The Big Chill 2004

[PilotX]

well, I am surprised thats its tuesday lucnhtime and i'm starting this thread..

firstly, thanks to the big chill staff who were fantastic and didn't misplace our kit as well as being very helpful throughout the weekend..

I got to see many vjs but my memories of actual sets have faded, most likely due to cannabis consumption and sleep deprivation .. so i'll do my best..

Catweasel, truly brilliant stuff spoke to you about it afterwards so you know that the burning bit was my favourite.. really worked well with the song, as did the flower field, have to have a look at twixter now .. the still objects got a few laughs around us and looked really good, nice mixture of the bizzare and funny.

of course, cat I saw on friday evening.. now what happened after that? .. Coldcut where good as always, I was tired after driving down so only watched half their set before going to bed .. didn't hear anything particualrly different to what I expected but that's not surprising.. or bad.
ermm.. saturday.. umm.. think I saw some of Alex&Jeremy (or was that sunday?) some very nice shots of people, really like the colouring (presumably you used lots of makeup on the shot to do that, followed by processing?) and again nice use of stills.
Handmaid, i think on sunday, really lovely the presumably food colouring into liquids on the first tune was very, very well done and I like the use of normal things to create abstract patterning so enjoyed your set..

I know I saw alot of other people. i'll have to come back later when I'm reminded by something random.

Matt Black had some nice stuff although a bit of technical difficulty but a nice mixture of 3d and real imagery.

I was mostly happy with our set following Matt, although it's hard to keep up with mixmaster morris as you never know where the musics going to go .. as always there were good and bad bits of our two hours and our scanconveror wouldn't work properly with flowmotion so the last 30mins didn't work out (and why the text at the end was so pixelated). instead of picking up the 320x240 output on full screen of flowmo it decided to go for a quarter of it for no apparent reason.. have to look at that this week never happened before.. oh well ..
I liked the screen on the roof of the sanctuary tent as well, but didn't find anything that really used it unfortuantely..

[Amukidi]

I think there is a few posts on the original Big Chill thread!
Dunno where to start really - still totally shell-shocked by the enormity of being involved in such a big project. All I can say at the moment is a HUGE thanks to all the VJs involved, who conducted themselves in a truly professional fashion, even when faced with some of the difficulties that cropped up through the weekend! My aim of trying to see everyone face to face fell a bit off kilter - but it was great to meet the ones that I did.

There was an awesome array of talent present, and a lot of good attitude too, which made my job so much easier (I've never been busier in my entire life, than the hour before and 8 hours after the festival kicked off!). Lot learned though....

The enthusiasm and willingness to work above and beyond the call of duty was, frankly, quite humbling - you folks really put me at ease and really contributed to a fantastic festival.

Finally - spare a thought for Leon (Chromatouch) who was on standby duties - why oh why didn't I get him sorted with a radio? It was a fairly spread out site and this made communication tricky as mobiles didn't really work too well there. Another lesson learned - sorry mate!

I thought that the tech-crew were top - they always seemed really willing and able to help through the varios glitches that occured - Adam Seaman (Ombudsman) was running this side of things and I got a lot of reall positive feedback about this.

Finally - big, big thanks to Jim Myogenic - a stalwart friend and ear to bend when the solids hit the air-conditioning, respect to you fella!

PS (Shameless plug)- if anyone's in the Brick lane area on Wednesday (tomorrow) - I will be doing a DJ / VJ night at the new Big Chill Bar - 8 - 12.00
http://www.bigchill.net/story.html?id=918
I'll be spinning some of my favourite tunes and squirt some of my new stuff onto the screen - mostly girly ambient and electronica, but If anyone facies it I'd love to se you !
More later, probably!

[Rovastar]

Sound like a good event and a great time had by all.

I really wanted to go/play but didn't get things ironed out in time for this year. Maybe next. :)

BTW where exactly is the BigChill bar (it doesn't say on that page)................maybe see you there John

[Amukidi]

http://www.bigchill.net/media/bigchillbar.pdf
Be great to see you there.

[Lara]

Aww everything I saw was lovely, and I was far too busy chilling to see everything- oops.

I was a bit gutted to have some weird bug with my powerbooks and the MX50, which made all my footage come out black and white..... for everyone that saw it it wasn't supposed to be like that. Also the weird interlace lines on footage with movement on the LED screen was a bit of a shame. So definitely one of the most difficult sets. I was the first person the bug happened with so I was in a proper flap trying to fix my settings the whole way through, first time using VDMX too.

I thought Toby stole the show- his set with Fourtet was absolutely amazing.... very inspiring.

Hmm, must run off now, post more later. Thanks to Amukidi for giving me such a wonderful opportunity.

[vjfader]

sorry I'm from the states. What country is this event?

[Amukidi]

It's in Herefordshire, on the English / Welsh border, 25,000 folks, 6 stages / Tents over 200 acts, 50 odd VJs!
and to cap all that, a lovely vibe!

[syzygy]

Fader - the Big Chill festival is in the UK (Herefordshire), but the Big Chill organisation does do events overseas too.



Here are my thoughts/opinions...

Overall, the event was fantastic - I've never seen so many good visuals or heard so much good music in such a short time.

and now a run down of the things I saw (with some non-VJ input gleaned from my girlfriend)

Myogenic (Visuals to Laroca) - I didn't think it was the best set that Jim has ever played, but it was still good. Lots of nice super8 footage in there

Catweasel (Visuals to Adem) - Really enjoyed this set. The strange Terry Gillingham-esque 2.5D characters were nice and the burning cutouts during "All of Your Friends" were amazing - more than any other visuals during the whole weekend, the visuals for that tune really enhanced the music, bringing more meaning to the words of the song.

