VJing.JuergenINPUT

Describe VJing.JuergenINPUT here....

actually: will get some texts next days - texts from the spletizizers-project, one text from the members of ticklish, they work on a ph-d work on these topic. some other texts i got have to be translated .. will set up the whole thing over the weekend.

Audiovisual Liveacts

A very young and compeletely autonomous genre of the synaesthetic practice of performance. In this multi-media performances image and sound are generated and manipulated digitally in realtime, one depending on the other. Within such realtime improvisations, the human protagonists interact inbetween themselves as well as with their computers. If music always has been one of the strongest creative inputs for non-figurative forms of depiction, the visual structuring finally will coincide with the musical performance within these multi-medial realtime events. Due to the interdisciplinary aspect of this genre, the protagonists may appear within various socio-cultural contexts: at clubs, cinemas and concerthouses and, so to speak, fall between all stools.

links:

projects/groups: www.abstraction-now.net www.lanolin.at www.vidok.org www.spletizizerz.net

technical: http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/softVNS.html

http://shoko.calarts.edu/%7ecchaplin/lev/lev.html - Live video list / LEV

http://mob.bek.no/ - developed at bek for the linux environment

http://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/%7edano/physical/physical.html - live physical computing

http://www.keyworx.org/kw_home.html

http://www.troikatronix.com/

http://www.cycling74.com/index.html

collection of texts/permanent upgrade (at the moment only collection no curation of texts):

techno-visions: sound as window to new social and aesthetic spaces (to be translated)

TECHNO-VISIONEN Sound als 'Fenster' zu neuen sozialen und ästhetischen Räumen Christian Höller Die letzte Dekade stand musikalisch primär im Zeichen von Techno-, Rave- und einer neu erwachenden Electronica-Kultur. Beinahe scheint es, als hätte sich ein Massenphänomen vom Beginn der neunziger Jahre (Rave) im Lauf der Jahre in zahlreiche Nischen, Kleinstsegmente und Substile ausdifferenziert, die sich kaum unter einem einzigen Begriff zusammenfassen lassen. Grund genug, um Rückschau zu halten und nach den visionären Versprechungen dieser vielen Teilkulturen, und zwar sowohl in musikästhetischer als auch in gesellschaftspolitischer Hinsicht, zu fragen. Ausgangspunkt soll die Spezifik dieser neuen Musik selbst sein, und hier vor allem das ganz besondere Sound-Vokabular, das sich in den letzten Jahren entwickelt hat. Welche Qualitäten und Intensitäten dominieren dieses Vokabular? Welche visionären Momente - um weiter auf der nicht-musikalischen Metaphernebene zu bleiben - lassen sich von der Sound-Ebene in andere Bereiche (gesellschaftsutopische, erfahrungsmäßige, etc.) hinein übertragen? Davon ausgehend sollte erkennbar werden, ob und inwiefern Sound heute zu einem Leitmedium kultureller Produktion geworden ist, bzw. innerhalb welcher Produktionsparadigmen die konkrete Arbeit mit Sound gegenwärtig ihren angemessenen Platz findet. Daran anknüpfend sollten die Hierarchien und Differenzierungsmomente innerhalb der Techno-Kultur selbst thematisiert werden. Ganz offensichtlich hat letztere eine breite Schichtung von eher Konsum-orientierten Massenvergnügungen zum einen und dem neu auflebenden Avantgarde-Ethos einer kleinen Electronica-Elite (man denke an Labels wie Säkhö, Mego, Touch, ~scape, etc.) zum anderen hervorgebracht. Eine diesbezügliche Fragestellung könnte lauten, inwiefern diese Schichtung die alte Differenz von Massenkultur und Elitedenken (»intelligent techno«) bloß wiederholt, oder ob diese Begriffe im Zuge der fortschreitenden Fragmentierung von Techno und Electronica bereits dekonstruiert worden sind. Ein weiterer Aspekt könnte die Frage nach veränderten Geschlechterbeziehungen innerhalb der Rave- und Club-Kultur sein. So sind ehemals fixierte (Geschlechter-)Identitäten durch eine Dancefloor-Politik aufgeweicht worden, die sich von der Position des weißen, männlichen, heterosexuellen Rockrebellen nachhaltig abgrenzt und stattdessen auf ein ekstatisches, polymorphes, oft auch nicht-geschlechtliches »Genießen« setzt. Dennoch scheint die materielle und personelle Infrastruktur der DJ-Kultur immer noch weitgehend männlich dominiert, und es wäre zu fragen, wie eine weitere Verschiebung des Geschlechterverhältnisses durch Techno und Electronica bewerkstelligt werden kann. Ging es bei Rave, zumindest in der Anfangszeit, um die Ermöglichung des größtmöglichen Vergnügens für die größtmögliche Anzahl von Leuten, so bestand ein begleitender Aspekt stets darin, neue Räume oder neue Erfahrungen von Alterität zu eröffnen. Entscheidend wäre also die Art und Weise, wie Techno-Visionen selbst zu einer umfassenderen, vor allem auch ethnischen Demokratisierung (und Enthomogenisierung) von Kultur beitragen können. Nicht zuletzt sollte dies im Hinblick auf die in Europa sich immer stärker durchsetzende politische Grundtendenz beurteilt werden, die großen Wert auf Selbstermächtigung durch (Jung-)Unternehmertum und Selbstverantwortung legt - etwas, was von der DJ-Kultur selbst kaum in Frage gestellt wird. Schließlich stellt die Dancefloor- und Club-Szene in Summe ein heterogenes und disparates Sammelbecken von lose miteinander verbundenen Subjekten zu sein, die in erster Linie einen ähnlichen (und manchmal auch völlig abweichenden) Geschmack in Bezug auf elektronische Musik teilen. Dennoch scheint es auch einige zentrale Werte - etwa eine ethnisch »inklusive« und tendenziell »globalistische« (gegen globale Ungerechtigkeiten gerichtete) Haltung - zu geben, die von allen Beteiligten dieser Kultur mitgetragen werden. Eine hier anschließende Frage lautet, wie diese Werte in eine stabilere und institutionell verankerte (politische) »Konstitution« übergeführt werden könnten. Auch dieser Punkt sollte in »Techno-Visionen« Beachtung finden.

