::The act of Vjing :: collectors and collections

[labmeta]

Good morning all,

I`m working on some research at the moment that tries to use the analogy of a collector and the collection to describe the process of the VJ, and i hope some of you can partake in a small experiment and talk about the process's you use when working.

The way i see it at the moment the practice of the VJ can be separated into two physical parts: the preparation of material; and the live performance/enactment of those elements.

There are essentially two types of VJ [ probaly more but for this example 2 is enough], one that produces all of there own content and one that collects or samples media from a wide range of sources. However I am comfortable with viewing both as collectors of sorts.

Both operate their performance by having real-time access to a huge library of media that can be accessed instantly to be relayed to the display screen. The more I think about the practice of the VJ the more I begin to see it as a process. Like a mad collector, who stores all that he finds. The vaults bulge with archived video.

The performance of the VJ is about structuring a library of media into some form of order, about connecting the wide range of small media fragments into a larger framework that can produce some form of meaning. The process the VJ puts themselves through deals with the cognitive process of making meaning and understanding on such an intuitive level as it develops in a live, improvised manner. The process is to make sense and reconnect the media into some all knowing, communicating form. It?s a connector?s way of seeing things, giving them a context within your own understanding.

this week i found a smal xtract of writing by John Baldessari where he lists his image archive as catogories from A-Z and he talks about how his work is like choosing from a menu rather than creating a new menu each time.
you can see ther brief extract from blasted allegories [pub MIT press] below.

My task if you have time to partake is for you to undergo the same process and list or summarise your catagories from A-Z.

Im interested in knowing what process you use to connect those catagories to what you do in a live situation. What desicions do you take in order to select the next clip/scene etc. Or if you have any comments about how your cataogories talk to each other either in preperation or perfromance please explain it a little bit.
I expect alot of it is very intuitive but i`d like to try and break things down a bit for the rationale of my research.

All help is much appreciated:)

Best,

Paul

[labmeta]

as always forgot the attachment

[Kyle]

Your research sounds great? Where do you study and what is your major? Also will your findings be available to us? I have volunteered information in the past and haven't received any findings or follow-ups.

Also correct me if I misquoted but would a question format as this be acceptable? Basically just rewriting what you said.

-List or summarise your catagories from A-Z.

-What process do you use to connect these catagories to your live performance?

-What desicions do you take in order to select the next clip/scene etc?

-Please explain how your catagories talk to each other either in preperation or perfromance.

[labmeta]

hey Kyle,

Glad your interested, and yes i know the feeling of volunteering information for peoples research and never seeing it. This is personal research that will eventually get published and disseminated through the narrative lab project that began at AVIT uK last year.

Currently there are a few of us working on a storycollecting/narrative VJ project and im trying to tie the ideas involved in Vjing to academic discourse. The research and work we did last year has been published on the VJC articles section and the same will happen again for this work, although the collecting and collection slant forms only a small part of it. The work will then [hopefully] go on and continue to be presented at AVIT events in the future in lectures, seminars, workshops etc, whatever seems the most appropriate.

your question rewording is all fine:) if that makes more sense for anyone


cheers,

paul

[Anyone]

I find VJs and DJs more like curators than just collectors...

curators cherry pick various elements from collections
(be it art, music or what have you)

and re-present these together in a new context.

the juxtaposition of these elements in new orders
is actually creating new meaning,
that just isn't there when we simply combine the sum of these parts...

IMHO...

Ne1

[many2]

I do not organise my clips like that since my work is based on compositions, not clips. Each composition is part of a larger group (which I call a show) and all compositions in a same show share the same theme, color, movement and interaction scheme (since all my compositions are made to be played with in real-time).

I also hate random clips VJ sets and I am doing eveything I can to make sure nobody thinks that's what I am doing.

[brunomarinho]

I do pretty much the same as Many2, several comps, that are part of a group because of color, movement how they glue to eachother etc, for me there isn?t much of an advantage in categorizing all the clips , like b for birds or c for cars, I prefer to do it by styles. Ex: I have a set called "Mondrian" cause the colors and shapes remind of him, also another one called "Toxic" for the same reasons.
I guess that as long as you can keep a good record of what you have and more important to be consistent in the choice of the clips to be part of the same set.

Peace and Video

VJ user in orb

[digital19]

Ok... I'll give it a try:

List or summarise your catagories from A-Z.
I don't have a set order or random stockpile.

I collect visuals and play them in a very similar way that a DJ collects and plays vinyl

an artist friend sometimes has some really neat paintings I use/tweak.. then some compositions, and if a part of a movie or documentary impacts me in some way it might make it in.