Iconscious Collective - A really interesting and enjoyable AV set. Bit rough around the edges, but some fantastic ideas in there. Nice that not all of it was sample based. The Cellist and piano section was great and the interludes (skinning up on a record deck and "how to make an interesting scratch video" were a nice touch)

Matt The Cat (I think) (Visuals to Catskills All Stars) - Not really my cup of tea as I'm not really into the throw everything into the mix style. Jenny liked some of the clips but thought that sometimes it seemed like some of the combinations of clips were a bit random.

AVinIT (Visuals to The Egg) - Really, really nice in places, especially where things became partly AV. High quality visuals that took advantages of the colour capabilities of the LED screen on the Chill Stage. Sometimes there was almost too much happening on screen, espcially where the music was more chilled, but when The Egg were going for it, the visuals works perfectly.

The Ombudsman (Visuals to Ulrich Schnauss)

I really liked these visuals - suited the music really well and had a really nice dreamy quality to them.

Republicof (AV set) - Parts of this were amazing, parts fell a bit flat. I really liked what the group were trying to do - a fully mixed media show with spoken word, music and people doing stuff in real reality.

I thought the part about 'special' children was well done, espescially when some of the people featured in the video part came out in front of the stage wearing the same T-Shirts.

I also liked the 'Killer Rabbits' segment (lots of shots of huge rabbits invading cities along with spoof news reports), which I read as a metaphor for the way the government spreads fear to keep the populace needing them.

The 'Small boy' section (compere puts tiny small boy in front of camera and we see him on the screens) didn't really work for me (and a fair amount of the audience from what I saw) - it was just a little bit too much like bad student comedy.

The best bit for me was the reading from Brave New World alongside archive footage that shows that the world we have now is not all that far from that described by Huxley.

Skalpel 'Thunderbirds' (AV set) - I've heard good things about Skalpel, so I found this dissapointing. It was really just lots of space clips and Thunderbirds clips thrown together withsome breakbeats into a rather random set. Seemed like they had found some decent samples and chucked them into the mix rather than having any kind of plan. I would have been impressed five or six years ago, but not now.

DFuse (Visuals for Dub Side Of The Moon) - This was the big dissapointment of the weekend for me. I went along buzzing with the possibilities for what DFuse could do with the Reggae Pink Floyd concept. Unfortunately, the visuals were so mismatched to the music that my girdfriend actually sat down as they were putting her off the music and eventually we moved out of sight of the screen. While the music was warm, slow and uplifting, the visuals were cold, fast and somewhat clinical. The content looked high quality (actually, Jenny disagreed with me on this - she thought it looked a bit rushed) and would have worked well with drum and bass or techno, but it just wasn't what we wanted to watch while litening to a Reggae workover of Dark Side of the Moon.

Coldcut (AV set) - This was exactly as I expected it to be. A bit shambolic in places and there were some technical problems with computers crashing, but they did warn us at the start that "this is an experiment" so no worries about that. There was some good use of freeframe effects (I was really proud to spot one of ours in there ;) ) Jenny did hear some people complaining that it was exactly the same style that Coldcut have been doing for ages, but I don't see that as a problem myself as I really like that style.

Matt Black (Visuals for first half of Mixmaster Morris) - A dizzying array of weird and wonderful visuals in this set. I would love to have Matt's DVD/VCD collection! Some technical issues but nothing that ruined the audiences enjoyment.

A for our own set (The second half of Mixmaster Morris), my girlfriend said something like "dissapointing at the start but got much better as the set went on", which I would agree with. Things were a bit stressful at the start as we had to finish setting up (not enough space to rig everything up before Matt Black started) but once we settled down I was pleased with what we did and we got some great feedback the next day from some of the people who were there. Doing visuals for Mixmaster Morris was fantastic - such good music to work with and a really nice guy too.


Dan.

[mondo]

wow dan - in that case your mixmaster set was brill.

did you do the fireball clip

and the anti-war sam puppet with the newspaper "!" and "?" overlays - very very effective.

and the piano track with close-up keyboard clips that mosaiced into an amazing abstract - brilliant - fitted the set very well.

[syzygy]

Yay! that was our stuff!

The fireball is actually a fountain of water lit in orange - everyone always sees it as a fireball though ;)

The uncle sam puppet was from one of the anti war demos last year. Unfortunately, the music moved on before we could roll out all of our anti war and newsprint stuff, but it was nice that there was a bit of politics in the music so it was appropriate to go that way with the visuals too for a while.

The mosaic-style effect that we used on the Pianola (its like a piano, but it can play itself) is one of the latest freeframe effects I've written - we'll be releasing it in our next pack.

Glad you enjoyed the set -and that the visuals came out okay - it was really hard from the stage to tell exactly what things were looking like on either of the big screens (one because it was right behind us and the other because it was a load of circles haning in the roof...)

Dan.

[Lucidhouse]

I had a great time, was realy great meeting some of you...
obviously did'nt catch everyone's gigs but out of the stuff I saw...

alex et jeremy: great set, you guys work hard in creating your unique style, good partnering with musisians...

mondo: didnt catch the whole club set, but liked what I saw

lara: saw the beginning of your set, good filming/mixing of narative content though would've liked to have seen it in color..(dam technical problems)

just of the top of my head at the moment...

highlights: vj's being aplauded by punters and misicians when doing sharp mixes (mix master morris pointing towards syzygy)

lowpoints: too mutch ambient light coming through tent doors that where directly oposite or behind screens.

