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VJ Theory: TEXTS
Date published: 16/01/07
MUSICAL LANGUAGE IN THE VJING AR

Daniela Tordino

Translated by Thompson Loiola
Reviwed by Joyce Alders



“My computer program is like a piano.
I could continue to use it creatively all my life.”
John Whitney



The aim of this article is to analyse how musical language is involved in all aspects of the process of projecting and manipulating live images – VJing, a kind of artistic manifestation, is increasingly present at electronic culture events and has caught the attention of arts and technology scholars.



The scenery of VJing in technoculture

Pieces of art that use video in their elaboration have been recurrent since the 60s, but not until the 90s, when hardware and software became more affordable, could experimentation in that area improve. Technical evolution and the decrease of prices altered perspectives for art and its producers, who started to realise multiple possibilities like never before. Digitalisation allowed several arts – music, photography, video and cinema, for example – to be mixed into the production of a single piece of work. Techniques of numeric figuration , states Couchot, "modify art in the sense that they are used to control all automatic images (photography, cinema, television), because those will be transformed into figures that will then be registered, treated, diffused, conserved and manipulated" (Couchot,1993:45).

In this scenario, dancing electronica has conquered its space and spawned the position of the VJ – visual jockey -, the person in charge of projecting and live editing of images in clubs, rave parties, festivals and galleries. Besides musical attractions, those places began to offer improvisation of live-played video, accompanying the rhythm of the music played by the DJs. Arlindo Machado analyses the images of the "videoclips addressed to the clubbers" as "retinal stimulation patterns very similar to those rhythmic patterns of the music". It is also characterised by the absence of a linear narrative, since "in places where audience go mainly to dance, it does not make sense to project images that demand involvement, contemplation, fixed attention at the screen" (Machado, 2000:179).

In Brazil , the pioneer was Alexis, who, after a Kraftwerk performance at 1998's Free Jazz Festival, was touched by the beautiful images presented there. He realised the importance of video in a musical event and started to project his own productions at electronic music parties. Red Bull Live Images, in September 2002, had some of the biggest Brazilian artists and contributed to the consolidation of VJing, which turned from superfluous to essential in the main events of the electronic scene.

DJs mix their sources during performances; and so do the VJs. Besides the symbiosis between sound and images, the characteristics of the space of performing – such as architecture, lighting, and the amount and disposition of the screens where images are projected – determines the kind of enjoyment of the audience. The combination of variable factors stimulates the senses and transforms the place into a synaesthetic environment. A project by the VJ collective Embolex exemplifies this issue. “Embolex Whiteout” happened for three months, during 2003, at an underground club in S ã o Paulo located in a mall on Augusta Street . The dance floor was in a sort of dark basement, only accessible through stairs. Three large screens, strategically positioned, would exhibit the projections, while loud techno and breakbeat were played. It was nearly impossible not to be reached by a big load of stimulation. The very name of the project, “Whiteout”, as opposed to blackout, was inspired by a concept of the Critical Art Ensemble group, according to which the excess of light can be as blinding as the lack of it.

In that scenario, is it possible to establish a stronger link between VJing and musical language, besides the synchronization of the images with the music during performances?



The technology that makes performances feasible

Basic equipment used by VJs have similar functions to those of the DJs: two laptops to store the images and a mixer. Digital video cameras are also used – to capture images in real time – and some other devices, like the DVD-J, that allows those images to be manipulated like the DJ manipulates the records, with scratches, for instance. Interestingly, a very modern digital set can have analogical references.

Musical language is also present in the utilisation of the MIDI protocol, through keyboards connected to the computers. Associating keys to an image bank, the VJ can play those images. Videoartist Lucas Bambozzi, from the collective Feitoam ã os, emphasizes the importance of the possibility of “steering clear from the old and anachronistic computer-based references of the ‘qwert' keys, that has little to do with music or image” (2003:73)

Those experiments can be considered an evolution of the image synthesizer created by videoartist Nam June Paik and of later inventions, like GROOVE (Generated Real-time Output Operations on Voltage-controlled Equipment) and VAMPIRE (Video and Music Program for Interactive Realtime Exploration/Experimentation), this software allows live manipulation of sounds and images, which were both experimented with by Laurie Spiegel.

VJing software like Flowmotion, Modulat8, VJamm, Neuromixer e Arkaos, are similiar in their logic and interface to those used in scenic and musical performances. They are the same in many cases: KeyWorx, Isadora or MAX/MSP - Jitter.

The internet deserves to be mentioned here as well, due to it's importance to the spreading of the VJing culture. On the internet, it is possible to download software, participate in forums of discussion like VJBR ( Brazil ) and VJCentral (global) and to watch a multitude of online videos. In his article, Kim Cascone emphasizes the role of the internet in the broadcasting of digital music and in the process of self-teaching of the composers. The composers use the internet as much as a tool for learning, as a means of ditribution of their compostions, in what Cascone calls “cultural feedback looping” (Cascone, 2000:12). In VJing technique, one can observe the very same process. Bambozzi states in “The era of digital ready-made”: “many websites make available to their audience what we can call true machines of manipulation of senses, through the online editing of excerpts of audio and video”. Also, “the ideal of the VJ is now just in front of any internet user, with no transformation or specific know-how needed”.