AudioVisions – audiovisual tendencies in Austria

The Austrian film in general may still be rather unknown- except for insiders of course. But it is exactly the Austrian avant-garde and the experimental film that is extremely impressing and worth mentioning. Since the 1950ies, the medium film as an autonomous art form has been developed in a manifold way. Thanks to names like Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren and Valie Export or Lisl Ponger, Peter Tscherkassky and Gustav Deutsch – representatives of the so-called „third generation“ who, between 1975 and 1985, used the medium film as an artistic means of expression – Austrian productions were able to find international acclaim. All these artists have found a very own, distinctive form of artistic expression. In their works, you can notice that they have not explored the options offered in the medium film formally or even technically, they have challenged this medium in order to find an individual form of expression.

In today’s productions though, even more divergent and most vivid trends can be diagnosed. On the one hand, you have cross-over productions: films using an experimental film language and which cannot easily be assigned to a specific genre. And this does not only apply to films which tend to be more narrative but also to documentaries. And on the other hand you have films that represent the interest in the fundamental possibilities and the fascination in the techniques.

And yet there another interesting trend that can be noticed in the last few years. For quite a while, the Austrian avant-garde has traditionally been bound to the use and exploration of the medium film. The medium video, however, as well as the new forms of digital networking and multimedia now have extended the audio-visual realm of possibilities. Digital image production and processing have become more and more important throughout the entire world.

At the same time, since the 90ies, an innovative crowd of people working in the field of electronic music has evolved in Vienna. The growing importance of music related to film/video has resulted in a number of co-operations between artists working in the most different areas. The abstract and non-narrative videos you can find in the compilation AudioVisions are a selection of some of the most exciting works being produced within this field of electronic expression.

Overlapping levels of abstraction and direct links between sound/image interfaces move to the foreground, working off conventional editing, systems of reference, and relations to representation. Influences from avantgarde film are found as well as processes of alteration and transference from that tradition.

In most of the works images as well as sounds are computer-processed and treated as information of equal value. Hierarchy of sound and images has definitely been abolished. Sound here is not always the starting point of the images. Both, visual and sound material interact, and the editing, the manipulation is done on the computer: anything can be produced, deconstructed and put together again in many new and different ways. Synthesis is obligatory, the computer becomes another tool. The medium is the presence. Abstract design is a process. (Juergen Moritz)

To: hc gilje From: Andreas Broeckmann Subject: interview: Live-Sculpting - Image:Code:Sound:Performance

ab. hc, you are working with digital video images that are partly computer-generated, and partly taken with a camera and then reworked. You co-operate with people in music, in performance, and you also produce exhibition pieces. How would you describe the essence of what you do?

hc. Construction of reality, creating structures instead of finished work, opening up collaborative spaces, both in performance and installation work. My work is not about technology. Though it uses a lot of technology, it has often been described as emotional and sensitive, which I like. I collect images either from my own recordings or from other sources. In fact, I rarely produce anything completely computer-generated, but I rather sample visuals the way musicians sample sounds, and then rework the material for my own use. Through video I want to explore compressed vs. slow time, inertia vs. motion, rhythm through repetition (loops), past vs. present, all of which relate directly to my main themes of interest: relations between mental and physical reality, (re-)construction of reality, memory, dreams. I am interested in creating spaces and ambience rather than stories. My installations attempt to create a collaboration between the visitors and the ”system”, becoming, so to speak, mirrors of the visitors. The way in which the visitors relate to each other and to the space is a very important part of the work. Most of my live work is related to the project VideoNervous which I initiated in the spring of 1999 and which set out to explore video as a live medium in the context of recent technological developments and in collaboration with more established live media: music, dance and theatre. On the whole, it’s the live experience that matters most: if you weren’t there you missed it, and subsequent documentation is merely a substitute. I like the idea of the unstable media, meaning that a work only exists within a short time-space and among the people who are present. This gives it a sort of fragility. Also, considering that the average attention span is getting shorter, live art has a clear advantage over the gallery context. Here, the audience actually choose (and sometimes pay) to watch what you are making, so while you are performing you have their attention. This is a privileged situation!

ab. The use of video as a dynamic medium for live performances has been expanding only recently, although some pioneering artist performers, like Steina Vasulka or Michael Saup, have worked on opening up this conjunction for quite a while now. Can you explain a little how you have approached this in your work for VideoNervous ?

hc. To start with, I wanted to give the medium of video a spontaneity which is often lacking in a field heavily dependent on technology. It's a complex process from the initial idea to the final result because the material first has to be recorded, then edited/transformed. A live setting where the experience is created in facing the audience will furthermore depend on an immediate presence and on the communication between the players on stage. Until recently, these criteria could not be fulfilled using analog video technology, as the equipment was too expensive, technically insufficient and lacking flexibility. The digital revolution has now made video technology cheaper, better and, most importantly, it has given the user instant access to the video stream. Digital technology has thus made it possible to work in a totally different way both in production and during performance. Thanks to digital video technology, applications supporting MIDI control of video and new projector technology, video will become a powerful medium in the crossover field of performance/live art and visual expression. Another important aspect of this type of work is video sampling. Sampling is a familiar tool in music where you choose a sound source, digitise, manipulate and use it in new contexts. The samples are like a new instrument that can be played by the performer. This has finally become a reality also for video thanks to the development of small and cheap cameras with good image quality, the possibility to transfer the video to a computer, faster machines and better compression codecs. Video loops were developed in the infancy of digital video when limitations in storage space and processing power permitted work with stamp-sized loops only. My first video loop fit onto a floppy disk but, ironically, because of fast developments in technology, I no longer have the equipment to play them back. The loop has since evolved into a new aesthetics: it worships motion, repetitions create rhythm. The analog video tape has both a physical and a time-based limit; because it has a beginning and an end, it takes time to access a specific video clip on the tape. This physical restraint vanishes on a computer: Random Access Video means that it will take the same amount of time to find any video clip on a hard disk no matter where it is located. Any clip is thus instantly accessible and can be fetched with a keystroke or the click of a button. To make use of this immediacy an address system is needed: a way of establishing a relation between a keystroke and the video clip to be played. MIDI is an addressing protocol used in the music world for coordinating keyboards, samplers, computers and other instruments, which can also be applied to video when used with the appropriate software. In principle, a MIDI-based system for video connects each key on a MIDI keyboard to a video clip on the computer's hard disk. So when a key is pressed, the corresponding video clip is played instantly. There are many sources of MIDI input, a keyboard being the most common. VideoNervous also uses other types of MIDI controllers, like triggers and sensors. From being a mechanical tape-based playback system, video has evolved to become a reactive organic medium, an extension of the performer’s actions. Another prerequisite for making video interesting in a stage context is the technical progress in video projectors. The evolution from big, expensive and dim projectors to cheaper, handy and bright units allows them to work as a source of light, and thus as part of a light design and a scenography. Space can be created by projecting onto walls, floor, ceiling, and other surfaces and elements, including bodies. VideoNervous is a system where the border between technology and the human performer fades out. The performer becomes a cyborg: the instrument is an extension of the human actions, while at the same time the human is the sensory apparatus of the instrument. My perception of the world makes me do certain actions through the technology, which in turn influences my perception of the environment. VideoNervous becomes like an extended central nervous system in which many of the processes parallel our daily processing of reality: sampling from reality, transforming the samples. The hard disk could then be seen as a memory bank, the video samples as pieces of a reality: memories, dreams and thoughts triggered by impressions from the outside world. Thus the brain and the perception apparatus become the arena for this project, working with concepts of subconsciousness, cyclical train of thoughts, information overload, flashbacks, extending and numbing the sensory system.

