does) so the material being performed changes during the performance. Wikipedia - So if we start by asking what part of performance is art, I agree that the intention of the creator is what mostly counts here. Each part of the performance can be art if the creator sees it that way. Anyway, the question of what is art and what is not art is very time-based, as we know from history, Andy Warhol would have had difficulties being recognized as an artist in the late 16th century. Nevertheless, I’ve been always pushing the notion that live cinema has artistic intentions basically because it can’t be considered only as entertainment and art institutions are better places to show this kind of work than cinemas or even clubs (depends if it’s a special event or just a night club).
I was at Cal-Art for a panel talk with Allen Sekula, John Baldessari and some others on the power of image and the semiotics of moment when a visiting professor popped up with a statement totally out of turn. His name was Jalal Tufic and he made a point that at first was puzzling, and then was clearly fascinating. He said to stop filming this moment. Stop it now. His point was the documentation in time becomes the entity and that our moment was thus in a way surrogate to the video in the cameras whirring in the corner of the room, so much plastic. The live performance or moment to him was to be like a happening where this is all and all is the fibre of this moment, its collusions, its breaks and collisions as any other pin point in space or time. To be picky, I would say that "live cinema" doesn't have intentions at all. These are the exclusive domain of the artists and the audience of the live cinema work! Though I'm not really talking about intentions (claimed or otherwise) about the work, but about the structure of the work in relation to the boarder and more complex history that precedes it and which the informed audience shares with the artist making work. This is what makes a performance interesting or not, meaningful or not. It is this contextuality that exists as a result of the audiences "past experiences" with a class of works and that allows them to become meaningful and art. I really like the concept of the past contextualizing and ultimately agitating (or non-agitating) a moment into full focus, cargo and totality. Very interesting! I used to make false poetry machines for experimentation with this in regards to specific words and sentence constructions. Words like ‘sea’, ‘soul’ and ‘humanity’ are open ended as opposed to words like ‘pacific ocean’ or ‘population’, although of course, those words are also open to personal interpretation and filling to their skin by each person's past experiences and associations in a constellation of points and points of entry. These words also arguably carry past usage, knowledge of their age, the cargo of their years, and thus when inserted into a rudimentary sentence nine times out of ten proved to seem meaningful, clever, even profound while the person had actually unknowingly picked them randomly earlier and they were simply dropped into the undercarriage of a basic sentence. It is also interesting to see how an individual moment of improvisation, if one thinks of game theory, could at times be exactly as another: a ‘copy’ or ‘second form of what occurred before’ as erroneously interpreted by someone who had some sense of this. It would be erroneous in the face of game theory as there are mathematical probabilities, variability and recombinant potentialities within a set of tools no matter how vast. This would simply be that odd phenomenon where people with no biological lineage, in other parts of the world, have been found to be nearly identical in photos. Sampling is a large umbrella and only getting wider and more complex to define and distill with creative commons and the increasing ubiquity of certain tools of performance, replication and creation as high-end technology becomes more affordable in waves. |
modular structuresI find the modular method in creating live AV performances fascinating, the endless possibilities of mixing the material (video clips, texts, animations, patches etc) together in real-time. A performance is never ready, it can keep changing endlessly and a live recording of a performance is just one glimpse of it, just one moment amongst many other possibilities. This is really the part that makes live audiovisual work so different from video art for example. Modular structures can of course be found in all media nowadays, especially online - more thoughts on this? |
The modular method in VJing, as I see it, is a very effective way to blend all sorts of influences and quotations. Totally POP. Birimbica a carioca aflita.
