Expanding our role in clubs to make us more valuable

[elbows]

Although Ive been moaning about the style and attacks in the what is a VJ thread, it has raised many interesting points.

So anyway Ive been drinking and this is a tangent post from that. We seem t be arguing over what the term VJ means, and it seems that some people are most concerned with how promoters etc perceive us, as this obviosuly has a rather large effect on how much we get paid, our "social standing" within the whole club culture, position on the flyer, how much we stand out in the clubbers brain etc etc

Anyway, so Im thinking as I go along here, but we are basically at the moment saying to promoters "we provide visuals" and then theres various disagreements about content, whether we are responsible for the equipment an rigging, original content v's copyright abuse etc etc.

Well, at the end of the day, cant we find a more unique place in club culture etc than this? The Interactive element is what Im getting at.

for example, and although I hate marketing its a sad part of the game and at least this might be honest marketing, given the apparent situation round my area regarding clubs suffering a bit at the moment and the era of the superstar dj possibly fading and losing its shine...

Tell the promoters that people are bored (true) and need things to be taken to a new level. I mean, I love listening to good DJ's but they are as interesting to watch as much as watching my vodka bottle slowly empty. Combine VJ stuff with lots more emphasis on crowd interaction via mad sensors, lots more live cam action (in the future maybe lots of hardware "pods" in the club where many people can contribute to the visuals), get more live electronic music in clubs by new time musicians who play strange as yet uninvented instruments that create sound and video at once.

If mobile phone text messaging can go from nothing to appealing to many "average normal" people, and become a mass market overnight, then there must be something "social" in human nature that could be combined with visuals and music in clubs to create something new and deeply meaningful to people???

We must be due for a new expansion in musical genre's sometime soon too - I mean things are getting rerun too much - when theres 80's nostalgia only 20 years later you know somethings wrong!?!

When I wake up one of 2 things will happen. Either I will look at this post and cringe in embarresment at my alcyhol fuelled stupidity, or maybe I had an idea that might go somewhere. Discuss and feel free to tell me to shut the hell up ;)

[Anyone]

hey elbows...

my personal reaction to promoters' miseducation was to become a promoter myself, and attempt to set examples of what VJs can accomplish, without restraints...

Peace, NE1

[bigloose]

Here in Lausanne (Switzerland) promoters are starting to understand that they need new stuff.
3 of the main clubs have now their own projectors and are looking for Vj.
-One of the club ( Cult Club (http://www.cultclub.ch) ) has already 5 projectors around the dancefloor and they are planning to have more .
- the Mad (http://www.mad.ch) (one of the biggest club in switzerland) has two permanent projectors. and when I went to mix over there they rented 6 projectors (5 on the dancefloor, 1 outside + 10-15TV)
-the D club (http://www.dclub.ch) is doing projection too

more and more promoters are setting up projectors/screens and then you just have 2 mix (which is nicer than setting up for hours before mixing all night long)

So my conclusion is that our Vj life should slowly get easier... lol

b!gl00z3

[brain]

good mornin elbows,

hope the aspirine works... :)

i agree to your ideas, athough i'm plain sober. i'm sure most people in clubs will stay consumers only due to laziness, dumbness or simply being stoned/pilled/drunk. but then there are people who like to play, joke and try new things. if it works, more people might get interested. interaction may be additional offer like visuals are: if someone doesn't care, he simply looks the other way.

here in frankfurt are some high-tech artists/nerds who created several (audio-centered) interactive modules. check

http://www.involving-systems.com/

their stuff is really amazing and for me points forward to your "pods". and i heard of first steps towards visual machines... (their stuff worked best in laid-back party/exhibition context, not in packed clubs, of course.)

i hope there are other people who think and work on similar stylish and innovative stuff!

maybe some day we will be operating on different sources, provided by who/whatever and the audience (maybe even from some other place).

brain

[hamageddon]

ah, involving systems still around, pity they haven't really been evolving since the last years, when i first saw their "hitek"gadgets @ the bockenheimer depot, their incarnation as saasfee @ the centralstation darmstadt last year didn't impress me either, nice hardware tho ;) but who am i to judge....

seen the things happening @ backupfestival weimar last year and the preparation 4 this years with defuse among others, methinks the state of art has drastically evolved beyond this stuff.

right now with free modular stuff like eyesweb, pd/gem and some interface trickery there's plenty of poss of getting a cool interactive enviroment for music, visuals and ppl. but, as ever, it takes time, money, the right ppl and space to realize stuff like that. anyway i'm still up 4 it.

[BRK]

in our clubnights the djs are the vjs and vice versa. We re-pitch and stretch music videos to mix perfectly in time with each other video beat matching, the vjs will also drop accapella videos which we build ourselves, over the mix...

also the usual vj stuff going on using a range of software... but people are loving this in the clubs

[fluchtpunkt]

hi elbows,
interesting post.

some of my thoughts on the matter:

from my experience marketing yourself as vj is most of all about getting the foot in the door. once promoters see what they get, they will not want to miss it. today, with fully automated soundreactive software - in preset settings(!) - already capable of amazing scores of people (ooo it's on big screen, trippy!), as a fairly talented and committed vj it shouldn't be too hard to achieve the same effect on even more people, and in this case especially the promoters!
& that's just the personal level. visuals, properly mixed to the music, create more pressure on the dancefloor, an atmosphere more dense; it takes the whole thing to a different level. people will stay longer and are more likely to come again (the former i know from experience, the latter i bet is true). you can promote the promoter (logos etc.). you (can) give the event a unique (and unforgettable?) look. ...
and all that makes a lot of sense for a promoter. i think you shouldn't try to rub that in too much before you do your first night though, surprise is a powerful weapon (ya mon :) ). make the first night cheaper (i.e. a test sample) & insist on handling out definitive terms later (by then you'll be in a much better position for bargaining)!
...
:cool: interaction:cool:
is great & i'm always trying to have more. setups with mad sensors are no technological challenge but the industry doesn't deliver them (or only at high prices) because of a (too) small (consumer) market for these products. so you either need to build/develop them yourself ( :( :D ?)or you need money. another possibility could be to use cameras as (very sophisticated) sensors. with software you could then break the cam's output down to some simpler behaviour (i.e. than the original video). actually you could emulate most any light-sensitive sensor like this. here you'd have to develop the soft ( :( :D ?). or you could combine the cam(s) 'smartly' with what you have (softs, mixers,...) and try to achieve similar behaviour ( :confused: :D ?).
i think 'crowd interaction' on screen is a very nice thing - but only as long as the 'vj' is in control of it (i mean it wouldn't occur to a dj, or guitarist or whatever to say: hey crowd interaction is cool, i'll let people scratch (or play etc) a bit). so for me it splits into two things: new&innovative ways of live-feed@the party for the (live-mixed)visuals on one hand. some kind of ?-reactive wallpapers, ... a living room that reacts to its visitors ( :cool:nyamnyam:cool: ) on the other.

ps: 80's revival is obvious:
in 2000 you have the XX's revival
in the 90's you had the 70's revival
in the 80's you had the 60's revival
...
:):):):)

[complexvisuals]

I have the Nokia, I have the Datasuite and I have the cable,

so.........

What soft does everyone use to put it up on screen?

Cian

[LEVLHED]

ummm...I don't think they are talking about actually hooking the phone upto the beamer....you would just manually enter the info via your favorite, text-able VJ soft...

[Rovastar]

Personaly I think if we use the best that we have to offer in the market place at the moment - mixing the different mediums etc we can put on a blinding show and would make VJ'ing pretty valuable.

I feel taht we are not not using enough of what we have got around us at the moment.

Work smarter not harder.:)

[PilotX]

Originally posted by elbows

Well, at the end of the day, cant we find a more unique place in club culture etc than this? The Interactive element is what Im getting at.

Tell the promoters that people are bored (true) and need things to be taken to a new level. I mean, I love listening to good DJ's but they are as interesting to watch as much as watching my vodka bottle slowly empty. Combine VJ stuff with lots more emphasis on crowd interaction via mad sensors, lots more live cam action (in the future maybe lots of hardware "pods" in the club where many people can contribute to the visuals), get more live electronic music in clubs by new time musicians who play strange as yet uninvented instruments that create sound and video at once.


me and syzygy were talking a couple of weeks back about interactivity in a club, and came up with the (relativaley) cheap idea of using midi drum pads, shelled in a pod, and placed in a club to allow people to control the visuals. A number of pods could be set up, each controlling different images or types of images. We went on to talking about rigging cameras up in the club and having these controlled also by a pod.
People would work out where the cameras are, and what the pods do, and control the content to some extent.

It might be working us out of our job, however, so we'd need to be doing visuals as well - us vs the clubbers. hmmm.......

This never got past the germination of the idea tho', as we got caught up in other things and haven't come back to it yet, but it certainly falls in line with the interactivity idea.

[Deebur]

Originally posted by BRK
in our clubnights the djs are the vjs and vice versa.

Could you explain this? Are the dj's vj-ing aswell (or the vj's dj-ing aswell)

I am dj and a vj but never (not yet) at the same time. But I do think the combination has extra value because you (as a VJ)know your visuals and you know (as a DJ) your music. So the combination should become more of a whole....

So who's doing the combo-thing? And who against the dj-vj fusion?



:D :confused: :D

[Primebase3]

the only one I can remember is Eboman , but that wasn't really vj ing more sampling a sound from the video(that looked good to)and play it. uhm...kinda like coldcut's timber. for the rest : I like the idea but the mixing of audio is a lot harder then vjing in my opinion ..and when you go "blue screen" with video it doesn't stop the crowd from dancing. a dj could "cheat" he could make music video's for everytrack and then play'm when needed...then again he needs to know how to make his content and such,..hmm toughie :) maybe more time getting to know the dj and his style before spinning can help. or if that can't be done , grab mix-cd's if available and learn his style and make content accordingly. did that a few times and that worked pretty well.

[Deebur]

oh yeah, AKA Sample madness with his VR-midi-video-audio-glove, wicked stuff!

But not what I mean: just someone who's working an audio and a videomixer at the same time....:nod:

[many2]

When I was in Leeds (UK) for AVIT there was a VJing event here in montreal and since I couldn't participate live I decided to build an interactive video installation (together with K-Project). This way I've been able to entertain 2 completely different groups of people in 2 different countries (Canada and UK) at the same time !

What we built was simple but easy to use for the audience : we used joysticks, driving wheels and touchscreens to control variable parameters in thematic shows made of vJo presets. We made different sets, like different games of video (instad of video games ;) There was no points, no goal, but people were still playing with videos.) Each preset I've made was built to react to the music by default, giving an interesting output wether or not there was someone using the installation. What the audience could drive with the controllers was an additional layer of effect control. Some presets used a live camera input, the audience being able to control real-time effect parameters in real-time to modify the dry camera source, but more interestingly some presets used the live camera with the Image Explorer effect for vJo, giving the crowd the ability to influence the effects just by moving in front of the camera. The camera output image itself then wasn't shown, it was just used to feed some data channels to various vJo effect parameters. Image explorer is still basic but Nash has opened something BIG with this new plugin.

Fluchtpunkt, you should give this one a try, it seems to be what your were looking for. Image Explorer is free and is part of the "NashArts 01" plugins package.

Many-2

[fluchtpunkt]

...sounds very sweet :D !!

cheers