ab. Software has become a very important tool for artistic creation with digital images. In the video field, advances have recently been made in terms of the real-time manipulation of images and their adaptation to sound and other digitally based data flows. What are the software tools you use? Do you also write software yourself? What would you like to see as the next developments in artistic software?

hc. I have been working with digital video since I got my first Mac, making those short stamp-sized loops which I filmed off the screen with a professional Beta camera and sent to different short film festivals. I used the basic tools like Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and, more recently, Final Cut for the video work, until I discovered that I could actually steer the playback of video in real time with external controllers. In 1995 I started working with Director and simple sensor-triggering. My first experiences in live contexts were with x<>pose, one of the first video-triggering programs: connecting a keyboard to my Mac through MIDI, I triggered different Quicktime loops. Then I was introduced to Imagine, created by Tom Demeyer at STEIM in Amsterdam, which was a much more powerful tool for manipulating and mixing images, and adding input from a live camera. Imagine was also designed for real-time purposes and control from MIDI input, but lacked the ability of scripting for making more interesting relations between input and output. So I started experimenting with Max on one computer controlling the behaviour of Imagine on another, which I used in the installation node. Max is a programming environment for building control structures usually based on the protocol MIDI. The fall of 1999 saw the start of something important for real-time visual work: the first version of the nato.0+55 video objects for Max was released by the controversial Netochka Nezvanova/antiorp. With its later releases, nato has become a series of very flexible objects for recording, playing, combining, creating and manipulating video in real time (and a continually growing library for working with internet/networks, 3D, text and sound). The learning curve is still pretty steep, as you have to learn Max and the nato protocol to obtain interesting results. The essence is the combination of visual material with a programming structure which becomes as important as the visual material itself. Max and nato make it possible for artists to design their own video programs without the knowledge of a programming language like C. At the same time, more and more artists are actually learning C to create their own objects for use with nato and Max. As regards future developments, I am still looking for easier ways to work across different media – audio to video, video to audio – and a more flexible way of dealing with sensors and actuators as part of a total environment. We need new ways of interacting with the computers. Artists have an important role in experimenting with this. Part of the incentive for me to work with installations is to create new ways for man-machine interaction. I am also waiting for more efficient code for existing software. A lot of real-time video work is really slow. I have started working with small systems that communicate over local networks, so it would be very interesting to see good systems for collaborating with video over the Internet, since the current solutions are too slow. We will see what the new network collaboration software Keystroke, developed at De Waag in Amsterdam, has to offer when it will finally be released. In summary, I would like to see software that enables better network handling between machines and the physical world; a more sensitive computer.

ab. There are groups like The Hub and Sensorband who have made attempts at doing translocal performances using ISDN and Internet connections, but they often suffer from the time delay and limited bandwidth, even when using only sound or MIDI data. The same goes for the streaming media experiments of the Xchange network. Have you made experiences in the field of networked performances? And do you think that it will be a question of overcoming the technical limitations? Do you think that the conceptual ideas are in place for multi-user online performances using, for instance, nato?

hc. I am participating in some of the collaborative projects initiated by Motherboard that have tried to incorporate networks in the performances and installations, either locally or over the Internet. The performances included use of CUSeeMe, IVisit, IRC, Realaudio/Realvideo, with guests contributing text, images and sound. For instance, a guitarist would play from San Francisco, while a singer performed in Cairo and somebody was dancing in front of a webcam in Toronto, still others contributing text from elsewhere. We did an installation last fall with works from five artists linked locally, which also included Internet remote control of a light tower. The colour mix in the light tower could be geared by changing the colour on a website. In January 2000 at Bergen senter for Elektronisk Kunst (BEK) in Bergen, Norway, Motherboard arranged a two week worklab/performance, HotWiredLiveArt, with artists from different backgrounds and various countries, together with two of the developers of Keystroke. As the organizer of the next edition of HWLA, Canadian artist Michelle Terran points out, live, networked collaborative art emphasizes an ongoing process and de-emphasizes the final product. In August this year, HWLA2 will be held in Banff, Canada, where we will be focusing on physical interfaces and telekinematics, using Max and Keystroke mainly. In the summer of 2000, HotWiredPartyActionPlan took place in two sites, Momentum in Moss, Norway, and Interaccess in Toronto, Canada, each involving a local public and hosting several events. The network between the two spaces involved mostly webcams and Keystroke, but we found it very hard to get a true collaboration going. It is difficult to find a focus if something is happening simultaneously in a physical space and in a remote space, as they compete for attention. From the experience of these projects, I have come to think that the network works best in one central place with guests contributing material. The goal for me would be to create a single space consisting of elements from several sources. As concerns nato, I believe it offers a range of possibilities for networked collaborations, but when it comes to streaming video between machines, it is really slow, partly because of the size of video and limited bandwidth. I have been more interested in sending commands through networks to control the performance on remote machines, mainly in installation work, to distribute the computational power. In my current installation I will have one ”brain“ computer gathering sensor input and doing some ”thinking” which will then send commands to the media players for video and sound, thus enabling a communication between the two video projections, the sound and the surroundings. I think the problem with network collaborations is that, while the process of actually doing something with somebody who is somewhere else is very interesting, the artistic result is often less. For the performers it is an exciting situation, but the spectators hardly ever sense the presence of ”the other”, which is why they only get something out of the actual visual/audio output. I took part in some Keystroke sessions and also watched quite a few. Sometimes you obtain some really nice results when there are two people networked. Adding more people usually just messes things up, and the performers become frustrated. When there are no rules, meaning some sort of loose structure on a jam session, the performance is likely to be of little interest. Network collaborations are a performers’ medium, and as long as the audience is not directly involved in the interaction it is hard to distinguish between network, random and pre-programmed behaviour in the resulting work. I guess this is mainly a conceptual problem, namely to either include the audience in the network or to find ways to visualize this interaction for the audience. In any case, the experience of being part of these small exclusive performance networks shouldn't be underestimated as a performance only for the performers involved.

