... but is it art?

[bart]

What is VJ-ing? Is VJ-ing Art or Entertainment? Does a VJ have to create his/her own material?

These are just three questions we all ask ourself or need to answer about VJ-ing so feel free to post links to articles that you think are relative to VJ-ing and try to define or describe this exciting new art-form.

[Edited on 16-10-2007 by bart]

[bart]

This thesis reviews the influences and explores the characteristics and elements of live cinema, a recently coined term for realtime audiovisual performances. The thesis discusses the possible language of live cinema, and proposes “vocabulary and grammar”.

http://www.solu.org/writings.html

I really enjoyed reading this theses, very interesting.

[bart]

“VJ Culture: a Phenomenon in History, Presentation, and Perception” is a report by Annet Dekker based on a series of interviews held in the summer and fall of 2004 with thirteen VJs in the Netherlands.

Interesting article that explores many aspects of vj-ing from the perspective of various Dutch VJ's. The article is available in Dutch or English PDF.

http://www.vjcultuur.nl/page9.htm

[bart]

"At first sight the work of a VJ looks similar to that of a video artist. Using the same equipment, it has a similar aesthetics. But in contrast to most video artists the VJ only operates live. In this way VJ shows are related to performance art, especially the live creation of an experience where different senses are being triggered. Most VJ's see themselves having a direct link with the rise of House music in the mid-'80s and the popularity of video clips. In this paper I will show that the now common combination of DJ's and VJ's in clubs is a recent form of synaesthetic performance."
Annet Dekker

http://www.montevideo.nl/en/nieuws/detail.php?id=44

[Vjunk]

I think VJing is art and entertainment at the same time. It is art because it has the elements of contemplation as Aristotle suggests. It has universal meanings. (?)
Vjing is a live performance, it is different in that respect from cinema or video art. Spectators are moving bodies, they are not sitting like cinema spectators. The visual context on the other hand is varying but has the same potential because it is at the end 2d moving images on a screen. We cannot underestimate the role of the music. The language of music helps the visuals go in that mathematics. The music has a leading role in perception, ?
We have a problem with the images, 2d visual material. For Rudolf Arnheim, art is mimetic, trying to represent the real world like painting and theatre. They are trying to be not related to reality, own a language on their own. Video's own material is reality itself. Cinema, film, video are likely to be a new order with space and time; representing a kind of our brain, thoughts moving??? So it is entertainment

[Vjunk]

"As a true performance, the film
would only exist in the presence of its author. Why live arts ? For
the contact, the act of gift between artists and audience [12]; For
the risk, the thrill of the audience toward the unexpected, the
accident, the insight into the construction process; For
improvisation and open forms, because text and recording are not
holy and should be subject each time to reinterpretation and
recreation."

Live Cinema: Designing an Instrument for Cinema Editing as a Live Performance: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~lew/resear ... 202004.pdf

"After performing with a simple prototype in real conditions in
clubs and festivals across Europe and the US, we found that,
contrarily to most common computer-based performance tools :
the interface needs to be transparent, so that the audience sees and
understands the process; and performative, so that the audience
can be engaged in the performer’s effort."

http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~lew/resear ... 202004.pdf

[bart]

Here is an interesting article from the Adobe website:

"If we think of VJs as part of the family of projectionists, we might trace the line right
back to Aristotle, who first noted the specifications of the Camera Obscura—a dark
room with a pinhole projecting light and images from the outside world onto its walls—
more than two thousand years ago."
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/think ... ulture.pdf

[ScamOne]

I have a degree in painting from the School of Visual Arts in New York so I have a background in traditional art in the historical sense. I have been VJing for about 6 months now, and have just started to do it professionally. I definately think it can be art, but I am not sure that I have seen it achieve that level yet. Most of the live footage is see seems to all look the same. Anonymous graphics pumped in time to equally meaningless and anonymous music.

If you are creating material, or are at least using film footage and cutting it up and effecting it -then I think you can take it to the level of an art form. If you're just mixing graphics in time to beats, then you are not. Its really dificult to say.

This goes with all facets of art though. Much of contemporary painting I wouldn't call art either. Standards have fallen across the board I think. I look at the work from all the top vjs in the world and though I really haven't seen as much as I need to, I don't think its there yet.

I believe improvising is something very special though. You act without thinking and are drawing an intelligence from sources that science cannot study.

[bart]

The VJam Theory book is published:
"VJam Theory (collective writings on realtime visual performance) presents the major concerns of practitioners and theorists of realtime media under the categories of performance, performer and interactors, audiences and participators. The volume is experimental in its attempt to produce a collective theoretical text with a focus on a new criticality based on practitioner/artist theory in which artist/practitioners utilise theoretical models to debate their practices."

Info:
http://www.vjtheory.net/book.htm

Buy:
http://www.lulu.com/content/1930514

[trilion99]

I believe improvising is something very special though. You act without thinking and are drawing an intelligence from sources that science cannot study.

Such as? Improvised intelligence from devine injection?

Fact is that people don`t care if VJing is live or not. Actually I think they dont care about VJing at all. People go to the club to see other people, not to watch music videos, be they improvised or not. Be it art or not.

Anyway the great thing about VJing is that sometimes someone mistakes for the DJ.