[akira_k]

Originally posted by Lara
I was a bit gutted to have some weird bug with my powerbooks and the MX50, which made all my footage come out black and white..... Welcome to the club!
we had this shit happen to us recently, happened more frequently with our iBook. Seems like a fault at the MX-50 because we have always been using MX-50s and my iBook. at first it's also kind of random, or it gets worse as the machne heats up. Mashing the source buttons on channel 2 or 1 seems to momentarily help the problem.

It's like if the signal wasn't arriving consistent enough to the processor of the MX50 or something.

Anyway glad to hear about these stories, I wish I had festivals like that over here, or that I could assist to the european festivals.

[Anyone]

Originally posted by akira_k
Welcome to the club!
we had this shit happen to us recently, happened more frequently with our iBook. Seems like a fault at the MX-50 because we have always been using MX-50s and my iBook. at first it's also kind of random, or it gets worse as the machne heats up.

I think you should get a scan converter for just such occasions...
pulled me out of a few tight spots already.
quite small generally, handy like a spare wheel...

Ne1

[ChannelZero]

Hi peeps,

I really enjoyed things at the Big Chill, I did the visuals for Flipside, friday at the Sanctuary and saturday at the Chill Stage and was totally amazed by the crowd, the vibe and also the backstage support and the AV crew (who were really interested in my work and supplied me with water and a helping hand)

We just came from a promotion tour (Ibiza.... yes, I know and I didn't had time to relax there, but the Big Chill is something...

I saw so many great VJ sets and enjoyed it so much!
Really loved the BoNoBo set musical and visual, and was touched by the 'look at my family album' visuals from Alucidnation, and was very very disappointed by D-Fuse (wanted to buy their DVD but not gonna..)

Will be there next year anyway! Doing visuals preferably...

VJ Maybe Roger
p.s. and many thanks to the beautiful (oh-) Kay and Pippa who found my lost backpack containing my two laptops 5 minutes before my second set...

[mondo]

yep....dfuse disappointed on dub side of the moon....such a good slot - they didnt seem to have done their homework :(

[PilotX]

my memory has been jogged slightly... I also saw Mistaken Generation (Iconscious) and feel pretty much the same as dan.. the interludes where great.. some of the tunes I thought went on too long musically for the sake of the video (the Cellist being a case in point).. nothing much happened in the audio and I got a bit bored by the end of the tune even though the video continued to introduce new elememnts and looked fantastic..

Republicof I saw part of the set - I came in on aldous huxley bit which was great.. the special needs tune was also good, but I was a bit confused by the introduction of ecstacy alongside talking about adhd, autism and ritalin.. not sure if you were trying to draw a link between ecstacy and the rise in adhd/autism, or a suggestion that as a society we are looking more towards drugs to solve problems.. I dunno..

[oxygen]

i am very surprised nobody liked d-fuse....
ok. they might have had some more connection with the music, but what they have done with the visuals i thought was most professional i had seen on the screen during big chill. very clean and suddle transitions.
the way they used the parts of the screen to distract the eye to create a visual narrative structure in time had great esthetic moments for me.
a consistent way of using a style to represent a multiple angle view on the sampled footage, what made the picture interesting to look at for a longer period of time. Sometimes the different moments framed togteher almost worked as a puzzle being solved in front of my eyes...

as i said before, i have seen bits of pieces of some vj sets, not really knowing who was playing. most of the stuff was ok , but not very consistent and without a unique style. i saw nice clips moving their way at the screen, but most of it was mixed without synchronisation to the music or thinking what the images say(mean) or how to impact the punter with some suddelty. (yes, i get easily "o.d.-d" with visuals) . It made me too aware of actualy looking at "loops" and "layers" instead of experiencing visuals and feeling i was looking at something unique and a synergy was created between visuals and the music.
In general that was my dissapointment of what i have seen of the visuals in big chill.

[spark]

d-fuse

olga, i suspect most have seen d-fuse before and therefore the kind of stuff they showed at dub side... which was a total let down for me too, and not the first time they've done it. if anybody has seen their video for funkstorung's test that was shown with onedotzero a few years back, they'll know the feeling - and the visuals in that case were nothing more than a rip of the windows mystique screensaver.

but, d-fuse are very good at what they do, so i have no doubt if they'd put the effort in for koyaan and somehow aligned it to their architectural/virtual style, then it is a show of shows.

toby

[syzygy]

Originally posted by oxygen
i am very surprised nobody liked d-fuse....
ok. they might have had some more connection with the music, but what they have done with the visuals i thought was most professional i had seen on the screen during big chill. very clean and suddle transitions.
the way they used the parts of the screen to distract the eye to create a visual narrative structure in time had great esthetic moments for me.

I assume you're talking about their Koyaniskatsii remix?

I think most people referring to disapointment here are talking about the DFuse visuals for Dub Side of the Moon on the outdoor stage, where the visuals really wrere completely unsuited to the vibe of the music.

I've heard good things about their film remix, so it sounds like their performances at the Big Chill were very mixed in quality.

Dan.