Sometimes I'll play in AfterEffects or Photoshop. VisualJockey is my composition editor of choice.

I really like organic scenes (flying over cornfields, city life sped up)... and cartoons sometimes (my friend does really funny stick figure things). My 3d compositions aren't bad, but I find they don't fit usually. Ultrafractal for fractals (especially when they come out with animation inside it...)

That's my curating process.



What process do you use to connect these catagories to your live performance?

I live in the Midwest. At a recent event someone came up to me and saw "wow! last time I saw someone using a projector they played kiddie porn all night."

... so the environment here is still really backwards and pathetic sometimes... If I lived on the west or east coast I know my performance would change. I like to be the type of artist that leads people to open and elevate their minds, maybe that's a recurring theme...

For me... It's just like vinyl. A part is reading your audience, a part is leading the direction you want to go. I start the night knowing I'm going to play clip X... and I play a lot with the same DJ, so there are certain songs that always seem to go well with certain clips.

but from there it's looking at the people in the crowd and saying, ok... If I was in a telepathic visual conversation with these people I'd bring up.... :alien:

[littlecatalyst]

the a-z list may take some time viso'naut .and btw is A for abstract (or broken down intoB-blotches, C-circles, D-distortions, J-jagged stuff, L-lines, M-mysty...) or is this mostly for representational images (people, dancing, dj's, riots, stars+planets, glitter balls, butterflies...)

but i also thought this about what youre saying;
Originally posted by visualnaut
The performance of the VJ is about structuring a library of media into some form of order, about connecting the wide range of small media fragments into a larger framework that can produce some form of meaning.

are you looking at linguistics in this research? cause it looks like that and tha post-linguini stuff.... the "library of media" being the Langue right? the whole body of all the stuff available, not just in one's own collection, unless each VJ actually has their own language (which they don't. dialects maybe, or like Many2's complex plhrases.....) In any given language, the langue would be all possible words even made up (DIY) and street slang. Whereas the body of fragements that a VJ selects... that's what they call Parole. but is it the stuffthey selcted that night or since the first day they started collecting loops? really, since ALL media is available to the VJ (morals and aesthetics aside) then ALL media is the langue. and our own indervidual collections are our own Paroles (our pesonal arsenals of imagery). and if that's the case then i just don't follow what you're saying up there, cause following through with this logic, on any given night, a VJ's set is really his/her speech, using fragments available in his/her parole-- his/her personal colection of media fragments to express a given sentiment, feeling, narrative, whatever..

Originally posted by visualnaut
The process the VJ puts themselves through deals with the cognitive process of making meaning and understanding on such an intuitive level as it develops in a live, improvised manner. The process is to make sense and reconnect the media into some all knowing, communicating form. It?s a connector?s way of seeing things, giving them a context within your own understanding.
isn't that like talking in a different language? but when you get into the"all knowing communicating form" that is a leap i totally don't understand, even moreso, i think the process is to be as succinct poetic and powerful with the tools of the language to allow the spectator (listener, punter..) to see things... it's their job to see and make sense of the images that are being thrown their way,

giving "them" a context within your own understanding is the only time you mention them at all (not that i disagree with that statement, actually think that that's the most important part-- so an A-Z catalogue is intereting in a nuts n' bolts kinda way, but i think the real twist is how it is percieved by others. How does a spectator jdeal with this and make sense of it, and what kind of sense.... cause face it, when you know your material, you know what the range of output can be, often have your fave things to mix together.... you know it. your not fresh-eyed at all-- the peeps who show up and never saw your set b4, do they construct meaning from the barrage and rhythm of the chosen clips? do they follow non-linear narratives? do they have similar/opposing responses to the visuals.... jmo but i think that's where the real meat is.. i tihink it will be a really interetsing calatogue to see ((especially thd definitions for the squiggly shiny things)), and hope that this wasn't just a long winded hair splitting

[blitheAKA]

This is an interesting thread!
I like the touch on the difference between Langue and Parole.....this may be one route to an understanding here.

I do think we are trying to develop something of a language, rudimentary as it may be at this stage. This implies a desire to communicate, between the VJ and the viewer, and this implies a shared context. That context at this stage is a sort of assumed one i think.......
What is that context?
That we are all 21st cent. First-Worlders who saw science fiction films on the telly as kids?

Then one could search for iconic images which seem to crop up in every or most VJ's sets. The Eye, the Tunnel, the Dancer...are there others?
Are these the first words in our language?
What do they mean?