Elements of recombination and sampling

Images projected by VJs are situated in what Bellour calls "Between-Images": the space where photo, cinema and video meet and intertwine in a multiplicity of superpositions and configurations that are scarcely predictable (Bellour,1997:14). Fragments are edited in software, mixed and recombined with the aim of generating new meanings, different from the original ones. According to Couchot, "the numeric order makes it possible an almost organic hybridization of visual and sound shapes, of text and image, of arts, languages, practical knowledge and ways of thinking and perceiving" (Couchot,1993:47).

Those images may be filmed, scanned, downloaded from the internet, extracted from films, videos and used with or without copyright. "They are the universal property of the information networks interlinked in contemporary times", says Chris Mello. In other words, image sampling became as natural as music sampling in rap or electronica. The collective Critical Art Ensemble believe that "it can be verified today that plagiarising is acceptable, and even unavoidable, in the context of the post-modern existence, with its technological structure". They emphasise: "one of the main objectives of the plagiariser is to restore the unstable and dynamic flux of the meanings, taking on fragments of culture and recombining them over" (2001:85).

Says Lucas Bambozzi: "sampling, copying/pasting, live processing have sophisticated the phenomena of reproductibility. We are in the 'ready-made and digital remixing era'."



Image and sound recreating environment

VJ Spetto developed the VRStudio software, which associates images stored on computer hard disks to the keys on the keyboard in a way he can "type" selected images. He believes that the objective of VJing is to create another environment, through reconstructing the space where he performs. With that in mind, we can once again relate video and music, since concrete music was, in Robin Minard's point of view, essential to the formulation of a concept in which "sound, its spatial contexts and visual elements become one, creating a multi-sensorial space". Minard is inspired by Pierre Schaeffer's reflections, which "liberated sound of its original context and established a structure where sound is a new material to the artist, one to be molded with all the shapes of abstract creative process" (Minard, 2002:48).

Emmerson analyses the importance of electroacoustic music, which changed the pattern of spaces where concerts took place, as inadequate for contemporary artistic needs: "audience looks for multimedia spaces, in a mix of music, images and socialisation" (2001:19). That is exactly what can now be found in nightclubs.

Helga de la Motte-Haber believes in the importance of the 60s and 70s' experiments, when artists' intentions were to create a specific aesthetic for the audience and to "respect human perception, that functions holistically, with all senses alert to capture information" (Haber, 2002:33). In the book "Expanded Cinema", Gene Youngblood describes several intermedia events that made use of the technological resources of the times, like Carolee Schneemann's Kinetic Theatre, Milton Cohen's Space Theatre or John Cage's experimental concerts. In 1958, Jordon Belson joined the composer Henry Jacobs; together, they produced the Vortex Concerts, in which visual abstractions were projected in the dome of Morrison Planetarium, in San Francisco , and electronica was played. Not to mention Nam June Paik and the group Fluxus' work.

Riddell goes even further in stating that "our century turned installation into a form of art" and concepts started to be experienced by means of place, image and sound (2001:340). VJing may be considered "the origin of 'happenings', taken to club culture" (Emmerson, 2001:19).



Improvisation and the "live factor" during projections

Besides the term "visual jockey", the VJ is also called a "visual jammer" in some countries. That designation creates a link with music and it might be even more appropriate, since just like in jam sessions, improvisation is the basis of VJing performances.

Christine Mello, in her article "Live Images": "following the logic of unpredictability, chance and aleatory probability – announced in visual arts by Schwitters' Dadaism and the Fluxus group, in literature by Mallarm é and in music by jazz improvisations and John Cage and Pierre Boulez –, there might happen or not, in live video, the manipulation and rearrangement of images in real time, from the selection of a pre-existing image bank (made by elements taken from the media, in many cases)." In this way, the improvisation and unpredictability of sounds and images, combined with the audience and the space itself, turns the moment of performance in to a unique event, impossible to be relived in all its depth. Mello also says that "when projections include audience participation and real time in the very core of meaning and sensorial construction, they become a kind of art that is non-object oriented, transitory and impermanent, opposed to art related to a specific product (like a videoclip), to the final result of a piece or to the contemplation of a spectator."

During performances, the "vibe" of the audience interferes in the DJ's play list, and the VJ selects images as the songs are played and the participants react. Choice of colors and speed, for instance, may stimulate people with greater or smaller intensity, therefore changing the "feeling" of the environment. Laurentiz points out that reception of those images influence their own creation, since "image/ sound syntony, the way they are perceived, the 'heat of the audience', the rhythm of the place, 'here-and-now', are to conduct the development of the sign construction on the screens" (Laurentiz, 2004:5).



Conclusion

Beyond synchronicity with songs played in environments that prioritise multisensoriality, the VJing art is deeply connected to the musical language, either in its origin, or in the process of elaboration of images, software interfaces, collages and mixes, in media relations or in the recreation of spaces. That relationship is present in the studies about video and electronic image. "As it exists only in time, including the real and present time, electronic image is sheer duration, sheer dromosphere, speed inscription, keeping therefore a stronger relation with music, the very aesthetic of duration, than with plastic or visual arts" (Machado, 1996:55). Taking the approach that timing is the determining factor for this connection, Domingues adds: "the life of the images is directly determined by the duration of pictures, their rhythms, frequencies, gaps and other syntagmas of musical language" (1993:115).

That is the life that pulsates on the screens of the venues that shelter the contemporary electronic scene.



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Bibliography



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