[spark]

well i too had a brilliant time, but extreme tiredness definately kept me from seeing and doing more.

the highlight for me was playing croquet, taking a walk in sun-rising countryside, seeing the stage i was going to play on, and top of all having all those studio hunched muscles given a thorough working over with a massage at the festival... all within 24 hours of finishing the set i'd been making back in the metropolis. the transistion between the two couldn't have been better.

i was really happy at how my set went, which was kinda like two years stifled creativity released, and it all seemed to go well with the slot - four tet's music i adore and really like his way of playing out where he'll explore a track for twenty minutes, wind it down and then start up with another. that really worked with my four 'acts'. and it was definately a moment to suddenly look out at the end and see the field full of happy punters at 2am!

the live reversion of KLF's chill out was one i was looking forward to and had some great moments, not to mention realising it was a mate from work who was singing elvis and had masterminded it all. tho' the visuals did suck for that...

another nice moment was walking in to jigsaw music and seeing my old home town of brum bouncing around quite stylishly, tho' you could never say brum was stylish itself (could you now? ...times are changing)

mmmm... this is reminding me just how little i saw of other people's stuff, and how few people i actually met. i think was passed out under a tree for most of the festival. but it was worth it, a lot of work beforehand, a great gig and then one of the best places to doze the rest of the weekend away, ever.

what does have to be said, is that i experienced pretty much the perfect festival as an artist - good communication up-front, and sorted and obliging while there. respect to all involved.

toby

[syzygy]

Originally posted by spark

what does have to be said, is that i experienced pretty much the perfect festival as an artist - good communication up-front, and sorted and obliging while there. respect to all involved.


I think it really showed in the performances that the visual acts were as well looked after as the audio acts.

I would definitely say that the Big Chill is the best large event to be involved in as an artist - everyone is looked after but at the same time there isn't some huge divide between artists and everyone else - it all feels very inclusive.

Nice one to all the Big Chill crew for creating something so great!

Dan.

[mf]

Hi everyone
I am having some real problems with my email at the moment. so a brief explanation about the weekend.
we were happy with our work with 'Ikon', did anybody see that?

Koyaanisquatsi was in our mind our worst performance, It took the a/v crew 40 minutes to set up.....to just plug in a laptop and a few dvds.
why did the take so long and the audio was SO low. I lost interest. But I know Anyone + Oxygen enjoyed it, so thanks.

Dub Side of the moon, Mondo you say we didn't do our homework.
They promised to send a cd never arrived, we spent 30 minutes discussing the set with them. they said 'Fast, Drum n bass, Dub and techno'. Even thought the set was completely different, we still would have sorted if
A. there had been a 15 minute change over as promised.
B. we had no monitors working
C The dvd remotes activated all players.
D we were completely exhausted from saturday night.
We basically had 1 x vhs working.

I admit it was a very limited set, but I was pleased with the results, once we got into the swing of it.
We have had a few people text + emailing to compliment.

Anyway, I always look at the big chill as a bus mans holiday. This was downtime for us.

My comments on the festival

Also, why didn't the compares announce the vjs

How complicated was that program?
I would look up a Vj, that would tell me who they were performing with, then I would have to look up the musician, that would tell me what stage + day but not time, then I would go to the program timetable...complicated or what.
so I missed a lot of vjs slots.

The festival got bigger this year and has changed, I think it will be interesting when they get 50k people there...good or bad I don't know.
certainly the bigger it gets the less money is paid to the artists.

PS Hey Toby, you completely miss the point of Syn_Real.

regards
Mike

[SQUIFF]

My feet are just settling on the ground after the big chill this weekend. I played 4 vj sets with Irena Michailova, Different Drummer, Pentatonik and Moses. Each was a surprise musically as I had no idea what was comiing next and I tried to jam some visuals to suit the vibe of each track as it unfolded. Pentatonik didnt want to 'brand the tracks with specific images' so i tried to use ambient colour washes and live footage of the band (filmed from the back due to to lack of long cables) using a wide angle lens. I received lots of positive feedback particularly for my virtual set where my backup tape was used for adam freeland.
I would like to thank Amukidi for the opportunity and all the other backstage crew for their assistance.
I was particularly impressed by the visuals for the egg, ulrich schnaus, fourtet and jon hopkins.
It was a real honour to be involved with the big chill and I was particularly impressed with the organisers ability to accommodate almost twice as many people as last year yet maintain the big chill vibe.

[Anyone]

Originally posted by mondo
yep....dfuse disappointed on dub side of the moon....such a good slot - they didnt seem to have done their homework :(

I'm sorry to say Mondo, as a friend I need to be constructively critical,
I wasn't impressed at all with "all is full of Love" either
(the supposedly subversive porn 3am set done with Yeast and guilaine Boddington)
you also need to do more homework on your own subject...

although the selection of samples was quite good,
the sequencing of them, the order in which they were presented
did not make any sense narratively, the storyline was simply undercooked...

the samples and voice overs of chocked people
actually had an inverse effect, it unshocked me.
in the end I was shocked you would think I would find this shocking
the most shocking things are done by people that are not conscious of shocking
(does this make sense?)

finally, please, stop putting samples of george bush everywhere...
weapons of mass destructions have nothing to do with porn or erotism, at all...

sincerely, Oli / ne1

[mondo]

mike
fair point taken about dub side - shame there wasnt a fuller longer crossover...if you get the cd can you burn me a copy!!

...but i still didnt like that set as much as ive seen Koy play out

totally totally agree with a/v tech changeover in the mixed media tent which was catastrophic at 3.30am!!.....

the a/v dude took 20 mins to source the projector bnc cables - and the audio took aeons even though we went throught the tech spec over and over again with3 hours to go!...and it was low as well....but hey we were happy to play to 10 people after all!!

[mondo]

oli
we did 6 months of homework on the subject matter <large as it is> ...and i think we hit a fair bit of the spectrum considering 80% was new shot stuff!!

nb> the script was "In a time where we fear our bodies being blown apart, we are cowering under the duvet delving into the most powerful alternative to terror and death ...sex."

