In an interview with Eduardo Kac, Nam June Paik, Korean-born American artist, considered to be the first video artist, stated that the relationship between art and new technology is as old as art. He considered the Egyptian Pyramids as the combination of high art and high tech. There will always be visionaries in the artistic endeavors incorporating new technology of his or her times. MTV’s approach to image and music is interesting and popularized “visual music” in the entertainment culture. Nam June Paik give credits to artist like Laurie Anderson, a fine artist, performer, musician whose multimedia work has been a catalyst bridging high culture and popular culture. He claimed that the new technology of today can be and will be used artistically in two basic ways: in the fine arts and in the applied arts, and the line is blurred. The VJ community is divided into two basic groups. The artistic VJ, who typically does not call him or herself a VJ, but prefers the term media artist, practicing in the realm of fine arts, and the club VJs who traditionally have played second fiddle to the DJ’s in the club culture. There is a rift emerging between the traditional VJs and the new breed of media artists.
As I read many of the essays from Vague Terrain, an appropriate title, I am intrigued by the theoretical and philosophical discourse surrounding the real-time audiovisual performance. VJ or Veejay is a derivative term from DJ or deejay. The meaning of VJing has changed from individuals hired as TV hosts presenting music videos on MTV of the early eighties to media artists in real-time mixing sounds, visuals, light, audience and space at present. The definitions are as varied as the individual performers themselves. VJing incorporates many more practices than just video mixing; furthermore, wanting to be seen as representing modernity, art and style in the 21st century by the practitioners themselves. In her essay, VJ Theory, Ana Carvalho writes, “The term visual performer, describes practitioners working in live cinema, interactive installations, gallery performances, guerrilla interventions and club performances.” Words like hybridity and crossovers are often associated with the practice. In other words, the performers or practitioners are typically multi-disciplinary, non-conforming and working outside of the box. Looping through cyberspace at times, they see themselves on the cutting edge of mixing art and technology at a time when cultural materials have never been as readily available to the general public as it is now with the help of the almighty Internet, the network of networks. Like any emerging artistic endeavor, media artists’ practice is being defined and challenged at the same time. In his article, Last night a video band killed my DJ, Ryan Stec writes, “Currently, VJs have an exceptional collective knowledge of technology and have developed a clear understanding of how to augment the sonic experience for the audience. What is struggling to be understood is our role within the performance and how we might become the performance itself?”
Why the struggle? Ryan Stec again asks the question, “How does a VJ cultivate this performance side of his or her work? The more important question is whether the VJ, media artist, wants to dominate the live cinema that engages vs. allowing the audience to consume the experience. In the latter case, performance then takes on the “wallpaper” dilemma. Michael Betancourt examines the fine line between wallpaper visualizations vs. performance practice in Wallpaper And/as Art. Context is crucial. When a VJ performance or live cinema is set in a gallery/theater, it engages the audience and is customarily viewed as art. In the club setting, a non-art venue, VJ performances takes a back seat. The audio-visual mix on screen, however artistic it may be, becomes a “wallpaper” visual experience. The audience dominates and consumes the performance. There seems to be a real need on the media artist’s part wanting recognition for their techno skills. No doubt that artistic and technical expertise are required on the VJ or media artist’s part during their unique real-time performance. I suppose aside from creating Cubism, Picasso should also have demanded recognition for his brushwork. The need for many VJs wanting to establish themselves as performance artists because of their ability to maneuver electronic equipments seems superfluous.
Michael Betancourt writes, “Art can be transformed into wall paper, just as wallpaper can be transformed into art.” Although, the club VJ often considered second fiddle to the DJ, is very much like a film director, stays behind the scenes. The focal point of the VJing is the screen as it should be since the goal is to create synaesthesia, where the audience is engrossed in the totality of a sensory experience. Carrie Gates states, “The senses are enveloped and the mind is tantalized into a world being spun into existence on the spot. Perhaps it is this feeling of immediacy and immersion that is so rewarding for performers and audiences alike. Perhaps it is the intense bombardment of the senses that does it. Or perhaps it is the richness of the dialogue between technology, spatial architecture, and human expression that speaks to us so powerfully.”
This brings me to the introduction of VDMX by David Fodel. The software is amazing. The limitless potential of mixing audio and video is absolutely overwhelming. For any artists who might have the slightest inkling of wanting to work in time-based medium, it is like having a magic wand creating amazing humanly impossible special effects. The danger is that sometimes, the results obtained from manipulating software can be so far fetched and detached from reality that I wonder if we are really gaining anything? Just because we have unlimited access to technology, technology does not create artists. Is the latest thing always the best thing? Are we just blindly following fashion trends regardless of our body shapes? By overly depending on electronic devices, we are sacrificing our sensibilities as artists. In 1983, MTV was criticized for feeding its zombie-like viewers with endless doses of sugarcoated mindless garbage. MTV has greatly reduced its overall rotation of music video because of the Internet, the void I believe, has been taken up by a good portion of arbitrary art seen on the net.
In contrast to arbitrarily composed work, I enjoyed viewing professor Phil Solomon’s experimental video mixing gaming software and cinema. He is less concerned with the performance aspect but more interested in engaging the audience to experience his creation as he intends. His observation of the new paradigm, “the world is full of one-liners, superficial and immediate” is thought provoking. How do we balance the ease and the immediacy with which vast interactive materials are at ones fingertip, linking otherwise disconnected cultural data, and to transform and create work that is fluid, interconnected and relative, is hopefully the goal of every artist no matter the medium.
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