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61550_530780524926_51500324_31158599_5346631_n a photo by PatrickPaganoDWI on Flickr.

A/VCLUB September 2010 LIVE @ DIGITAL WORLDS INSTITUTE
REVE [Research Education Visualization Environment] Isadora, Jitter and Resolume Avenue

Repost: Smoke and Mirrors VJ Theory in Historical Context

I always find it intriguing when past and present link in unexpected ways. Last semester we learned about the early precursors of digital media and cinema, those coming after the camera obscura and the continued refinement of optic lenses. For instance, in 1558, Giovanni Battista della Porta published a four-volume treatise on the Magic Lantern, a forerunner of the slide projector, which may have been a Chinese invention. Two centuries later, a popular pastime of the late 18^th century was the Phantasmogoria, or ghost show, which used mobile modified versions of the magic lantern to project multiple images on smoke and semi-transparent materials, often employing rear projection. Fast forward to this semester, and our assignment to read and post on several of the texts found on vjtheory.net website, including articles by Patricia Moran, Gabriel Menotti, and Andrew Bucksbarg.

In “The Contrary of the Movie Theater,” Menotti deliniates the difference between VJ performances and the evolution of the movie theater- and what was lost in the process, explaining that, “The tableaux vivants and the travelogs lost their place to the multi-million blockbuster.” In contrast, Bucksbarg describes the evolutionary process toward immersive VJ environments as the following: “Contemporary live A/V work has similarities to this earlier work beginning with “light” or “color” organs, instruments designed for the live performance of light and visual media beginning in the mid 1700s, as well as early filmic and animation experimentation. However one could also consider even earlier works using light and shadow, such as shadow puppetry.” But the thread that best links contemporary VJ practices to their historical precedents is traced by Patricia Moran, after first alluding to “experiences like the panoramas in the XVII and XVIII century.” She points out the importance of smoke as an important element in creating and manipulating an immersive experience: “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.” This idea of projecting onto smoke, whether ambient or manufactured by design, places contemporary VJ practices in the historical context of a long tradition, one which combines projection, ephemera, sound, and emotional involvement in order to produce new experiences for the participants.

Quartz Composer Examples

Check out these incredible examples made by an artist named Futurismo Zugakousaku in Quartz Composer: http://www.zugakousaku.com

Signs of Life

Here's a picture from the opening night of Signs of Life. I had no idea what to expect going into it so I was pleasantly surprised by the show. As per the norm for most opening nights there were a few glitches within Isadora. For about 5 or 6 minutes the program froze and the actors went on without it. I'm not sure why exactly it froze but it all got sorted out and the show finished well.

Maya Deren "The Very Eye of Night"

While watching this video in class, I was awed by the simplicity of the video. With todays computers we can do much of what she did with a few simple keystrokes. And yet it was such a feat for her to hand cut the film and by hand do all the animation of the stars and dancers. There was a distinct hand made feel to it that made it actually more interesting then when we use computers to pull off the same effects. The computer is more mechanical and it does things more precisely; you could see the random shaking in her hands.

It was an engaging video that captured my attention.

Mary Hallock-Greenewalt: Media Pioneer

Portrait of Mary Hallock-Greenewalt (1871-1951) by Thomas Eakins

In watching the following video about the work of Thomas Wilfred, there was mention of his contemporary Mary Hallock-Greenewalt. When you watch it, look at the way that the video treats her work as secondary. As the first comment says, she is damned with faint praise. In my role as a media student and a woman artist, I feel that this kind of slighting of women media pioneers happens far too often. And I am very interested to now be aware of the careers of such notables as Loie Fuller (thanks Shamar), Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, and Maya Deren, all of whom worked with Light in some manner. Learn about her work with color and light at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hallock-Greenewalt

The Very Eye of Night

Astrophysics [For Maya]

Our bare feet in the damp grass, we spin after dusk,

As our mothers call us in by ones and twos, insistent.

Dizzy with freedom, palms and planets revolving together,

We play our games, pretend to be statues, or spin while laughing,

Giddy cosmonauts awaiting our landing.

Above us the stars traverse the stage in elegant alignments.

The Twins with their sculpted torsos cavort with the Pleiades,

Some goddesses so faint that they are almost forgotten,

Lost amid the rush of vertigo and gravitas,

Eleusian Mysteries conducted to flute, chime, and drum.

Three Graces pose themselves just so,

The curvatures of intention in a constellation of movement.

And for a while there is no up or down, beyond buoyancy,

No rules to obey, only floating perspectives,

The ancient forms breathing again,

For we are at the axis, peering into the very eye of night.