ab. hc, you are a Norwegian artist who has spent the past year in Berlin and who cooperates in different international contexts, as well as in the translocal sphere of the Internet. You are thinking about staying in Berlin while you are still intensely working on some projects in Norway. How would you describe the geography of your work? Does it matter at all where you are physically based? And do you feel that there is an influence of locality in your work, even though it is so much part of a cosmopolitan media art scene?

hc. I believe that the people I meet are more important than the places where I happen to be. Some people I meet physically, some through the Internet. The important thing is to have an interesting artistic, technical and social context for my work, which is one of the reasons for moving out of Norway. Of course, my work is influenced by travelling a lot: last year, I spent three months in Helsinki on a residency, one month in Bergen working on a project, and the rest of the year I was never more than two weeks in the same place. I do get many impulses from my surroundings, but they are seldom directly related to art: I am very much into urban structures as they are human-made landscapes which, in the end, participate in forming our way of perceiving and constructing reality. So I get a lot of inspiration from a city like Berlin because it is constantly trying to reconstruct itself (and somehow failing). Still, I don't think that there is a direct influence of locality in what I do, even though a sensitivity to the surroundings is a crucial aspect of my overall project NervousVision. A lot of my work is directly related to a physical space and other people (as when I am working with my dance company, KreutzerKompani, or with a theatre group) who are located somewhere else than myself. There is a time lag in how my projects relate to where I am. Most of my current projects were initiated a year ago when I was still based in Norway and didn't know that I was going to Berlin. But lately, after some time in Berlin, projects have started to appear here as well. For example, I will do a performance at Kaffee Burger in June, an installation at Podewil in July and the exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in August. And currently my mind is in Japan...

Andreas Broeckmann is a net-worker, researcher and media art curator living and working in Berlin. He is the artistic director of the transmediale media art festival.