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Relationshipsbody, installation, performance artThere are already many different definitions of performance from performance art to theatre and music for example. In what way(s) does VJing differ from, or overlap these other practices? Is it sufficient to describe VJing as ‘technologically mediated performance’? In this sense isn’t an orchestral performance also technologically mediated? Has anyone tried to map these overlapping areas of practice? In ‘performance art’ on its own there are a huge range of approaches allied to different intentions, ambitions and presuppositions. Some of these hold as central the presence of the body of the artist. Where does VJing or, for example, tele-presence relate to this? Finally, is the ‘performance’ of an interactive installation a result of the interaction between the viewer and the software/hardware? In this sense can you say that an interactive installation is also an improvised performance? |
My feeling is that an essential part of the VJ performance
is it being a visual performance. In this regard we should perhaps include
the paintings where Yves Klein directed nude women coated with paint
to drag, roll, etc themselves on canvas as (possibly) related, although
I would prefer an understanding where this kind of performance was something
different than VJing. My mind has to go to Roland Barthes for a bit. The paraphrasing of his concept of the death of the author is to argue that it is that live conduit, that current of exchange with the viewer/observer that agitates the dormant within a created work. I am not saying this just as a theorist but also as a musician/new media guy/writer. Think of the cheesy old "If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?" Does a book tell a layered narrative full of moments and symbolism if no one is reading it? Does a work of music play out its tones, architectures, flow, structures, feels and emotive weight sitting inside a shiny CD? “A bell is a cup before it is struck”, to quote another old saying. The work is a constellation of potential and something that its creator has some satisfaction with yes, but is it fully in fruition and in a sense alive when being read, heard in a way that is much more? There is no way to really know how each person will react and respond and what personal memory, mood, taste, expectation, release they will bring to its shape and details, hence it is like a circuit complete and aglow. I have written on the relationship between Barthes' death of the author and the re-combinatory practices of appropriation: http://www.hz-journal.org/n10/betancourt.html While it is true that all reading requires a reader for meaning to emerge, even more significant (and ignored in Barthes) is the role of past experience and context in the determination of meaning. A work without context can be quite opaque. (The indexical statement "bububu" is a good example of this). It is this context, existing beyond the control of any singular interpreter, that creates meaning. If there is a consensus meaning and a subjective meaning that are radically different, and the subjective one depends on private, idiosyncratic referents, then it is not likely to be believed by anyone as a legitimate interpretation. Thus we need to remember the power of context in our
interpretations. I think that's the problem when VJs are considered more as visual producers hiding in the background rather than performers who can be seen performing, otherwise who knows it’s "live" and who cares? My first interest in VJing was years ago at a party when I actually saw the video on two monitors and the VJ playing the keyboard that triggered the mixes and effects and I was struck by the physical interaction and the movement of his body to the music and using that to change the visuals, that was what made it interesting to me. How is this different for an audience watching a guitar player performing live before an audience? I think this type of performance does demand "the awareness of the controller by the audience". That's what makes it feel real, especially when music is involved, to see that the VJ "feels" the music in their bodies and reinterprets that in a synaesthetic way back out through the imagery as any musician does through their other instruments to accompany the work. As an ensemble piece, requiring in many cases the marriage of image to sound, it makes a huge difference to me to see the performer. Otherwise, (and this is why club visuals can be boring) it could easily be canned music and eye-candy visuals with no soul. How does a VJ otherwise breath life into the work? I'd like to see more VJs out front and have a view of them as they create the work we see - yes this takes away from the immersion, but so does watching a guitar player, the audience can be in control of their own experience and choose what they want to watch/experience, the artist or the art. |
rhythmThe VJ and VJing is a performance for nightclubs. Live lights around dancing people, drugs: party time. Are watching images the audience’s main idea? The performance is nearest to the music, rather than the image, it is a rhythm. The proposition is to make sense, but not always. Is it the sense that something happens with just icons, with images full of meaning? Some radical performances are those that suggest, that develop abstract images or make ordinary icons become abstract. It’s necessary to control the meaning for audience? Why? To connect “cinema” with the performances? The space is different and it isn’t important to tell a story, to make sense like in cinema. In a way I imagine that our era is a sensory one. We may know the world and think, but sometimes be affected by the rhythm. |
