This is a question I ask myself when it comes to visuals. There are several degrees of this in the video projection world. Some are the ‘automate everything so I can press a space bar and go home,’ to my more preferred mode of operation of ‘I will stand here and hit the cross fader all night to the beat of the music.’

I recently watched ‘Terminator: Salvation’ which I believe to be the pre-prequels to the Matrix trilogy in that the ‘Terminator’ years were the early phases of this war between man and machine and the idea popped into my head that a small scale version of this unfolds in the non-existent arguments between the different approaches to visuals.

It’s kind of interesting that the ‘space bar’ approach tends to be more financially driven whereas the ‘slapping the x-fader’ approach tends to be in a more artistic vein. The pragmatic vs. fantastic.

Usually for my tastes if the video in a ‘party space’ is live I tend to get lost in the experience of the space, my mind wandering between the people, the drinks, the music and then then back to the visuals. From my experience in bars where a TV is often spouting away whatever its got be the news, a music video or movie show I tend to get sucked into the image and people will have to break my attention from it. If the VJ of the night is using material from television or film I tend to not have the same experience as I would with such material in a bar because VJs are very often looping the clips.

The following requirements would probably hold my attention:

1) The video would have to be tightly integrated with the music both rhythmically and lyrically.

2) The physical presence of the VJ would have to be either amplified visually via a camera feed or by their mere presence that integrates something theatrical.

This brings to me the question of awareness. How much are we aware of what is ‘artificial.’ At the end of ‘Terminator: Salvation’ John Conner states that the difference between humans and machines is that humans have the capacity to love. I can say with certainty that I did not feel much love when I finished watching ‘Terminator: Salvation.’ Did someone press the ‘space bar’ when they made it? And when a movie or film does provide a real emotional impact it is not up to the projectionist how the film is performed. The sequences of images and sounds were programmed to evoke those emotions within us. Always this returns us to the modified and often repeated, McLuhan inspired phrase ‘it’s not the media, it’s the message.’

I am not really interested in conclusions. I find these to be rather dry, exhaustion rather then inspiration. The inspiration can come in the freedom of knowing that what should matter more then anything is what someone is trying to say. If you have nothing to say you will not likely have a long lasting impact. If you are not interested in an impact of any length you might actually be better off with the freedom of expressing whatever it is that makes you tick in the moment regardless of others opinions.

I sometimes think that this is at the core of what VJing is.