VJ's are boring. AWFULLY BORING. The audience standing there staring at the wall like mindless zombies. Looping video clips merged together with the same old color burn, color dodge, additive blends. Just video any old shit out the side window of your car and add some blend effect. Add some of those symmetric kaleidoscope effects. Boring.
I work all day with digital TV, developing and debugging mpeg decoders. Many of the bugs produce more interesting visuals than vjs. the latest vj i saw, with a flashy laptop and resolume and a graphics tablet and pen, was way more boring than a circuit bent nintendo
Please. I want you to take control of my visual sense, in all directions. What's with this drawing the same old computer-blended video clips in a shitty rectangle on the wall. Give me VISION. Give me 3d glasses or x-ray specs. Point the projector in my face. Give me an all-encompassing, earth-shattering hallucinogenic experience or get the fuck off the stage
 Norrköping, Sweden
About me
I enjoy building gear as much as I like playing with it. I havn't been creating music for very long, so don't be too hard on my tracks. I dislike the use of computers, and welcome a more hands on approach. Most of my music grows from live improvisational noise. Constructive critism is of course warmly welcomed.
My Gear
The studio consists of several cassette decks, shortwave radios, vinyl players, diy synths, minidisc machines and modified/circuit bent toys. I sometimes use a computer for multitrack recording and effects. Recently, I've enjoyed building some weird MIDI controllers.
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Electronic Music other: vj's are boring
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Written August 14 2009
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yes boring. who needs visuals when theres music anyways
hey Dach do you have any software that can do that weird "remove the color but keep the greyscale" offset trippyness that happens that makes it look like the predator is coming out of your frozen television signal?
I don't have the words.. but y'know what I mean? I love that effect. I agree with most of what you say. There are tons of crappy visuals out there and a fair amount of it is made by blending random video clips together in some compositing program or using some sort of video scrubbing hardware to "spin" video. blegh. However, I think your experience with VJing is awfully narrow, and you likely have not seen some of the most amazing stuff out there. Joshue Ott (superdraw) has been mentioned, I'd also suggest checking out Scott Pagano, Yuki Kawamura, Andrew Benson, Vade, Dan Winckler, and countless others who are making something more akin to live video art than eye candy for clubs and raves.
Unfortunately, since Clubs are often the only place where vj's are showcased, they have to play to the taste of the venue. These are also not the sort of places where you'll find the most amazing beats or mind boggling harmonies in music. It's functional four to the floor booty shaking beats with samples of shit people recognize, and the video is often something analagous. People don't want to see pretty things, they just want to party. The genre is fairly new, and new methods/styles are created all the time. Standard practices are far from developed, so in the meantime, dig harder and find the gems and if you don't like what's out there, try to build something new. If you really feel that strongly about how everything else sucks, there's a good chance that whatever you make will be highly personable. It might even be regarded by passive aggressive blog posters on digital media forums as being good ;) also, there are plenty of vj's who hand out 3d glasses to the audience. I saw one about 3 months ago at warper who did 3d renderings in jitter, and was contacted today by another called "the blue and red" who's work I haven't seen yet. link
j_chot said: "he's right....the art is painfully un-entertaining right now....there needs to be someone to show folks how it's done... when I vjed something once, I just triggered a bunch of horror movie/cartoon/kung fu/monster truck clips..." shit that sounds like a good show. i like this thread because of the illuminating qualities
I can almost hear the sperm splattering off your screen.
heh, sorry. Got a bit defensive. Carry on ;)
People who put in minimal effort and get rewarded for it tend to praise others who do the same.
I have never seen an interesting VJ performance. And I've seen many, even some that are mentioned as 'good' here. Raster Noton? Boring. Everything, boring boring boring.
Fuck screens. Use lights. Think ENVIRONMENT, not VISUALS. More succinctly: who wants to watch TV when they're listening to music? Do that at home with WMP visualizer and some weed. When I'm paying for a musical experience, I want something immersive.
nagrom said: "I have never seen an interesting VJ performance. And I've seen many, even some that are mentioned as 'good' here. Raster Noton? Boring. Everything, boring boring boring. Fuck screens. Use lights. Think ENVIRONMENT, not VISUALS." sorry i have to disagree. check out some royui ikeda stuff or some alva noto installation, which include projection into fog or circuit bent tv equipment. on the other side it's quite pointless to argue over taste. yeah i'm with madeofoak: "um, so why dont you do all that and stop complaining?"
Ryoji Ikeda bores me – I had enough strobing when I was in high school messing around with DJ lights, but projection into fog can be interesting. Unfortunately light travels only in a straight line so you're limited to prismatic shapes – damn physics.
also i'd love to see some of that buggy mpeg decoder magic! fire up a vimeo account and put us in our place :-)
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