I don’t believe a VJ performance must be like cinema, I love to make performances full of abstract images. Rhythm can exist in trans-modality, in multiple forms.... Narrative in written form is composed with a sense of internal rhythms, cadences, multiple pattern evolutions and variations in its structure, language and punctuation. Rhythm in visual media can be expressed and interpreted in single to multiple flows at once as the eye scans the visual plain. This is also true in graphic design theory as the amount of visual information must have "beats" from sparsity to complexity in sections of the grid, in the plane, during a viewer's interpretation/experience/immersion. Rhythms are found in pauses, blank spaces, tonal shifts, shifts in scale, shift in shading color and color symbolism, as well as in meteorology, climatology etc. Cinema also can have rhythms in its scene lengths, pacing, cuts, sound to image variation, in soundtrack, in imagistic overlap or disparity and collision/collusion in more abstract film. Part of the beauty of rhythm to me is that it is so varied and so present in such a variety of forms. Rhythm can be a feature of both temporary and spatial constructions. So, in that way, VJing is no closer to music than it is to graphic design or cinema. Rhythm is not an indicator of musicality or visuality. In any case, cinema is constructed as a fixed sequence (even though its sequentiality can be broken by different narrative resources: flash backs, etc.) and is seen in a fixed context (movie theater, home), whereas a VJ performance exists in the midst of a space of flows. A fragmented visual performance, which demands mobility (both perceptual, intellectual and physical) from the viewers cannot be constructed in the same way as cinema, otherwise it will be condemned to misplacement. It will be closer to a non-Euclidean conception of space than to time, even if time can be thoroughly twisted into an apparent non-linearity. Cinema is something to watch; instead, a VJ performance is a space in which to move around (and just occasionally watch, possibly while carrying a drink and chatting with friends). I believe that VJs should acknowledge the fact that their performance cannot be considered as an attractor just because it happens on a screen, suggesting a parallel with cinema. A movie is a strong attractor whose power lasts between 1 and 3 hours; a VJ performance is something closer to an alternating magnet: you watch it, and soon you want to turn away, then you want to watch it again. The watcher doesn't even have to fill in the blanks! It is a new mode of viewing, an exciting space to explore. I would like to see some other firing VUs, as shown at Hackaday’s site, posted at Netbehaviour. A perfect sample of a VJing performance! Firstly, the VJ genre is certainly not cinema. A good comparison would be cinema/theatre. The genre of VJing is a very plastic form, unfortunately inhibited by its close proximity with electro-music: This being an extremely linear Euclidean form of music. Therefore the resulting collaborations are usually pretty clichéd in spite of the formidable technology involved. A rhythm concept especially in occidental culture is very narrow in general and in scientific terms quite behind our present era. Binary rhythms for example in no way or form represent time per se, time being not linear as amply proven in early 20th century quantum theories. I venture to say that time and rhythms are the same, as we could not even exist for one minute without the millions of diverse rhythms making up the structure of the universe as we perceive it. The VJ genre has quite a capability to represent modern time perception as do various forms of computer generated music. However, this is at present a rarity. It’s an unfortunate comment on our epoch that unlike the so-called renaissance in 14th century Europe, art and science are very distant. So many graphic artists and sound technicians truly believe that because they are good technicians that this means they will make good art. Unfortunately that is not the case. It’s true that in our era everything can be art but does that instantly mean that it should? |
The wide field of livevisualsAfter reading the comments to the last post I felt it might be good to chat a bit about the wide field of live visuals of which VJing is only one possibility. As I have understood, VJ Theory doesn’t discuss only VJs playing at nightclubs, but also visual music, live audio-visual sets, live cinema, etc. If this is not the case, then I probably shouldn’t be here to start with. I also started as a VJ, but then moved into live audio-visual sets, collaborations with musicians, theater, etc. I think VJing in general is a good opportunity to experiment with images (as "no-one" is normally watching and trying to analyze your work). Though I remember one night standing amongst the audience in a drum'n'bass party watching someone's visuals: clips from Charlie Chaplin’s movies followed by clips from space odyssey followed by other clips endlessly etc, in a fast rhythm and I was wondering if these images had any connection in the mind of the VJ? Why did he choose these images and not some others? Had he ever read about Eisenstein’s theory of montage? Had he ever done any visual studies? Many questions crossed my mind while I was watching the visuals. However long I watched those images, I couldn’t figure it out, was there suppose to be some kind of random logic, a secret code to discover or not, but as I didn’t figure out any message behind the choices of the VJ, the images soon appeared