“Live” Visuals

VJ’ing stems from “Projection Design,” a term chosen by scenic artists to refer to designers who worked with film and video projectors in theatre. The title has since grown beyond the technical. It now includes LED fixtures, TV monitors, computer screens, interactive visual instruments, Pepper's Ghosts and Eyeliners to creative holographic images, and so on. Our field now generally involves putting an image on the stage that is ephemeral and changeable.

The input and output of your images will have a great influence on content, context, aesthetics, and meaning. It is also a great way to play with “practical” effects, by having the materiality of the “screen” and/or the inherent aesthetics of the input device help further define your art.

Input To Output

In this lesson we will explore the three most basic parts of our VJ toolkit – inputs, filters and outputs.

• The inputs, or sources, are the materials that contain the content of our work, whether they be pre-rendered files, live feeds or real-time computer generated visuals.

• This imagery is then processed by “filters” also commonly known as effects or FX, which modify the stream of pictures to change the aesthetics and overall feeling associated with them.

• Finally the result is sent to a place where it can be viewed, output to a screen, projector, a movie file on a hard drive or streamed to the Internet.

One of the most powerful aspects of working with “live” video is the ability to experiment with the addition of live-camera feeds into your project. Consider how the live presence of your face/body influences the meaning of your imagery. You are now part of the subject matter, so consider your relationship to the pre-existing forms.

Responsiveness

VJ’ing design is a cybernetic art form; we are essentially creating a visual instrument. The goal of many visual performers is to have a close and immediate interface with computers, to make them expressive. Their goal is to use these machines to emote, thereby making the computer's presence invisible.

For live performance, particularly for live music, the element of improvisation and responsiveness matches the energy and ephemeral quality of the performance in a way that pre-rendered and cued/time coded imagery cannot.

In addition, the imagery and its delivery systems (playback software, MIDI controllers, analog mixers, and so on) can be refined and tweaked over time, similar to way music may evolve during rehearsals on a tour—fusing a symbiotic relationship between the musicians and the visualist.

The presence of real-time effects and audio-responsive imagery increases the synaesthetic relationship between image and sound, thereby creating a more “live” experience for the audience.

This week, we will explore interactive concepts that extend the moving image beyond the timeline to real-time interactive expression, using data mappings from physical interfaces such as keyboards, MIDI, OSC and DMX lighting boards.