[QUOTE]weapons of mass destructions have nothing to do with porn or erotism, at all...[QUOTE]

..ill pass on your notes about rumsfeld, bush samples et al....the political bits were generally yeast footage.
<but you are wrong, there is a very real erotica link between torture @ abu ghariab jail and s&m torture in the dungeons of london>
the imagery of that last track played on the dichotomies of "justified" torture/sex and "consensual" sex/torture...i thought playing it with sex in the city overlaid with bagdhad was pretty clever - im upset you may not have grasped the link - but marc's lappy did stutter on the night...and it does make sense when viewed correctly

what did you think of the other tracks? ie.phone box piece, the red gimp, etc - the set was a bit disjointed but it was the first time played out - and with 4 people's work rammed together, it gets a bit difficult to sequence i admit, we need more work on it for sure...

[QUOTE]the samples and voice overs of chocked people
actually had an inverse effect, it unshocked me.[QUOTE]

dont fully understand what you mean - do you mean the samples didnt work or were too many to digest? i think you mean we overshocked people to submission - am i right?? good - that's what we wanted to do for certain tracks!

anyroad - more criticism welcome please!

[Rovastar]

What!! did mondo and co actaully play some stuff *without* Bush and co in? ;):):P

[Anyone]

seriously, I don't want to carry on to long,
*this is not a rant*

with an attitude like saying "porn is evil" in the voise of George Bush, Michael Moore style... In that perspective, we are only left with a caricature...

I think sex in general is a very rich subject,
but also very slippery, no pun intended...
I think it's necessary to leave a lot of room for the audience
to make an opinion for themselves of the "evilness" of sex...

IMHO, what I have to say in a nutshell about the perf I saw,
it needed a more consistent appropreation effort.

in other word,
even if these were samples, I didn't feel they were you own,
they were still raw...
I could still see the original filmakers' signature more than your own stamp on it...

There are other ways,
but a simple way to bring a feeling of consistency
throughout a heterogenous collage of clips,
is to apply a same effect to all of them,
colorizing them for example.

for example,
having a very gradual passing from green to red
from the begining of the perf to its end,
could have very well infused your own subjectivity on to the perf...

Ne1

[jeremy]

Originally posted by PilotX
saturday.. umm.. think I saw some of Alex&Jeremy (or was that sunday?) some very nice shots of people, really like the colouring (presumably you used lots of makeup on the shot to do that, followed by processing?) and again nice use of stills.


Hi Tom,

yep that was us on saturday.
congratulation you find one of our secret: a lot of makeup.
will try to post some pics later on.

thanks.
Jeremy

[jeremy]

Originally posted by Lucidhouse
alex et jeremy: great set, you guys work hard in creating your unique style, good partnering with musisians...

lowpoints: too mutch ambient light coming through tent doors that where directly oposite or behind screens.

Thanks you LucidHouse,
sad to not meet you. :sad:

We like your set: good color, good rhythm, poetic
and if you used Resolume during your live:
I'm jalous.
and in this case, you are a resolume master = very well live mixing.:yep:

Remote, the musicians, were very good.
good contact with them, nice experience.
I love the record.:yep:

Did we work hard to make our video ? .... hum ...
this is just a question of : blusher, lipstick, nail polish ...
-> my best advice to make nice video:
never put your nail polish when you are doing you video in After-Effects ...
you may have the temptation to retouch your work with it ...
your computer screen will not appreciate this experience ... :P
--- stop joking ---
yep, some work before.
during this set, we show only 3 of the 16 actors
with who we made the video.
and yes some makeup...

Regarding the sun in the tent...
yep, we need to work on it for next year...
love the sun on my skin... not on my screen...

Jeremy

[mf]

So what are peoples opionions of our Dubside of the moon set considering

A. there had been a 15 minute change over as promised.
B. we had no monitors working
C The dvd remotes activated all players.
D we were completely exhausted from saturday night.
We basically had 1 x vhs working.

Did the people watch the whole set. I would appreciate more acurate feedback, than somebodies girlfirend thinking our work was 'rushed'

thanks
mike[B]

[myogenic]

mike

here's my tuppence, sorry if its neggy, but i'm being honest and have tried to put it as constructively as possible...

I was really looking forward to seeing DSOTM as i'd heard great things, and have listened to the album many times before i saw the live show...

I was dissapointed in the fact that the visuals just didn't seem to match the music in anyway. When the tracks broke down, the visuals didn't seem to follow, and that was combined with the images that didn't seem to suit the style and mood of what was being played...

I was hoping and expecting to see a dub take of pink floyd visuals (as many of the non-vj friends i was watching with were too), or at least some sort of reference to floyd, as they are some of the pioneers of what we now do...

I felt the political footage that was played was also totally irrelevant and it pissed me off that it was there. There's a time and place for political content, and the closing act of a "chill" festival wasn't it...

Unfortunately you didn't recieve the cd before. DSOTM has been released for months, and for the sake of a tenner, surely you could have got a copy. I wouldn't risk playing a set for music i hadn't at least got an idea of what it sounded like...

With hindsight, having heard what you've said about the technical hitches and the description beforehand of 'Fast, Drum n bass, Dub and techno', then had everything gone well and as planned, then the set may well be getting rave reviews instead. I also think that the standard of vjing was so high over the course if the weekend, that by sunday night, it would have taken something very special to impress...

There's no doubting the production quality of what was shown, but unfortunately as a punter you can only judge on what you see...

