This is Addictive TV’s selection of under-exposed VJs. We asked each of them to talk a little about what they’re up to, where they feel the scene is at, and divulge a little of their performance technique.

Vitascope

The way I see it the club scene has changed a lot in the last few years, and unless you are prepared to either run your own club night, or get co-opted full time into someone else’s dream, it can be quite difficult.

VJs used to make up for the fact that DJs are pretty boring to watch, but I’ve noticed that many clubs have live acts now due to the resurgence of live music, so the VJ has had to seek new avenues for their art.

Back in the 90s not so many people could get their hands on the equipment, but these days you can just get your mate down with the visualzer from iTunes and get some visuals going in about 10 seconds. That’s changed the market a lot.

At the moment it seems you need to be applying for media arts related grants that don’t really accept that all we are doing is partying with pictures. You end up making up a load of guff about your good time stuff, or playing at media arts/VJ contests at which everyone is sitting down chin stroking, which is not why I got into VJing.

I have found myself writing songs on my guitar and getting a band together and not really worrying, and maybe doing some free parties to keep my hand in. Though having said that, it was a great experience doing Optronica last year, plus I got invited to the Stockholm arm of Pixelvark last October.

But those were the only 2 gigs I did last year. At the moment I’m sitting on my stuff and developing slowly whilst doing lots of other things. I am always up for the gig - I have a mass of stuff that has only rarely been seen outside Glasgow. For the moment I’m just happy to not be sitting on a speaker stack getting battered twice a week. I have a gig lined up at a possible party in Durness (the most northern village in the UK!) in July at some time. I just got knocked back from Scottish arts council for a 16mm loops/maxMSP project, so thinking on basically…

My own work has moved mainly on-line now as it allows for interaction with the viewer/user directly. It also seems to be a free space a bit like clubs were to me a while back. I am still exploring how image and sound connect but have moved some of it into real life using digital photography and Flash software to create audiovisual “instruments”.

For more check www.instantactionobject.org for more.

Exceeda

So where do I think the VJ scene is going? Well for a start it’s definitely growing and growing, I’ve been active in this area for a while and it’s very exciting to see the visual/sonic art thing mushrooming into an entity of it’s own. There has been a long, ongoing quest to perfect this stimulation for centuries, and now it’s kind of ubiquitous among the general public.

One big step was to name one of its specific forms VJing. Hopefully this will develop as a wider creative art structure under which will live different styles and different groups, from the more commercial market to the abstract independent, from the professional to the enthusiast, and each one of those will be fully recognized within its own genre. Following closely behind Serato, I reckon it won’t be long before some integrated sound and picture “i-see” or “garageband:AV” programs hit the market.

On a more technical level, I think the format of screens as we know them will become increasingly become obsolete, with free spaces and boundless surfaces taking their place. This will fuel a fiercer and beneficial cutting edge competition.

I’m currently in the throes of completing a DVD which will be released through Addictive - It’s a quirky take on different styles of music and atypical classic films. I’m also developing PLATFORM:X - a multi-screen project based around archive footage from 1930 to 1985, featuring live video sampling and jazz musicians.

All this alongside directing image pieces and station branding for Nickelodeon and editing and graphics on adverts and broadcast projects for Channel4 and the Discovery channel!

For more check www.exceeda.co.uk

Milosh

VJing is getting more mature – audiences are no longer satisfied with a mashup of decorative aesthetic effects. For me the real interest is in AVE performances and performance and installations. These really explore the relations between sound, image, space and time. It’s all about trying to develop new concepts of narration.

At the same time experiments with real time processing and VJing border with interactive installation and give interesting effects. Showbusiness and advertising both use a lot of video - VJs can find a lot of job opportunities if they have easy to use and flexible performance techniques.

My VJing technique is really linked to my broader artistic activities. Very often in my VJ sets I use elements, sketches or pieces of images which are not natively VJ loops. Generally my artistic activities are what I call ‘intermedia’. Some elements and some ideas pass through many different phases and media. They find their place in many different contexts and projects.

My setup depends the most on whether I’m responsible for just the video or video and sound. I find the latter is much more demanding, but also much more interesting.

For video I use a PC laptop running electronica live, 2 or 3 DVD players ( DVJX1 still the best) and my own DVDs, authored as little samplers. For video mixers I use the MX 50, V4 or AVM02. The KAOSS PAD video is a very cool device too, particularly as a sampler for AV sets.

I’m currently working on a concert, a kind of fusion of Mozart and Egyptian music. The video will be very big – a 48 X 6 meters screen on the stage. Technically it’s a challenge! The performance is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I’m also working on a personal experimental project called “PARACHORA”, a series of abstract videos in the form of water bulb with music of some contemporary experimentalists from France, Poland, China and Japan.

For more check www.myspace.com/milosh_vj

Bauhouse

Ever since organizing our first party in Berlin together as Bauhouse in 1995 we have continually worked as producers for audiovisual performances and installations as well as image films and commercials.

We create all our performances, installations and design work as ‘collage on a beat’. It’s a matter of remixing media in general, not just film. The pictures we use don’t give the audience any strict narrative. Rather, their meaning enters into a dialogue with the way they are sequenced rhythmically.

Music and rhythm is what gives our footage a new context. Images provoke music and music provokes images - we play both the same way. From our point of view this approach to audiovisual performances is very important. It’s different to other VJs or DJ/VJ bands.

We have a roughly structured set that we broaden week by week, just like DJs do, manipulating ‘real pictures’ from TV, film, advertising and material created ourselves.

From our perspective the VJ scene is stagnant at the moment. Only a few artists want to get new answers to future aspects of audiovisual structures. With our created software we are able to play audiovisuals like jazz bands play instruments together. We always want to develop the interchange between audio and video. You can see this approach in our films and installations as well as in our performances.

In the end of 2007 we had the first show of our new audiovisual performance ‘Triptych’ in Buenos Aires and beyond this we composed and developed in co-operation with Audi Germany the performance project ‘Symphony’. We were in charge of Audi´s audiovisual brand with several film, commercial and music productions. We bought together an orchestra and topics like speed, nature, man-machine, technique, media and Germany live and audiovisually on an abstract stage.

Three screens hang next to each other like a triptych. We stand under one screen and control the video sequences as drum and music patterns. This set up includes up to 40 musicians interacting with us and playing our composed music parts in combination with our audiovisual rhythmic elements. At this stage of our audiovisual projects the ‘Symphony’ is the perfect audiovisual concert composition. In 2007 we had three concerts in Paris, Buenos Aires and Vilnius.

For more check www.bauhouse.de