To automate or not to automate?
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.
thanks for this ilan.. you got me thinking..hmm
damn me too
I just made some tiny modifications to this post having written it in a flash. McLuhan’s exact phrase was ‚the medium is the message.‘ This is also true but only when it is adhered too, not necessarily in a rigid manner. The modified phrase was an effort, from what I could interpret, by a certain groups within the early 90’s digirati, to remind the public that technology was only a means to and end. The last time I heard anyone state this clearly only to have it fall on dead ears was Brendan from VJ Theory.
My sense was that Brendan tried somewhat to harness the chaos of developments into a cohesive ideology of a media revolution. But perhaps the revolution is just that. An unaware amalgam of functions barreling towards oblivion without any common awareness.
These things are always on my mind. I don’t tend to write them down publicly because I assume these things are being written down somewhere with all the academic activity that appears to be going on in live media studies.
Although to be completely honest from my little experience in meeting and talking with people involved with live media in academia one gets the sense that they too are overwhelmed by the blinding hype or sink into the doze inducing rhetoric. Hmmm… kind of like this comment.
The paraphrase and flipping the meaning of McLuhan’s medium is the message ( or massage as he sometimes said it) is interesting without even it’s Freudian nuances. The slip perhaps itself is an indication of a longing for meaning where none is no longer available under electronic conditions. At least meaning as we once knew it.
The two requirements to hold attention are a remnant it seems from a pre-electronic time of visual and aural space sensibility -give me the past that I might make meaning of the present situation. The overwhelmness is the discarnate self looking for his/her body. The figure without a ground, I think.
A wonderfully abstract musing.
Sure, the rules electronic media are completely different from those of analog media. I am talking about our relationship to these media and I am mainly concerned about where we stand in relationship to the images produced by human beings using this electronic world. As it is the electronic world is still very much reliant upon us and how we perceive it.
As I recall Tarkovsky used paintings in his films because he believed, in a most poetic gesture, that audiences were still disoriented by the presence of film as an artistic medium.
the question of automation has always been put forward as a solution to liberating the human soul from dreary and repetative work.. letting the machines operate themselves allows us more time to be what we are – humans, with a need to create, interact and seek pleasure. so what happens when your desire to create, interact and seek pleasure is sourced from(/with) a machine? interesting result. in this case i think it is clear. automation can allow the visual artist more artistic freedom, by taking care of certain tasks and allowing their human capacity to extend beyond the small details required to simpy run the operation. but, if its a hit the space bar and go home scenario, obviously the job is no longer providing any joy to the artist and is in fact dehumanising them.. in which case the obvious and most palatable solution is to allow the machine to take over.
Whatever it is, that keeps you active behind the screen, for me it comes down to a phrase which I read once on a partyflyer… „If you do drugs – don´t let the drugs do you.“
This sentence is appropriate to the software and the person behind the tool… it´s a thin line between artistic freedom, entertainment and the peoples mind we are dealing with. And also still a lot vjs dont know their tools good enough …but that´s another theme … but I found a real interesting article concerning this theme. So check this pdf for a good nonhuman/human dispute:
http://archives.arte.tv/static/u6/arte_art/robotlab/presse_ROBOTLAB_VA.pdf
cheers!
being a graph and chart porn lover, i imagine a two dimensional chart with the x-axis labelled „approach“ ranging from „technocratic“ to „aestetic“ and the y-axis labelled „motivation“ ranging from „love“ to „reason“ and you could probably locate almost every VJ on such a map. The „space bar hitter“ would be the reasonable technocrat, the „fader slapper“ a passionate geek.
among us there are many „loving technocrats“ out there – all the nerds who spend hours on their patches, solder their controllers or code amazing generative beauty. the technocratic approach may be criticized as not having a message and hardly any content but it definetly is beautiful and fascinating. at the same time, the output of the „aesthete maniacs“ might me out of sync quite often, or the heavy content too sophisticated.
like lucy mentioned before, automation does not necessarily mean a lack of aestetic passion, but can mean the extension of human capacity. it’s about putting your love into the automation and not letting the automation take over your passion.
two of my friends are musicians – one is the absolute expert in music theory and technically versed, he produces a lot, perfectly mixed and arranged. another friend has hardly any idea about music theory, he can handle his tools quite well and produces a lot, mostly unfinished and unmixed. but guess what: his shit is a lot groovier and he’s a lot more popular than the other guy, because he puts all his love, his soul and sleepless nights into his music…i think this phenomenon can be applied to live-video artists as well.
it really is the y-axis that’s more important. irrational passion and love for what you’re doing. mahalo!
what an intellectual deep sharing of thoughts is going on here!
I have the same point of view like k-Flux.
we could take a look to the light-design-development and we will see: at the beginning (1968?) they didn’t have any automation-tools and so everything was live. the lightinstallation and the mixing. today we have only a very small number of light-mixers, who are working really live (f.i. lars from Tresor or the guy from Panoramabar opening in the right moment the window shade/ jalousie) – 99 % are „programming“ the pult before the party and have a perfect hit-the-space-bar-and-go-home-scenario. thats why the light is always and everywhere so boring and uninspirational. no human input and no reaction to the ongoing atmosphere in the club.
and we have the same development in our vj-business. this makes me a bit sad.
(sorry for my english.:)
e
Brilliant