One primary differentiation could be between items depending on their social/cultural reference for their meaning, and a more 'abstract' tip. This notion of 'abstract' covers quite an area!

I can only offer my own definitions.......
Anything seen is 'recognised' by Line, Colour and Texture, by which we derive Form; and then Motion. In fact i should say it is usually the motion which is noticed and recognised first.
These qualities go beyond cultural reference and are plumbed into the human nervous system, at the most basic levels of attraction or threat.
Centrality, symmetry, asymmetry, advance, recession; and the rhythms of their interaction.
These give an image its attraction and power.

By these qualities we recognise something about the nature of the thing seen, how it feels to us, even before we recognise what it 'is', its assigned or assumed 'meaning'. I think this might help explain how , even with the entirely disparate or random nature of the 'meaning' of the items in an average VJ set, it often still seems to 'work'.

Yet this randomness is irritating somehow, isn't it? We want to erect a more coherent, larger-scale meaning.

My own practice is based on these rhythms of interaction, regardless of 'what' is being seen; and with this as the 'carrier wave', to erect a melodic line of meaning with the 'what' of the image, be it footage or abstract CGI shapes.
This is analogous to the cinematic practice of montage, but inverse. Rather than a flow of images to convey meaning, the meaning is constiuted by the sense of flow, to which the images contribute.

The rhythm is also of course the rhythms of the music which is integral with the Visualist's art. There is the other set of arguments as to whether visuals serve/support the music, could be standalone etcetcetc; but to my mind this is peripheral; we all know how we 'understand' music by the rhythm, colour, texture, flavour; and on deeper levels than what may be 'said' in for example a lyric line. Music and visuals both work on these levels of subliminal understanding; both share the same channel of communication.

This may be a start on 'how'; but 'what'and 'why' is dependant on the mindset of the Visualist.
Is the visualist simply a worker, an honest tradesman turning in a shift, like the lighting crew? Or an Artist, with a unique take on existance? If crew, then we might think the basis of the material will be 'what seems to be popular'. If an artist, is the task to report on existance or to invent a new one? An 'ideal' one, golden with love and beauty or that lovely Channel 4 vision of 'gritty reality?
A solid basis here is an assertion that the dance music context within which we all work is a culture of joy and affirmation at its heart (or at least a good time!) so we might assume our visual language has some message of positivity as its intention. Even when showing footage of Geo. Bush!

My own work usually wants to be much more lyrical, evocative and emotive than that; but the rhythm of interaction 'in the mix' gives it either lyrical sweep or dynamic impact even before beginning to consider what the image is 'of'.

A couple of thoughts......as a start........!
cheers
Greg from SUBLIME

[revjrbobdodds]

Approaching this from a somewhat different perspective than LCat's well-reasoned semiotic cant: Lacan might say (emphasis on MIGHT) that a viewer making logic or narrative from abstraction (or random montage) is an attempt to fill in the "lack" which the viewer is made aware of in any encounter with a visual (linguistic) object for which they have no referent. Because "true" abstraction (which changes from encounter to encounter) escapes all attempts at Symbolisation on the part of the viewer, they are confronted by an intervention of the Real. Or by truly bad art, depending on the object. :)

In either case, the viewer's desire to create narrative will likely be overwhelming (encounters with the Real being psychically unbearable). What is most interesting here to me is that the language of the VJ is the least likely tool the viewer will reach for when trying to make sense of the VJ's (good or bad or not-at-all) art.

Which leaves us with the question: when trying to communicate with the audience, particularly in a complex and not necessarily narrative way, whose language are we best off using?

I think David Hickey has a lot to say on this, although he has not written specifically about VJing.

the rev

[djnada]

Interesting stuff. I think that I would create a menu of clips organized not only by "surface" content, but by the way in which such content has been processed. For example:
A
Atomic bomb blast -

vectorized
modalistik1
modalistik2
water color
oil painting
(studio artist effects)
B
bikini babes dancing


swirl
spherized
mirror
(FCP or Boris effects)
Gotta go, will be back. great idea!!!
Back for a minute... Perhaps a thumbnail image alongside each entry would also help. I am going to work on this, since my library is totally unwieldy. Another issue for me are codecs. If I forget to include a reference to the codec in the name, I forget the codec. Preferences, or an "info" (mac) does not tell me what codec I compressed to. This is bad. Does anyone know how to retrieve compression data? (One would guess that there is a simple solution, that I am blind or something... Help!)