Hybridelity by Tricia Romano

Part techno, part art project, part music video, audio-visual is drawing artists across digital media into a multisensory pursuit of the groove Mar-Apr 2001 | Sometimes 23-year-old Beq Stupak travels around the country with DJ Hi-Fi Princess under the nom-de-tour Spiralkind. Stupak brings everything she needs in two small orange cases: 20 miniDVs that run 60 minutes long, two miniDV play decks, a Roland V-5 mixer, and her cyber-eyeglasses, Sony Glasstrons, for monitors. Not content to hide in the shadows, Stupak, her waist-length brown hair wrapped in pointy coiled buns on either side of her head, sets up shop up front on the stage next to the Hi-Fi Princess and mixes her video in much the same way Princess mixes records. Stupak switches her psychedelic images on the giant screen behind her by rolling a lever on her mixer back and forth, timing her changes to the beats. She merges her images by creating patterns and adding and subtracting from the screen, with old footage disappearing while new bits bleed into the next. Creating optical illusions out of close-ups of cell formations, she'll overlay a strangely dressed woman dancing over another reel featuring a bug-eyed close-up of herself, with what looks like shooting stars flittering out from the dark. "Visuals in a club setting are extremely important, even if they are not the driving force," she says. "They help shape the atmosphere of the room. They help to further communicate an idea, take the thought that is coming out of the DJ musically." When she performs live, Stupak must anticipate what the music will bring next, and what, in turn, she will add or subtract. "I tend to agree with the complaints that a lot of visuals become wallpaper, instead of standing out in their own right," she says. "If you're creating imagery for a live scenario, you have to be able to anticipate changes in mood and tempo, as well as introduce aspects that will keep people interested, without demanding that they watch every moment of the piece to understand it." New York video artist Jonathan Turner, 24, prefers the controlled environment of a studio to the chaos of live performance. Working with Jack Hazard's minimal techno, Turner recently created the short film Leaves, which has been accepted to the upcoming RETinevitable film festival. The event has in the past featured work by such luminaries as Sofia Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson, Harmony Korine, and Iara Lee, as well as audiovisual artists Live New Girls, John Carluccio, and Gus Gus. Turner's film will also be featured as part of a "Workspheres" installation by Lot/Ek in February at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. A meticulously crafted piece that uses three colors—blue, orange, and white—Leaves has visuals that are as sparse as Hazard's music. And like the music, a stream of percolating blips and beats, the visuals carry their theme through repetition and pattern, showing various shapes: a baseball player swinging his bat, people walking in tandem, leaves falling or sprouting from a tree. "I am looking for a meaningful synthesis between sound and visuals," says Turner. "I want sound to express the character of visual movements and I want visuals to express the character of sound. Most of all I want the audience to come away with an impression of the aspect as a whole, not separate elements forced together by necessity." Until recently, most video and music collaborations have been shallow at best—many argue that video takes a backseat to the music, or in some cases, the video simply has nothing to do with the music at all. Both Turner and Stupak are part of the rapidly developing world of electronic visual music. Part techno, part art project, part rave scene, part MTV, visual music has been drawing artists across digital media into the multisensory pursuit of the groove ever since seminal music visualists Emergency Broadcast Network toured with U2 on the Zoo TV stadium tour in 1992. But it is a development that hit the shelves this January that could lead to visual music's rapid weave into the fabric of digital art and entertainment: the Macintosh G4 with iDVD. When Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the G4/iDVD at January's Macworld EXPO in San Francisco, he knew bedroom video artists everywhere were drooling in anticipation. But the ramifications of the iDVD, which allows users to create and save to DVD their multimedia digital creations on their home computer, are being felt across the digital-music scene faster than the Cupertino Kid could have imagined. "Now the technology has gotten to a point where a person can edit video easily on their desktop computer that they get directly out of the box," says Stupak. Known as Video DJ Honeygun, she creates her own video in her home studio using her Mac to cull together the footage she shoots with her Sony TRV-900 MiniDV. "Time was when you had to invest in a lot of expensive extras to get a video machine happening, but now it's pretty much plug and play. People are now able to create this kind of media in their homes—both in terms of content and in the delivery mode." "The PC is pretty much all you need, with software like VJamm," confirms Coldcut's Matt Black. "DVD is expensive to produce, hence no one has done much yet: rich DVD publishers—even those who claim to be on the lookout for new electronic art, like Palm Pictures—are actually still asleep and won't dare wake up. The cheap DVD writer will change this, as will broadband net connectivity." Filmmaker Iara Lee, whose 1998 film Modulations documented the history of electronic music, likens the explosion to the wave of bedroom techno producers that emerged in the early '90s as a result of new software and more affordable equipment. "As it gets cheaper, everyone will be empowered to make a film," she says. "Everyone" is a pretty good description of the crowd making visual music today. Iceland's Gus Gus, a nine-member collective that began as the brainchild of two filmmakers in 1995, have always included film footage in their live shows. Underworld, best known for "Born Slippy" from Trainspotting, nurtured their love of graphic design and video art through their company, Tomato, and released a DVD in 2000 called Everything, Everything, which illustrated their command of combining visual and audio elements. Even superstar DJs like Paul Oakenfold—who is collaborating with Requiem For a Dream director Darren Aronofsky on three 20-minute films for his upcoming tour. "People deserve more of a show now, rather than just showing up with a couple decks and DJ," says Oakenfold. But it is the U.K.'s Coldcut who are at the forefront of the visual music movement. The duo of Jonathan More and Matt Black paired their beats and pieces with eye candy for the better part of the '90s until their breakthrough—the award-winning 1998 single "Timber," produced with Hexstatic. An antilogging piece made in tandem with Greenpeace, "Timber" uses footage culled from the organization's galleys. It has spawned a flurry of remixes from artists like Clifford Gilberto and As One (Kirk Di Giorgio), as well as video makeovers courtesy of EBN and the Swedish audiovisual crew Lucky People Centre—so many, in fact, that "Timber" garnered an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for most video remixes of a single in 1999. "There is loads of it happening, but our self-appointed maîtres de culture are asleep, as they always are to the true new shit. The real art is elsewhere," says Black, citing, GVOON, EBN, Lucky People Centre, Mutant Video Posse, and Eboman as other compadres in the genre. "Many of the innovators actually realize their work as meta-art, art that can be used to make more art. Hence it is not seen as Art," he says, pointing to Eric Wengler's "Metasynth"—a program that translates images to sound and back, and Chuthga, a public-domain sound-to-graphics program. Coldcut have also developed and made available their own video-mixing software, VJamm, enabling audiovisual recreation in a live arena. VJamm became accessible to the masses with the release of Let Us Replay in 1999, one of the earliest audiovisual CD-ROMs on the market. "We are researching as many ways as possible to integrate sound and vision," says Black. "I am particularly interested in sound that triggers visuals like the old sound-to-light units, but using computer graphics of all sorts, instead of lights." Perhaps the single most daring excursion into full-blown audiovisual melding to date is Hexstatic's Rewind (N-Tone, 2000), a CD-ROM that truly must be watched in order to be heard. Hexstatic's Warren-Hill and Robin Brunson first collaborated as VJs in 1995, playing at the seminal dance label Ninja Tune's Stealth night and at the U.K. ambient festival The Big Chill. But, says Warren-Hill, "We took VJing to its limits and felt impelled to start creating our own music synchronized with visuals. I began to play with simple video editing software and started creating music from a visual perspective. It's a natural next step for electronic music." Rewind develops links between sounds and their origins. In some instances, a noise might have seemed like a random choice when given only the audio option; with the video, Hexstatic are able to link a sound with a specific object or event—like a car crashing or a video game blinking. In "Vector," for instance, Hexstatic trigger nostalgic memories of the early '80s, setting their old-skool electro sounds to the images that recall the simplistic video games Asteroids and Space Invaders. Warren-Hill credits much of the CD's success to the new, affordable technology, as well. "'Timber' took around six months to complete," he says. "Thousands of edits were made in Premiere to achieve the intricate rhythms in the song. It would have been a very difficult task to edit on analog tape—it would have taken years. Computers allow us to treat music and images as one medium rather than two separate processes." Iara Lee also heralds visual music as the wave of the future. "There's nothing new, everything is a mutation of something that already exists," she says. "It is all about taking elements and different fields and mixing them together. Ultimately, everyone's goal is to have more synergy between art and the environment, and film is a very complete medium." Lee calls her latest project, Architettura, a four-part series exploring the relationship between architecture, visual media, and sound, a "truly mixed media project." Lee invited architects to work with musicians like IDM, techno artist Taylor Deupree, and German noise terrorist Panacea, then created the films based on their aural collaborations. She took the tour on the road traveling with the visuals and the musicians. In between the live music performances, she would screen the films. Lee and many other visual music artists cite now-defunct EBN as a major influence. Emerging from the RISD community in 1991, EBN was a collective of "culture jammers" formed by Josh Pearson and Gardner Post that morphed scattershot images and sound bites from TV news programs—most of the topic matter dealing with the Gulf War—before famously manning the visuals for U2's groundbreaking ZooTV tour. They later released an amplified CD, Telecommunications Breakdown, which attempted to translate their anarchist video approach to CD. "I think EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) came the closest to achieving popular acceptance as a Œvisual band,'" says Jonathan Turner. "Unfortunately, their work couldn't be fully appreciated on an audio CD." But, Turner adds, "Maybe DVD can change that?" For visual music artists, as technology expands, so does their palette. As breathtaking as Hextatic's Rewind is, Warren-Hill has bigger plans. "It would be good to achieve a level of ability where any sound could be represented by an image in three dimensions rather than two," he explains, "When combined with a narrative, possibilities of sensory fulfillment would be unimaginable."