as noise and my mind didn’t respond to them anymore, and I couldn’t remember any more images afterwards, all was erased, before even recorded, and in the end, this mix could have been done without the help of the VJ. Computers can make random mixes as well as people. What computers can’t make out of a library of video clips is some kind of story or meaning. Of course we all know that in the end, the meaning is built in the receiver's mind, nevertheless, if there is no meaning to start with, then the receiver will be wasting her time, right? Like many other VJs, I left the clubs and started to do live cinema/live audio-visual work, basically to be able to explore more these new possibilities and work better with audio and show the results to an audience, which is actually watching. It is a different experience than VJing, as the audience is expecting much more if they are to watch and listen to something for 30 minutes. Still, it is not cinema and it will never be, as the whole structure is based on samples, not timeline. The main interest is to create an audiovisual experience, which is not cinema, not VJing, but something in-between, some kind of meta-narrative poetic transformative event. I believe that visuals can work like a shiatsu massage for your eyes; live visuals can make you laugh or cry and hopefully go home remembering what had happened, at least bits of it. This is what many live visuals artists are struggling towards: creating "new" visual narratives, aesthetics etc. I hope this post serves to open the discussion up a bit, towards realtime audiovisual work, not just VJing. Sorry for the length! |
In our days it is hard, maybe impossible and not necessary, to think art and audiovisual cultural forms as specificity. It’s better to observe how the expressive elements are being used. I like Michel de Certeau’s idea of the use, in a way, depending how you use objects or structure ideas the symbols work, and maybe generate a different concept. We may defend a new quality, or a new aesthetic experience for the public during the performance, as it’s connected at the same time with the elements of sound, image, amount of screens and the space created with them. In a way, it is about how the performance brings together all the expressive elements. Are there obsolete concepts in art? Maybe. I prefer to look at the materiality of the expression to see how it creates mental and physical experience instead of always prioritizing time and history. It’s more useful to consider who goes, how, at places, so, if we are in XXI century, if we have created computers and use them, non-linear structures are more usual than we suppose. It doesn’t mean an automatic situation, but our cultural thinking form is changing. Later I may develop this subject, because it’s far from what I bring here now. Rhythm and time exist as cinema, as poetry and also as forms and objects. The VJs rhythmic images are suggestive of work by artists such as Stan Brakhage, but the director’s work is very different, he doesn’t use music, his artistic investigation is to try and make a visible music. I would like to know if the visible world of image as representation is enough to understand a VJs works? I don’t think so when I bring Brakhage’s work in as a proposition to show the difference. When I say rhythmic I remember how VJ performances break the movements or create movement with still images. Well, figurative forms and abstract forms produce sense, but they mainly produce abstraction as a musical form. I can't possibly agree that video somehow eludes the linear. Whether there is narrative or not, that's not the question. I am working with video as an accompaniment to live music, in particular, noise music (as well as other video pursuits). I find that as a performer I play a role that is subliminal to the act of the musician, while being, at that moment, inseparable. I believe the visual element, if performed as a live instrumental part, becomes part of what it accompanies. The audience finds them bound (without closing off a sense). I also find that even though I can use tools and clips and programs, my favorite instrument is still the camera in conjunction with the physical world, whether in front of an audience or in my studio. On that note, I don't see how you can make such a broad claim as video never being like cinema, as it is based on samples... I have performed plenty of live visuals that have plenty of variation, and absolutely no samples. They approach something more like a landscape, and I describe the work as video painting, rather than VJing, as there is no relationship to DJing (sample based mixing or playlist development), where the term evolves from. Regardless of where video fits, the exclusion of narrative from video as a live form is bogus. A piece of video is inherently timeline based, whether it is prerecorded or performed. Just as a piece of improvised music goes from one time to another, so does video. This is the fundamental magic of these media, and what the creator uses and intends is up to them and not your limited imagination or compartmentalisation. Just as you expected more structure from the VJ set you reference, couldn't you see a timeline of constructed clips/performative visual elements being performed for a long period? A video play, if you will? What exactly is it that you see separating video and cinema? Personally, I think it is generally narrative, but not timeline. Again though, these are generalisations, which I think we're trying to create dissolution of anyhow, yeah? I do agree with Ryan: the "distance" between cinema and video is minimal, when compared to the possibilities offered by