[littlecatalyst]

hey bobdobs
u mean the guy from those art magazines? he hasnt written about vjing yet? no?? but do u have links?? very curious..
also when considering this language or whatever trying-t-find-meaning.. i think we have to also take into consideration this whole passive viewing (and the obligatory non-linear storytelling) and add the lense of good old sergei "monatge magnet" eisenstein and especially his overonal montage cause that in a way how the language is going to be sensed, inputed into the viewer, right? cause it can't all be on the part of teh viewer to make sense of it. we have to lead them there, somehow, through the non linear beet oriented visual fragment primordial stew... the oness is on us too

[23523]

in our crew, i?m the crawler and preparator (and the guy with the huge data vault) and my crewman is the one with the intuitive, more impulsive way of performing...

he?s the guy who loves colours, vector styles fast changes, etc...

while i?m the guy who try?s to give the performance a sublimal touch of message.

-List or summarise your catagories from A-Z.

-amp reactives
-bunte (german for colored) vids
-boom (exploding things, bombs, war)
-disturbed (soldiers, political, real life)
-genres (hiphop, electro, goth, reggae)
-vector styles
-s/w (black nad white) styles
-sci-fi

-What process do you use to connect these catagories to your live performance?

first you need a background loop which meets the intention of the music and the crowd, then you fill this frame with stuff which is pushing the crowd...

-What desicions do you take in order to select the next clip/scene etc?

just listen the music, it helps to figure out the next arrangement... after some event s with the same crew you get feeling for the dj?s

-Please explain how your catagories talk to each other either in preperation or perfromance.

hmm, the most categories are created to look great in interaction with others... for example 3 Layers:

-amp reactive layer
-vector style layer
-background loop (in most cases some kind of converted video)

the combination of vector styles and the background loop is the most important thing in preperation and performance...

@visualnaut: sorry it?s little weird, but i hope it does help you for your study thing. :)

[unjulation]

'cos i sample most of my stuff it my libery is made up of folders that have the name of which movie i have sampled it from - when you spend your time spliceing and editing and exporting clips you get to know them prety well - i then have a tendancy to start practiceing/trying them out stright away so by then i have allready made some ( hopefully) good resolume decks then its to late to start re ordering them on my hard drive without the hassel of re-doing the deck all over agin - wot me lazzy no never ;) so i have lernt to work within a way that suites me and my personality and way of working - probably not the best way and maybey one day i'll sit down for a week and organise it better but i aint holding me breeth

[loboy]

the practice of the VJ can be separated into two physical parts: the preparation of material; and the live performance/enactment of those elements
I find that seperating these aspects into two distinctive parts to be limiting. I think a better distinction is studio production vs. live production, a static vs. dynamic synergistic relationship. Other threads here have touched on this debate as well.

I have gone into a set without any preparation of material. The underlying idea of the set was to use whatever material that could be extracted from my surroundings. I used various types of equipment, tv tuners, live cameras, scanners, shortwave radios, wireless 802.11 signals, etc. The set was built from these various inputs extracting sight and sound from the environment. The radio spectrum has a plethora of data flowing through it all the time, all you need to do is tune in or out of it.
the analogy of a collector and the collection to describe the process of the VJ
as a collector, it has become almost obsessive.

From Devices of Wonder by Stafford and Terpak:
"A wooden cabinet for housing foriegn materials, the Wunderschrank is indeed, first and foremost, an inclusive piece of furniture. The word cabinet is a complex term, denoting a small private chamber, an executive council of state, and a room for the display of works of arts. A cabinet can also signify a rich case subdivided for the reception of precious articles. All these meanings were current in the seventeenth century, but by its second quarter, as an item of furniture the name specifically referred to a box with compartments, drawers, shelves, and, usually, doors but sometimes only with a fall front. It constituted a high-tech variation on the comparatively static cupboard, the archetype of European furniture from the fifteenth through the seventeeth century." pg. 7

"The legacy of the Wunderschrank extends into cyberspace. Consider the universal flea market of eBay, an internet swap meet hosting two million-plus on-line auctions per day, listing some four million items organized into over three thousand categories of mostly nonstandardized goods. Today, the collectible is everywhere. As the science fiction writer William Gibson observed, this obsession with thrift-shop hunting and picking may be a sign of "some desperate instinctive reconfiguring of the post-industrial flow, some basic mammalian response to the bewildering flood of sheer stuff we produce."" pg. 20
You should check out the e-book "The Anarchivists of Eco-Dub" (http://www.altx.com/ebooks/eco_dub.html) by Nile Southern.

I think the place Baldessari is coming from is a much more poetic place, and something that almost harks back to the beat poets of the fifties.

Also this thread (http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=7740)