MIXMASTERS: VJs Mix It Live (Teil I) (will get english version)

Holly Willis Der Autor Simon Reynolds beschreibt die aktuelle elektronische Dance/Club Szene als »digital Dionysian derangement« (digitale dionysische Verwirrung). Man wird kaum einen passenderen Ausdruck finden, denn er trägt mehr als nur der Musikszene Rechnung. Die Suche nach einer nahezu flüssigen und sinnlichen Zerstreuung, der eine unaufhörliche Vorwärts-Beschleunigung entgegenwirkt, das Gefühl einer totalen Auflösung in eine Gemeinschaft, die durchdringende Erfahrung von Bewegung und überschwenglichem, ekstatischem Sichtreibenlassen, all das sind Einflussfaktoren für »image makers«. Viele von ihnen wenden sich dem »live video mixing« zu, und zwar als Reaktion auf den Bereich der elektronischen Musik, der das traditionelle Format Musikvideo ohne Begeisterung aufnimmt, aber auch als Ausdruck einer Kultur, die sich dem »sampling«, »mixing« und der Performance verschrieben hat.

Visual Music Das Bestreben, »visual music« zu erzeugen, hat eine Geschichte, die weit über die des Filmemachens hinausgeht. Der Filmexperte William Moritz merkt an, dass bereits im Jahr 1730 ein »okulares Cembalo« von einem Jesuitenpriester gebaut wurde, das aus einem in sechzig kleine Fenster unterteilten Holzrahmen bestand, der über ein herkömmliches Cembalo gesetzt wurde. Bei jedem Anschlag einer Taste erschien ein Fähnchen vor einem Fenster, und die BetrachterInnen nahmen ein rasches Aufblitzen einer Farbe war; im Zusammenspiel ergab das Aufblinken der Farben eine frühe Lichtshow. Die frühen abstrakten Animationen von Filmemachern wie Viking Eggeling (»Diagonal Symphony«) und Hans Richter (»Rhythmus 21«), in denen Musik von geometrischen Tänzen begleitet wurde, zählen ebenfalls zu den Versuchen, »visual music« zu erzeugen. Beginnend in den 30er Jahren, wurden diese Experimente in den abstrakten Filmen von Oskar Fischinger durch die Ergänzung von Farbe und Tiefe zu einer neuen Qualität geführt. Einige Jahre später kamen mit John und James Whitney Computer hinzu, und schließlich entstanden abstrakte Computeranimationen, die wiederum mit Musik gleichgeschaltet wurden.