computers. Both cinema and video are ‘recorded’ on necessarily linear media (tapes)... yes, there is digital video everywhere now, but it emulates the linearity of tape. Now, I believe that multi-linearity is an illusion visible only to the illusionist, and not the audience. Why? Well, only the illusionist (VJ) knows what strings they are pulling. The audience sees only the results, which end up being linear for them. Even if time is bent and folded, and images of Charlie Chaplin and A Space Odyssey are scattered about, as is related in this post, the final experience resembles storytelling. No matter how much you twist a story, it's still a story and if it gets too twisted, it loses its interest. In fact, the interesting thing about stories is precisely their solidification, with the possibility of only minor "hacks". So multi-linearity is not the only way for a VJ or AV performer. There is also the possibility (and we could even say need) for the performer to interact with the audience and this is where I think the VJ (for short) can pass the "VJ Turing test": is there a human or a machine at the controls? Is there someone who is sensing the mood of the moment, the ambiance, who knows the cultural context in which we are all gathered? Or is it just a machine popping out one image and effect after another? Can a VJ escape from narrative without having to escape from meaning? I have the feeling that this is getting at something important to the definition of what people are doing: that the venue itself imposes demands, and that there is a key difference between works done to be paid attention to and those that are not meant to be watched in any real fashion. It's entirely possible that as this medium develops, the VJ in a club which is the current dominant model will come to be seen in much the same way that the ‘serious’ film world (i.e. the film as an art people) view the commercial cinema creations such as ‘Die Hard’ when compared with ‘Red Desert’. Even though they share much in common, they are regarded as being completely different. (Ignore the experimental film in this relationship). Any experience we have is necessarily going to be linear (time is linear after all) however, what seems to be suggested by the idea of a ‘non-linear’ work is that the construction requires effort on the viewer's part because the components arrive in a different order than their coherence requires; in other words, ‘some assembly required’. Suggesting that all video is necessarily narrative because we have to experience it in a linear fashion confuses what is generally meant by "non-linear" when we talk about narrative or moving images. This is something other than Eisenstein's montage: the goal there was always (in its highest form) to transform the image from specific into general, so it could act as language instead of picture. Narrative isn't required for Montage to work (look at Dziga Vertov for example) and neither does being linear as experience necessarily mean that a non-linear construct is impossible, only that it requires specific cues for the audience to understand what's happening. Nole Burch goes through this in the book Theory of Film Practice. I think it’s critical for the form to evolve past eye-candy, with no real narrative, message or conceptual basis, and outside the club space into more of the art form it can be. Many artists have struggled to make it relevant and an art form, and it’s time the world saw it as more that visual stimulus for drunk and drugged party people. It can be cinematic, abstract, performative, installation based, poetic and innovative within various locations, contexts, technological forms, artistic milieus and practices, so I'm excited to see that the transition from the club to the theatre, gallery, streets, the web, etc. are happening and that we can start to see it evolve and have a new and varied voice. The most thought provoking idea in this post to me is the idea that the artist is most responsible for delivering the meaning of the artwork. I believe it was Duchamp who said that for every artwork there are three participants: the artist, the observer, and the work of art itself, all with equal power. That statement resonates for me personally so I use it here. It ties in with my empirical experience as an artist, as an observer, and occasionally as a work of art. As a human, I prefer a world where the artist and the observer have equal power and ability to assign meaning to an artwork, just as I prefer to interpret the meaning of the world around me rather than have it conveyed to me by someone else. It is just a personal preference but I am sure there are others like me in the world; those people would be my ideal audience when I am the artist. Taking an active role as observer in assigning/deriving meaning from the world around me (including that part we might designate as 'artwork') is very liberating; I'm not bound to interpret the artist's intentions in order to have a successful experience, and my interpretation becomes every bit as valuable as the artist's. As a bonus I get a personalised life experience best suited to my own mind. If I happen to interpret the meaning that the artist intended, this is a plus, but not required for the artwork (or the artist, or the viewer) to be successful. Ask yourself: as an artist, what is the message that I feel compelled to convey to the world in such a way that all can readily receive it? Is it possible to convey meaning in such a way? If it were, then what would be the value of that, to me and/or to the world? What message is that important? And finally: What would the world have to be like for the artist to reliably