Jim

[mf]

Thanks Jim
Appreciate the feedback.

was'nt my favourite gig, but I was pleased with the results towards the end. we were too scared to changed dvd's, so we tried to make the best out of a situation.

We're always playing sets for music we don't know.
But it was sunday night and was after a very long weekend.

mike

[hfrlab]

The big-chill was really interesting and relaxing........

We've liked so much the dfuse Koyaanisquatsi performance: an amazing reinterpretation of the film (visually and musically).
Hope you've seen our performance on xpress2 (friday 23.00-01.00, club tent)...........


ps. mike (dfuse) we've been trying to contact you but your email doesn't seem to work.

HFR-LAB

[mf]

and was very very disappointed by D-Fuse (wanted to buy their DVD but not gonna..

hey Zero Channel, surely you not going to judge 2 years of work making a dvd, on one late night gig.

I never knew people took the Big Chill that seriously

........that would'nt be fair :-)
btw most of the films are available as samples to download on our downloads page www.dfuse.com.

we know some of you are using them as samples so thay can't be that bad.


mike

[blitheAKA]

Well it's been a week nearly and the luvedup feeling hasn't gone away...:love: !!!

Just a few random appreciations, hopelessly inadequate to capture the truth of such an intense experience; three months or so into three days....

We played 4 sets over the festival, the most interesting doing visuals for the opening set on Sat. on the Chill stage for DJ Jacqamore, visualizing for classical music! The nicest later Sat. afternoon with Kate Rogers, again on the Chill stage, playing out on the marvellous LCD screen. Glorious! Nice and relaxed in that slot, it felt that there was the time and space to really explore, feel the festival and our visuals, and really say something.

Great atmosphere backstage, everyone working so confidently and happily to send the energy out....

Huge thanks to amukidi for making it possible!

I'm interested in the range of feelings on this thread, this or that thing being less than perfect. We all have that very necessary beady=eyed editor in us. I too had various challenges, 'stuff' happening,...but my lasting feeling is that of a much greater energy that was there, that of the culture itself, that we serve the culture; and when i found i could trust that energy, the problems would actually disappear...dewy eyed hippy that i am; but this actually happened several times.
In fact there was a faint aroma of perfection about the entire event, there for those awake to it. The serendipity levels were very high. Kept running into ppl and situations, as ya do, and those fitting seamlessly into the Big Picture. "We were just talking about you" Aha! Over and over. U know what i mean...

The weather was of course 'perfect', but i kept noticing the shifting artistic tracery of the clouds over the three days, surrounding both sun and moon, and people were describimg very unusual atmospheric effects they had seen. Something being said there.
Something very beautiful and a little strange about the whole thing.

Just so many utterly beautiful people, expressions, possibilities........
yeh i know everyone has their normal lives that they go back to, but just a big phat reminder of why i do this and what it's for.

Lots about what The Culture is and is about.
The interface between several worlds. Between the 'normal' and the 'alternative' certainly, but there seem several other layers. How we remember how to be so damn civilized to each other, like we've done all this before, some other time...all over the whole 3 days i did not see a single negative expression, hear a raised voice. Just lucky? Although i did many tours round the site, my 'enhanced' perception looking very specifically at individuals and groups and their interactions...

Just a big, big appreciation of being involved with this..........and i've got to say it, coz it's what i actually believe......this New Renaissance we are endeavouring to create.

Flashing lights and all....... the whole set of kit; laptops, resolume, mini DV, MX50s, DVDs, LED screens.......
what a set of empowering tools to shape experience!


greetz to all!

Greg from SUBLIME


:yep:

[machv]

Hey - Had an absolute blinder, best Big Chill for a while (maybe 2 years).

Best viz I saw were supplied by Amukidi and Simon for The Horizontal/Vertical thing with Bruce & Ulrich. John's uber colour schemes shapes and rotations over layed with Simon's graphical/text rotation objects - top class and perfect for the night; shame about the volume.

Skalpel were good, but really were quite mislabled with the "thunderbirds" thing.

Matt Black has all the toys in the world and a guy mixing stuff in and they still crash! :)
I think every vj and laptop performer who were in the audience for that gave a huge sigh of relief - if they can crash then it's ok for us to! :). A great performance but nothing trully WOW about it, but still highly enjoyable.

Paul & Funkcutter did a good set for Phantom Beats on Staurday morning too; and Emma's outfit had most of the site turning the heads to catch it!

"All is full of Love" didn't flow as well as I would've hoped and that needs to be worked on within the performing group - though it was fraught with difficulties to start with and that doesn't help setting the tone. As for the content, I had no problem and thought it was very well done. The image of Mondo in a cheap red rubber gimp mask will live with me for a while - mainly cos I've got photos to prove it. ;)

Hexstatic's Comedy hour sadly failed to live up to it's press with it's flow and content - from the very funny "Hal & Dave" to the not so funny "Idiots". Shame, but comedy is the hardest master. I was also very tired by this point so maybe not the best judge.

AvDv's set for Rob Wood was great too.

If anyone saw my sets for Bjorn Torske (club, sat, 6 -7:30 pm) and Sounds From The Ground (open air, sun, 9-10pm) I would appreciate the feedback.

[syzygy]

Originally posted by mf
So what are peoples opionions of our Dubside of the moon set considering

A. there had been a 15 minute change over as promised.
B. we had no monitors working
C The dvd remotes activated all players.
D we were completely exhausted from saturday night.
We basically had 1 x vhs working.

Did the people watch the whole set. I would appreciate more acurate feedback, than somebodies girlfirend thinking our work was 'rushed'

thanks
mike[B]

Hey, don't write off "somebody's girllfriend" ;) The vast majority of the people in the audience were not visual; artists - it's good to listen to feedback from the general audience sometimes...