In den 60er Jahren wuchs das Interesse an einer Überschneidung von Computer, Musik und Bildern; eine Menge von Bild/Ton-Performances wurde live an beiden US-Küsten gezeigt. Die 70er Jahre brachten mit Gene Youngblood Überlegungen eines »expanded cinema«, sein gleichnahmiges Buch widmet sich dem kinästhetischen Filmemachen, das leidenschaftliche und fühlbare im Gegensatz zu rein visuellen Filmen umschließt. Das Experimentieren der Filmemacher ging noch weiter. In Japan kreierten Künstler beispielsweise ein zur psycheledischen Musik passendes Kino, indem sie mit farbigen Ölen gefüllte Plastikbeutel auf der Innenseite der Projektorausgänge montierten. Durch ihr Zusammendrücken während der Live-Events wurden strukturlose, an Flüssigkeiten erinnernde Formen, Blasen und Strukturen geschaffen; diese wilde »visual music« war perfekt auf die Ära abgestimmt. Im Jahr 1981 kam schließlich MTV; aber dies sind nur die Vorläufer. Wirklich durchzustarten begann die VJ Szene in den frühen 90er Jahren mit den Live-Shows der »guerrilla media artists«, bekannt als Emergency Broadcast Network (Josh Pearson, Gardner Post, Greg DeoCampo und Ron O'Donnell). Sie verwendeten ein spezielles »tele-podium«, auf dem TV Monitore, Laser und Licht montiert wurden. Indem sie mehrere Projektoren und zwei von DeoCampo (der an der Entwicklung der Adobe-Software »After Effects« beteiligt war) kreierte »video sampler« hinzufügten, improvisierten sie während der Performances unter Verwendung verschiedenster Videos und Sounds, mit dem Ziel, vielschichtige und politisch orientierte Sound/Bild-Mischungen zu schaffen. Im Jahr 1992 gab EBN eine 30-minütige Video Compilation mit dem Titel »Commercial Entertainment Product« heraus. Letztere ist eine dichte und höchst begehrte Collage aus zugeschnittener Metaphorik und einem »sound mix«, der sarkastisch und subversiv wirken soll. EBN hatte sofortige und anhaltende Auswirkungen. Die Gruppe wirkte nicht nur bei der Entwicklung von »culture jamming« mit, sondern inspirierte auch VideokünstlerInnen, »video mixing« als eigene Kunstform zu sehen. Generation VJ Die aktuelle VJ-Szene ist politisch, national und ästhetisch gespalten. In Japan, das verglichen mit den USA ein Vorreiterland im Hinblick auf Technologie und spartenübergreifendes Bewusstsein ist, werden VJs verehrt. Naohiro Ukawa bezeichnet sich selbst als »the media rapist« (Medien-Vergewaltiger) und gilt als erster Künstler, der in den frühen 90er Jahren »visuals« in japanische Clubs brachte. Die Gründung von Prince Tongha, bestehend aus Pierr Taki von Denki Groove (Techno-Gruppe aus Tokio) und dem Designer Hideyuki Tanaka wurde vom Besitzer eines Clubs namens Gold initiiert, der Tanaka einlud, »images« in den Club zu bringen. Er erinnert sich: »Als künstlerischer Leiter eines "indie fashion" - Labels machte ich Computergrafiken. Wir mischten diese Bilder, sampelten sie und spielten sie in Echtzeit während eines Events ab.« Das aufregende am VJing ist für Tanaka die Entwicklung einer neuen »visuellen Sprache«. »Ich glaube, dass es ein hohes Potenzial für die Entwicklung eines neuen Bewusstseins für hungarian umlautvisual imagery-- in Clubs gibt. Im Moment sind sie die aufregendsten unabhängigen Orte.« Für Quentaro »Nendo Ani« Fujimoto ist die Freude am VJing leicht erklärt: »Wenn ich in einem Nachtclub mit einem großen Projektor bin, werde ich jedes Mal high.« In den USA existieren mehrere VJ-Strömungen, die sich teilweise dadurch abgrenzen, wie sie ihre Beziehung zur Musik definieren. Laut Brian Dressel, Mitglied einer Dreipersonen-VJ-Gruppe namens OVT , steigert sich mit der Verwendung von »images« für viele VJs der Genuss am Groove der Musik; außerdem wollen sie die Schaffung eines Kinos, das auf den Sinnen basiert, vorantreiben. »Musik ist eine abstrakte Kunstform, und die Art von Videos, die wir produzieren, ist ebenfalls abstrakt - diese Kombination funktioniert wirklich.« Brien Rullman, ebenfalls Mitglied bei OVT , schätzt die kraftvolle Wirkung auf den Menschen, die das Mischen von abstrakten Bildern und Sounds erzeugt. »Ich bin fasziniert von der hypnotisierenden Komponente der Visuals. Ich interessiere mich für ihre Fähigkeit, einen Trancezustand herbeizuführen. Sie schicken dich auf eine Reise, und sie weben ein Netz um die Musik und die Umwelt.« Während OVT eher in Richtung von Techno-Events tendiert, werden laut Vello Virkhaus - dem dritten OVT-Mitglied - auch Visuals für verstärkt Rock-orientierte Gruppen produziert. OVT hat für eine Bandbreite von KünstlerInnenn wie James Brown, Ministry, Korn, Meat Beat Manifesto, Crystal Method, The Cramps und Psychic TV gearbeitet. Virkhaus meint: »Viele Rockbands sind mehr an Hintergrundvideos interessiert als daran, etwas wirklich Interaktives zu produzieren.« Andere KünstlerInnen interessieren sich für die Schaffung eines Dialogs zwischen Sound und Bild. Der in San Francisco lebende Videokünstler und Begründer von H-Gun Labs, Ben Stokes, stößt sich an dem Aspekt, den er als »video soup mixing« bezeichnet, wo es wenig Zusammenhang zwischen DJ und VJ gibt: »Hier werden nur massenhaft Bilder aufeinandergestapelt, sodass man nichts mehr sehen kann. Darauf stehe ich überhaupt nicht.« Er fährt fort: »Dann gibt es aber auch Leute, die viel komplexere Dinge hervorbringen. Hier werden das Visuelle und der Sound direkt aufeinander abgestimmt. Möglicherweise produziert die Person, die das Video schneidet, auch den Sound. Dies ist mein favorisiertes Gebiet; nämlich eher eine Multimedia-Show als eine VJ-Session zu machen. Man kann sagen, dass diese Art der Performance der heilige Gral des Video Sampling ist, das sich gerade jetzt etabliert.« Andere VJs schätzen in erster Linie den Aspekt einer Live-Performance: Jim Fetterly von der Gruppe Animal Charm meint dazu: »Wir hörten auf, >Single Channel Videos< zu machen, weil wir die Verantwortlichkeit für die Art ihrer Programmierung nicht hatten. Wir wollten imstande sein, so wie DJs auf das Publikum einzugehen, deshalb begannen wir mit den Live Acts.« Für Beq Stupak (aka Honeygun), die letztes Jahr mit dem VJing begann, steht eher der darstellerische Aspekt im Mittelpunkt: »Mich begeistert die Idee des formbaren Live-Videos, und mir gefällt der Gedanke, dass Menschen etwas betrachten, das sich direkt vor ihren Augen verändert.« Vello Virkhaus schließlich findet Gefallen am Erzeugen von Stimmungen, die das gesamte Publikum beeinflussen. MusikerInnen denken immer visueller, und FilmemacherInnen immer Musik-betonter, sodass die scharfe Abgrenzung zwischen Audio und Video sich verschiebt. Ein Beispiel dafür ist das Londoner Duo Hexstatic (Stuart Warren-Hill und Robin Brunson), das in unzähligen Clubs und bei verschiedensten »audio-visual art events« als VJ auftritt und verantwortlich für die Viedos zu Coldcuts »Beats and Pieces« und »Let Us Play« zeichnet. Im August 2000 unternahm das Duo mit der Fertigstellung eines »audio visual album« einen Vorstoß auf brandneues Terrain. Mit dem Album, das den Titel »Rewind« trägt, verfolgt Hexstatic sein Interesse am »image sampling«, fügt jedoch eigene Sounds hinzu und schafft einen blendenden Sound-Image-Mix mit einem zusätzlichen Tool, das UserInnen erlaubt, ihre eignen Mixes zu kreieren.