communicate this way? I'll relate the above to video art when I have time, best to all of you who are taking the time to put your thoughts here, peace. I found the phrase 'seemingly random sequence of images' worth commenting on. If the artist and observer both have power and authority to assign meaning, then the observer's perception of 'randomness' is as much their responsibility as it is the artist's. It is always within the observer's power to assign meaning to art (and the world at large, if a distinction must be made). My roots as a video artist aren't in the club/party scene, but were formed by channel surfing on cable TV with a VCR to record 'random' sequences of images. I found that these sequences often contained explicit or implied meaning based on their juxtaposition, if I was selective about what I added as the sequence progressed. I found that I could 'perform' TV live by picking two or three channels and switching from one to the other at the right time. It was uncanny just how often the juxtapositions had meaning. I think that when the currency is images, the potential for us to find meaning is multiplied because our brains are so visually acute. By using my intuition to allow for the richest ambiguities afforded by a sequence of images, I create art with multiple layers of meaning, and therefore with a rich potential for others to find their own meaning. This allows for all three entities (artist, observer and artwork) to have power in the experience, and results in a better world for all three. Through my early experience as a channel surfer, I found that sampling this enormous stream of information to create meaning-rich juxtapositions is a natural, valid and needed response, in order to re-find meaning in the deluge. This is true for my life as an observer and as an artist (or of course as an occasional work of art!). There are some really good directions here. I believe narrative is an important and perhaps vital part of the human experience. It certainly can exist without the structure of linearity, after all the oral tales, which existed before the Gutenberg presses were mostly non-linear meaning that the time line was always relative to the recital and the listener. I disagree strongly that time is linear. It’s a tool of measurement, which we have created to measure our placement, and it is useful, but like many concepts, it is reaching the limit of its ability to explain and represent our present situation. Think of the opening line of any fairy tale: once upon a time. Which once, and upon what time? For me it’s clear that not only linearity, but time-concepts themselves, are being reflected in numerous ways throughout various forms of not only art but the sciences. I agree with VJam Theory about obsolete concepts in art. I think of it in terms of strata, for example Newtonian physics and Euclidean mathematics are simply ineffectual when treating atomic particle theory, or in quantum mechanics. That does not mean they are obsolete by any means, just that they can only be referenced up to a certain point with any contemporary usefulness. This does not imply however that one should be unaware of the base that they have created for contemporary physics and mathematic formulation. As a guitarist for example I find it fascinating that this fairly primitive instrument is still so prescient, surviving not only the tempered scale and the piano, but is doing quite well in face of software sequencers such as Pro Tools etc. Certainly people still lock into the cinema and do still read a lot. Still I contend as stated in a comment on the rhythm page that it’s unfortunate: there is this gulf between science and art at the moment and I do believe that VJing has the seed of a fantastic plasticism, but as always it will require new ways of thinking to achieve its mature form. Consider how long it took film to stop imitating theatre and yet even as it achieved its fantastic inventions, theatre certainly did not become obsolete, indeed both forms enabled important innovations in the other. Meaning can originate with the artist or the viewer and result in successful art. The viewer has as much power as the artist to create meaning. Conversely the 'failure' of the artist to convey their intended meaning (or even to have an intention) does not preclude the success of the artwork. The artwork itself also has a voice and will speak for itself once it is released into the world; the artist can't and therefore shouldn't try to control what it says to all viewers at all times. This is my opinion based on personal experience; results may vary. I just prefer the freedom to decide for myself what the world means, and affording that freedom to others. By affording it, we teach others how to see the world in a unique way that enriches their lives. To me, that's what art is all about. Anyway I'm not advocating totally random image sequences if that doesn't get you there; it just happens to work for me. Maybe that's just my Dada roots showing. I also have done more structured sets where I picked my palette in advance, but I try to have no pretensions about how that reaches my audience. At any rate VJing affords the opportunity like never before to create live juxtapositions that surprise the artist and the viewer; and by selecting images that are rich in potential meaning, it is possible to allow both the artist and the viewer to discover the artwork in real time, as a spontaneous act. That's what gets me off as a live video artist. Sometimes this approach results in a set that falls flat; mostly it results in pure magic, and something I could not have planned in advance. Not unlike a jazz improvisation. |