Sounds like you had a bit of a nightmare with that set. All other things aside, I think the lesson to learn from it is that it's always a good idea to get a true idea of what the music will be like beforehand. Don't trust what you are told ;)

I'd be well annoyed if I was told the music would be hard and fast and it ended up being reggae.

For me, the problem was not any of the reasons that you describe, but with the fact that the content you had was just not suited to to the Dub Side of the Moon performance. Even sloppily mixed content would have been okay if it matched the 'Pink Floyd meets Reggae" concept.

Zero Channel - don't judge D:Fuse on one performance - their work really is very good.


Dan.

[PilotX]

hi Greg.. you've also jogged my memory - I saw one of your sets in the sanctuary, possibly on the sunday.. it was nice to see what you do live, and a nice ixture of 3d and video as well.. I also liked the way you spelt sublime with other languages letters (or was it phonetic alphabet? I wasn't sure, it was never on for long enough), it looked good anyway.. i'm not a big fan of 3d but if its mixed well then great..

[ChannelZero]

Hey mf and Syzygy

Well, I just watched your DVD a bit; and must say it's impressive :yep: :yep:
(my friend bought it and we watched some of it last night)

I never knew people took the Big Chill that seriously
I do take the Big Chill very serious ;)

OK maybe I was a bit too overreactive after seeing so many nice visuals !!

[mf]

Hi Zero Channel
Glad you the dvd...soon maybe in 6 months time we will be in 'black'. You don't get rich making DVDs :-) But that is not what it is about.

thank your friend for buying the dvd.

thanks
mike

PS You can buy it for ?12.50 if you search the web.

PPS Syzygy, I don't think it is fair for anybody to pass comment on how 'rushed' somebody's work is made, unless they have a technical understanding.
.......sure they can pass comment, but it is not valid.

BTW I think the original Koyaanisquatsi is badly edited. But that is by today's standards, not then

[syzygy]

Originally posted by mf

PPS Syzygy, I don't think it is fair for anybody to pass comment on how 'rushed' somebody's work is made, unless they have a technical understanding.
.......sure they can pass comment, but it is not valid.



Hey, she just said what she thought and I passed it along. It was her opinion, not a professional judgement.

True, she is not in a position to accurately judge how much time it take to produce visual content (well, apart from all the time I spend doing it ;)) but if something looks rushed to her then it looks rushed to her, no matter how much time has actually gone into it. The key thing is that she said it _looked_ rushed, not that it _was_ rushed. It was her opinion, nothing more.

I included Jenny's views because I think it is important to see what people outside of our little visuals world think of things - if we allow ourselves to believe that you have to be qualified to hold an opinion about our art, we'll disappear up our own arses like so many scenes have in the past.

Sorry if anyone got offended by my frank feedback - that wasn't the intention at all. I find honest feedback really useful in improving the way that I do things and I find feedback from 'laymen' the most useful of all.

Dan.

[mf]

Hi Dan
no offence taken....
I appreciate the feedback and generally agree

..... for us Big Chill is 'our holiday' and is the time when we chill.

Thanks
Mike

[hfrlab]

Hi there,,
we have just uploaded 2 little videos of our live performance at the bigchill:

www.hfr-lab.com/01.london.4.0.htm

www.hfr-lab.com/01.london.5.0.htm




HFR-LAB
www.hfr-lab.com

[blitheAKA]

Hi hfrlab!
So that waa you was it? I thought that approach one of the most individual of any i saw at the festival........very pure and graphical; d'ye ken the Russian Constructivists? nicenicenice!

Big greetz to Syzygy! Thanks for the kind comments........gawd what a steamer that sunday set was.......meltdown! The beamer/mixer were hitting thermal cutout.......now we know how it felt to be a stoker on a steamship!!!

Greg from SUBLIME
:jump2:

[mondo]

The image of Mondo in a cheap red rubber gimp mask will live with me for a while - mainly cos I've got photos to prove it. [QUOTE]

....now i was wondering when this would appear - !!
marky please uplod it because even i dont believe i did it!! still trying to work out how i got it on and off mid-set!!

[PilotX]

Originally posted by blitheAKA

Big greetz to Syzygy! Thanks for the kind comments........gawd what a steamer that sunday set was.......meltdown! The beamer/mixer were hitting thermal cutout.......now we know how it felt to be a stoker on a steamship!!!


hi greg :) yeah it was hot.. I was sat in the sanctuary from about 10am till about 5pm to stay out of the sun (didn't want sunstroke with a 3am-5am set ;).. I forgot my timetable so had no idea who was on but the visuals and music were great throughout that day. but it was very, very hot.. all I could think about was how glad I was it was going to be cooler for our set.

see you soon

tom

[machv]

Originally posted by mondo

marky please uplod it because even i dont believe i did it!! still trying to work out how i got it on and off mid-set!!

soon come, Mond - in the meantime I'll pop one of them in a email to you.

[machv]

Originally posted by machv
soon come, Mond - in the meantime I'll pop one of them in a email to you.

and for all you lovely people

(warning - not for the feint hearted)

[machv]

(file didn't attach...hmmm)

[Anyone]

Originally posted by blitheAKA
Greg from SUBLIME
:jump2:

is that Sublime the band???

Ne1

[Anyone]

Originally posted by machv
(file didn't attach...hmmm)

lol mond, you look like a red Irobot :D :D
Ne1

[funkcutter]

think this is my 3rd attempt to get a shout out to the massive!

