For many years, decades even, VJ culture epitomised the beat-based interplay between video jockey and DJ performance in a club setting. With his projections, displayed on a basic screen behind the DJ desk, the VJ would augment the night’s experience with visual collages and animations selected to match the music. Well, visual culture has come a long way since these early days of VJing. And it is no longer considered the humble cousin in the DJ’s shadow: More often than not, today’s visual artists surprise and delight us with an audio-visual performance of their own. And these illuminating contents might leave the safe haven of the club – to conquer digital media and our smartphones.

From party to artwork

The term VJ or video jockey was originally introduced by the club scene to distinguish these particular visual wizards from run-of-the-mill video artists. First coined in the late 70s, possibly at New York’s seminal Peppermint Lounge, the monicker reflected an age that served as a precursor for today’s club culture. Back then, VJs would experiment with lighting and mirrors to conjure up a certain mood or atmosphere and give the DJ direct audience feedback. At legendary nightspots like Studio 54, this approach went on to transform humble parties into overall works of art.

Real-time revolution

Thanks to the accelerating evolution of intriguing technologies, the scene soon evolved in leaps and bounds. While many visual artists worked with VHS tapes or Super-8 reels between the early 80s and the mid-90s, the subsequent dissemination of digital technology allowed them to introduce found footage and their own graphics or animations into the visual melange – taken straight from the artist’s hard drive and then mixed in to match the beat. What’s more, real-time rendering gave on-the-ball VJs the magic opportunity to draw live visuals from a huge range of different sources and slip them straight into their mix.

Open source potential

“Today’s ubiquity of open source tools enables visual artists to simply develop their own applications and thus define their own look. Nowadays, there are a lot more options and opportunities to create visuals and turn them into a performance,“ explains German-born and London-based visual artist Max Hattler. With his own Hattlerizer application, designed to play visuals like an instrument, he choreographs and performs improvised concerts. Well-known for his graphic abstractions, Hattler favours eclectic audio-visual collaborations with musicians and producers ranging from Diplo all the way to Basement Jaxx. Taken to its extreme and logical conclusion, this might result in repetitive, mantra-esque animations like 1923 aka Heaven, created as part of a workshop with film students. However, this fascinating clip reveals only one side of his varied output: Hattler’s animated short AANAATT, featuring music by Jemapur, transforms the ceiling into the canvas of an animated collage and clearly pays homage to the tradition of 1920s German film-maker and visual art pioneer Oskar Fischinger.

3D video mapping

Fellow visual artist and Londoner Memo Akten also loves to explore new technologies and considers them a starting point for projection experiments. “I am always on the lookout for a system that can produce visuals and sound simultaneously. This is on everyone’s mind who works in the audio-visual field”, states Akten. To this end, he not only programmes his own software, but also works with several different 3-D applications. In August, he took part in the Curtain Call event at London’s Roundhouse, where Israeli star designer Ron Arad had invited fellow artists to use 5,600 thin silicone rods, suspended in a circle, as a 360-degree projection surface. Akten rose to the challenge with a custom, sound-reactive video mapping project, Simple Harmoni, based on these unpredictable and swinging 3-D objects. While their movements created complex patterns, these in turn were used as an input to create sound.

From stage to iPhone

This concept of simultaneous sound and vision generation is one also favoured by artist Ali Demirel and Canadian techno producer Richie Hawtin. Born and raised in Istanbul, Demirel now lives and works in New York and Berlin – and has been creating visuals for Hawtin, or the producer’s better known alter ego Plastikman, for the last decade. Together, the duo tackle the tricky concept of perfectly synchronised audio, video and lightning elements for this autumn’s Plastikman world tour and an accompanying iPhone app.
To this end, Demirel designed a semi-circular cage constructed from transparent LED panels. “I use the screens’ transparency to create an interplay between different layers and dimensions in the assembled LED wall.” And while these panels display Demirel’s custom visuals, they also afford a glimpse of the Plastikman performance beyond. In addition, special lighting elements illuminate the panels themselves, but also the area inside the cage and to section behind the LED object. So, when the light falls on the foreground only the LED graphics are visible. Once the focus shifts to the background, Richie Hawtin is thrown into stark relief. And when a spotlight captures the performer himself, his shadow takes over the screen behind. “This combination of different layers creates an intriguing, three-dimensional interplay of images and shadows,” explains Demirel. And there is even more to these visuals: Jumping straight from the stage to smaller screens, Plastikman’s iPhone app Synk (developed by R.J. Fischer and Bryan McDade) augments the live performance with a synaesthetic translation that changes live sounds into coloured elements on the smartphone screen or transforms voice samples into text messages. When users select a specific word, it shows up on Plastikman’s stage monitor and is reintegrated into the track. (See Plastikman and Ali Demirel at this year’s Sonar Festival in Barcelona.

Like most modern-day visual artists, Demirel uses technology as a tool and playground for experiments and innovations. At the same time, these new technologies also leave their mark on the work environment. Today’s visual artists might use interactive pen tablets or iPad apps to control their audio-visual performance from within a heaving crowd. And in the near future, a simple wagged finger or wave of the hand might be more than enough to trigger a bona fide audio-visual onslaught – with movement-based game controllers like the Kinect already paving the way.

Further information:

Max Hattler
www.maxhattler.com

Memo Akten
www.memo.tv

Ali Demirel
www.magnetmus.net