Holly Willis Bis vor kurzem waren Video-Mixer, die ein Abmischen in Echtzeit erlaubten, einfach zu teuer für den Durchschnittskünstler. Auch die Tools, die dem VJ ermöglichten, Clips auf einen Beat abzustimmen, wurden erst kürzlich entwickelt. Jetzt gibt es allerdings eine ansehnliche Reihe an günstigen Tools und Software, um FilmemacherInnen einen schnellen Zugriff auf Bilder zu verschaffen und das Mischen in Echtzeit abgestimmt auf Musik zu ermöglichen. Als Antwort darauf stieg die Zahl der KünstlerInnen und MusikerInnen an, die »image performances« machen, indem sie nach dem Vorbild der DJs, die mit Tracks spielen und sie neu kombinieren, spontan Visuals mischen. Die Tools Die Tools für »live mixing« haben sich allmählich im Laufe der letzten Dekade entwickelt und sind nun relativ leistbar (obwohl viele VJs die neueste in Japan erhältliche Technologie herbeisehnen). Eines der bevorzugten Tools ist der VidVox-Prophet; dieses QuickTime-Videosampling-Programm funktioniert mit einem MIDI-Keyboard, dessen Tasten jeweils einzelenen Videoclips zugeordnet sind. »Mit dem Tonhöhenregler kann man Bilder vor- und zurückspulen, vergleichbar mit dem Scratching eines DJs«, erklärt der Videokünstler Ben Stokes, der VidVox für seine VJ Events verwendet. Eine ähnliche Vorrichtung wird derzeit von MX Works entwickelt. Das System heißt MediaXstasy und erlaubt dem VJ (oder dem von der Firma gerne so bezeichneten »Me-J«), Echtzeit-Visuals zu schaffen, indem verschiedenste Clip-Variationen mit einem Keyboard verbunden werden; zusätzliche Suchfunktionstasten ermöglichen, Images über mehrere Bildschirme zu steuern. »Es gibt dir das Gefühl zu fliegen«, sagt einer der Entwickler des Systems namens Val, der anmerkt, dass KünstlerInnen in Kürze den sofortigen Zugang zu 50 Clips mit geringem oder gar keinem Zeitintervall zwischen Abruf und Abspielen haben werden. Die ursprünglich fokusierte Zielgruppe von MX Works waren eher größere Clubs und MusikerInnen als VideokünstlerInnen. »Madonna wird es verwenden«, sagt Val überschwenglich. Mit dem Aufkommen des V-5 Video Mixers (Roland) fand Beq Stupak ihre neue Berufung zum VJ. »Es handelt sich um einen Mixer mit MIDI-Interface, sodass man das Tempo an die hohen Geschwindigkeiten von Techno- und Trance-Beats anpassen kann«, erklärt sie. Die Equipment-Liste von Stupak, die oft mit demselben DJ arbeitet, ist insgesamt kurz gehalten. »Ich komme meist mit ein paar MiniDV-Playern, dem kleinen Roland-Mixer, einer Drummachine, einem Kabelbündel und ungefähr 90 Bändern.« Stupak zeigt viel von ihrem eigenen Material, verwendet aber auch einiges an gefundenen Filmmetern. »Ich habe die Blöcke im vorhinein gebaut und kombiniere sie auf verschiedene Weisen.« Stupak arbeitet mit zwei Playern, die beide mit dem Mixer verbunden sind. Jedes ihrer Tapes beinhaltet fünf- oder zehn-minütige Sequenzen. »Meine Bänder sind nach dem Flow-Prinzip organisiert«, sagt sie, »während einer Show habe ich für gewöhnlich alle meine Tapes rings um mich aufgereiht, und ich beginne mit einem Band; wenn die Musik sich aufzubauen beginnt, blende ich allmählich ein anderes Tape ein; dann verändere ich die Farben oder füge einen >chroma key< hinzu, und sobald ich merke, dass ein Band bereits alt aussieht, bringe ich ein anderes Tape; es gibt keinen Stillstand, ich bearbeite und mische die Bänder ständig; alles kommt exakt im richtigen Moment, nichts darf zu lange bleiben; wenn das Publikum den Durchblick hat, funktioniert es nicht.« Für die notorischen A/V-Cutup-Artists und Begründer von Coldcut, Jonathan More und Matt Black, erforderte VJing die Entwicklung einer eigenen Software, nämlich VJamm; dieses Tool ermöglicht den Usern, Sound mit der gleichen Leichtigkeit wie Images zu mischen. Coldcut verwenden die Software bei ihren Live-Shows. 1999 gab das Duo eine Version des Programms auf dem Remixalbum »Let Us Replay« heraus. Danach veröffentlichte Coldcut die vollständige Version auf der Ninjatune-Website; in der Folge wurde diese Version im American Museum of Moving Images permanent in dessen »Interactive Games Room« ausgestellt. Andere VJs probieren noch wildere Tools aus. Ein Mitglied des holländischen VJ-Teams Double Impact namens DJ Arlos sagt, dass seine Gruppe live Kompositionen im Blue Screen-Verfahren umsetzt. »Unsere Stärke liegt in unseren Performances - alles ist live, und wir suchen die Interaktion mit der Musik nicht nur unter Berücksichtigung des Beats, sondern auch des Texts«, erklärt er. »Wir verwenden zwei PCs, drei Video-Decks, zwei Mixer und Videokameras mit Blue Screens; einer der beliebtesten Aspekte ist der Blue Screen, auf dem wir manchmal zwischen den Shows Leute mit >chroma keying< und verschiedenen Effekten einblenden; es gefällt uns, Leute zu sehen, die Spaß daran haben, virtuelles Tanzen auzuprobieren.« The Look, the Feel, the Future Während die grundlegende Technik aller VJs gleich ist, gibt es doch einen riesigen Unterschied zwischen ihrer Ästhetik und den Orten, an denen sie arbeiten. Einige bevorzugen Raves, wie zum Beispiel Vello Virkhaus, der als VJ auf Raves vor 30.000 Leuten aufgetreten ist. Stupak arbeitet für gewöhnlich in »sweaty clubs«, wogegen Animal Charm intellektuellere Auftritte in Galerien oder sogar Museen absolviert. Was das Aussehen betrifft, wenden sich einige VJs dem Techno-Organischen zu. Brien Rullman (OVT) kontrastiert beispielsweise viele natürliche mit technischen Strukturen. »Ich habe Wasser mit Microchips«, sagt er, »oder Unterwasserkreaturen mit sehr technisch-orientiertem Zeug; ich bearbeite und filtere mein Material auch am Computer und hungarian umlautbeschlagnahme-- welche Bilder auch immer mir ins Auge stechen.« Das Material von Stupak ist extrem schnell geschnitten und beinhaltet oft Bilder mit Frauen von manchmal seltsamer Gestalt, sodass sie sonderbar geformten weiblichen Monstern ähneln. Das Filmmaterial von Animal Charm löst für gewöhnlich Momente des Wiedererkennens aus, da gerne alte Bänder recycelt werden, indem diese in einem unheimlichen Nebeneinander zusammengeschnitten werden. Virkhaus unterliegt verschiedensten Einflüssen wie Nam June Paik oder tibetanischer Kunst, um das, was er einen abstrakten, futuristischen, surrealistischen Remix nennt, zu kreieren. In Zukunft werden viele VJs fortfahren, sich eine noch bessere Umgebung auszudenken, um das Gefühl des Eintauchens zu vermitteln; zum Beispiel mittels Räumen, die von Bildschirmen in 360 Grad-Anordnung umgeben sind. Andere VJs wie MX Works hoffen darauf, dass Künstlervereinigungen gegründet werden, die Online-Bilder gemeinsam nutzen. »Wir sind gerade mit der Gründung der sogenannten Media Farm beschäftigt«, sagt Marc Benjamin und merkt an, dass die Firma auf die gemeinsame Nutzung von Clip-Variationen via Internet hofft. Aber für viele zählt lediglich, die Kontrolle über den Mix zu haben. So meint etwa Beq Stupak: »Auf einige Shows kommen all diese Highschool-Kids, die MTV schauen; und sofort gibt es ein Verständnis für Filmemachen und Kommunikation. Der Unterschied ist aber, dass ich die Show mache. Meine Stimme ist unabhängig und nicht vereinnahmbar.«


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