BC is waning in my hormone drenched brain, but i remember a lot of heat... a lot of lovely screens... and a lot of breastfeeding. luka had to go to feeds every 2 hours due to imminent dehydration... still not back to normal, but then neither are we.

unfortunately i didn't see anything i really wanted to see due to my maternal commitments, the heat and the sheer size of the event! thought it was a bit too big. but that might just be from my perambulatory perspective.. last time i went it was around 5000 i think.

we really enjoyed the chance to have a pre-booked-show session with the Phantom Beats boys... the club tent was fab but pretty empty 12-2 on saturday, but it was great to exercise our fingers on the mx50. we both felt the colours on the screens were not set strong enough for daytime - the brightness was turned up appropriately, but it looked a little washed out on one. never mind. the back stage crew there were incredibly helpful and friendly. hello again to mat the cat and mark who were practically the only vjs we met all weekend.

after a rapido child feeding pitstop back at the van - what a distance for the performers to travel!!! shoulda hijacked a lil golf cart i s'pose - we made it to the chill stage, where d-fuse were just wrapping up an improptu set, that lil black dvd player on the chill stage was a f*cker wasn't it?! but all was made up for by the fabulous screen which dribbled colour all over the stage, Fat Camp, us and the audience. we did enjoy our set, but maybe it was a lil too risque for Fat Camp chaps who were very sweet indeed...

it's a shame that there were no introductions or thanx to vjs at that point, although i heard it happen on the friday night on that stage as we were passing. our babysitters were also castigated for nicking beer from the fridge, which THEY had put there!!! and although the on stage crew were fine, we didn't have the same lovely reception from those in 'hospitality'! there was NO beer! when we got there.... (but apple juice suited me fine thanx)

all these points are really minor but as i sadly cannot comment on much as i missed meeting up with oxy, oli, mondo, and lots of you that i don't know yet, i have to comment otherwise! did see some tasty loops for adam freeland - but not a live mix as i heard from mat, and some wicked fish swimming through traffic on chill stage?

the nicest thing that happened though was being involved in a wedding on the sunday morning, where i was best man and paul gave the brides - zoe and jane -away to each other and the priest - who had been ordained over the internet in the state of arrizona - wore multiple clavicle piercings, a rubber dog collar and a pink studded strap on. blessed be!

thanx amukidi 4 the gig and suspect we will meet one day soon. and also think may meet some lurkers amongst you at the big barbie this saturday...

tra=x

[PilotX]

Originally posted by funkcutter
some wicked fish swimming through traffic on chill stage?


I pretty sure that was part of Catweasels set with Adem (my memory is also fading but I think i'm right)

[Anyone]

Originally posted by funkcutter
and some wicked fish swimming through traffic on chill stage?


I was on the chill stage mixing some blue fish through crowds on sunday...
was that it, emma?

Oli

ps can't wait for subterfuge on the 29th! :) :)

[cat]

Fishes might have been me, had some swimming between cars on a japanese street, lots fun with moving masks!
Sorry about my late joining the thread, been busy in the real world, just recovering from a rather large tooth extraction, feel a bit woozy, but damn, the pain killers these days, 20 minutes of pulling and no pain till I walked out the surgery!
Glad people liked some of my stuff, had fun making it (not the fish particlulary, didnt use a tripod when I filmed it...)

Just have to big up the Big Chill crew, who somehow were always friendly and helpful, no mater how tired/hot they were, Im sure my temper might have frayed in those conditions! And big up to Amukidi who must have had a nightmare sorting out all the artists, more than enough work for anyone!

For one reason or anonther I didnt see that many sets, mainly heat and booze (eh hmm) But enjoyed Sparks fourtet set, Bonobo's visuals were good too, dont know who's that was (?) they also had a liking for Tokyo cityscapes!

I had a lovely time though, so thanks to all the crew and the artists, look forward to next year!

Just as a added extra here some links to some of the video I made for it (no fishy though)

http://www.colour-burst.com/statued.mov
http://www.colour-burst.com/ringinginmyear.mov
http://www.colour-burst.com/theseareyourfriends.mov
Hope you enjoy, cant promise they'll stay there forever though...

[funkcutter]

Originally posted by Anyone
I was on the chill stage mixing some blue fish through crowds on sunday...
was that it, emma?

Oli

ps can't wait for subterfuge on the 29th! :) :)

oh, yeah! me too... the last one was completely mental - we had uberviolent Gob$au$age performing for us and this was the only gig they haven't been thrown out of ...so far... as rumour has it.

and since you brought it up i'll quickly plug -

anarchofudgepackingenderbendinentertainment...

the crotchwatching, twistonerve, spinetingling hubcap of the capital returns for a bank holiday special. by the time the event comes around expect double the amount of artisian escapades on the list below. we don't have enough hours, we don't have enough insults... we do have enough of what you need to make sure the holy day of the week gets worshipped in the correct way- tongue licking a leather boot, cocktail in hand and perhaps feather up yr arse.

welcome to subterfuge, honey x

djs:
Dou Dou Malicious (a french dj in london)
PRNWhore (punkvert)

vjs:
Overlap- audio visual set
punkvert Visuals

live/cabaret:
The Lusty Ladies of BurlyQ - A Queer Cabaret
Ernesto - poetry tease
They Should Have Been Aborted - live band
Andrew Bailey- big balls, rubber glove, strange sounds

master of cermonies:
3rd degree burn

sunday 29th august
6pm till midnight
it's free but to guarantee entry email the door whore-
subterfugecabaret@hotmail.com