What appeals about real-time video manipulation, about ‘live cinema’?

The world is catching up with vjs in enjoying a spot of real-time video manipulation: just watch people using PhotoBooth on any modern Mac. It’s compulsive, it’s fun! That term ‘Live Cinema’ is something close to my heart though: I reckon you can specifically and deliberately combine a lot of whats good in established cinema and clubbing to give a completely new way of expressing yourself as a VJ-esque performer while engaging with audiences’s own creative thoughts. The key to it is an improvisational use of narrative, rather than forcing a fixed story down their throats, you could be a cinematic incarnation of the oral storytellers of old, weaving tales on the fly, or providing the scenarios and juxtapositions that people find themselves compulsively mapping their own narratives onto. Stepping back from that, I’m interested in anything that uses media to make people interact or think in unexpected ways, which has taken me from playing with the conventions of one-man theatre to storytelling installations. And the tools are really hotting up at the moment, things are getting interesting.

Describe the live show you’ve developed and have been playing at various festivals…

‘rbnesc’ is a project fusing cinema and live experimental visuals. Presenting a series of character scenarios, it invites the audience to construct narrative and cultural critique: rbnesc >> urban escape. So its about the urban condition; whats happening, the forces acting on it, whether we should be accepting it. Some of this is overt, such as pasting up provocative quotes, some of it you can’t miss, given my visual obsession with CCTV cameras (hard not to living in the UK) and some is for the audience to map their own actions and consequences from the loose narrative arc I present. I hope they wonder whether the escape in rbn_esc is a valid solution…

How does it come together technically ?

I use Ableton Live talking to Vidvox’s VDMX on a macbook pro, with two behringer control surfaces. It allows a sophisticated audio-visual mix, and a template for the performance means I can somewhat improvise the mixing while keeping it together as a whole. I’m really happy that we’re at a point where an ‘engine’ to churn it out in realtime is clearly achievable, but boil it down and its only semi-live, its far from my ideal of being that proverbial oral storyteller, drawing on an archive of memories to make something new every time. Still haven’t seen the kind of interface to be able to truly improvise a fresh take each time. Well, ironically enough, that is except at the cinema in films such as Minority Report.

If you can produce content and have an ear for a soundtrack, it really isn’t that difficult to make an audio-visual setup for yourself with a modern laptop that can quite adequately get you to a ‘semi-live, semi-meaningful’ state, akin to rbn_esc as-is. Get some kind of audio sequencer that you can program in the building blocks of a DJ mix and sound effects, load the shots of your ‘film’ into a vj program that can perform your editing and montage on the fly, and tie it all together with as much midi and ‘knobs and sliders’ as you see fit.

What lead you to dedicate such efforts exploring narrative within live video?

Even starting out as a VJ, I found myself dividing a night of club visuals into discrete sets, each with some kind of theme, playing with hook and flow. Then I got involved in a little theatre outfit, and we explored how my responsiveness onstage with laptop and camera could enhance the act of a stand-up storyteller. Soon enough, we were delving into tv-like documentary sections with b-roll footage edited live to the storyteller’s semi-improvisational speech, we were having the storyteller interact with pre-filmed snippets of his other characters, not to mention many a coup de théâtre switching live cameras with staged pre-recorded chunks… it was a fun time, and really showed the potential of live, improvisational audio-visual media.

What differences emerge from playing similar set of audiovisual material, as opposed to playing a similar set of music again?

You can listen to that cd seemingly ad-infinitum, but the dvd will only get a play or two. there’s just something different in the way we experience a film to music. i don’t have the answers here, but thats kinda the point: there’s space between these two forms and that’s what we’re exploring. it could be that the film’s devotion to a all-consuming narrative and its set up to deliver an exact experience to you as you watch it means it leaves nothing to interest you on a second viewing, or it could be that the visual image is literal rather than abstract and once you’ve seen it, well, you’ve seen it. at the moment, I can only perform one route through my live-cinema piece, and so i have to rely on fresh audiences - not so hard given its a niche entertainment form - but my next big project is about giving me the tools as a performer to truly start exploring this.

As though to prove the live video performer is not checking their email, you were involved with an innovative trade show presentation with large touch screen technology, can you explain that?

I was asked to work with a production company developing a vj installation to be used as a central attraction of a motor show stand. A groundbreaking project as a whole, working on three 65” touchscreen plasmas surrounded by the public was quite something. Imagination, the production company, created a bespoke application that allowed us to playlist content submitted from the public around us, which we then published and imported into the vj setup I created on the central screen. The real innovation though was in the project’s raison d’être: interacting with the audience to create films that embrace them, putting the audience up alongside the über-produced brand films playing on the mighty LED walls. For that, and for realising it was vjs who could make the magic there, Imagination deserve a lot of praise.

How did it feel to VJ in that kind of spotlight?

We were making a five minute mix every twenty, all day, every day, in front of people who’d never seen anything like it. It was quite something, especially when they saw themselves on the six meter high led wall we were outputting to, or heard their voice booming over the stand’s PA. What really impressed me, was how working on that kind of surface really transforms the act of performance - arms flailing everywhere - and how an interface designed specially for it can really communicate to the public just what it is you’re doing.

Relentlessly, digital tools are making it easier to make music or video. Who are VJs producing work you admire, and why do they stand out?

- the Light Surgeons for so early on nailing the idea of an audio-visual performance broken out of the screen and into the fabric of the venue.
- bauhouse for so perfectly realising what I see as the vj/av approach in their high-end ‘montage on the beat’ productions.
- visualnaut, a good friend and collaborator over the years first with avit and then with narrative lab. Simply put, he’s a genius.
and I recently bumped back into ameoba, whose been trailblazing crazy-yet-superrefined a/v for years now. A welcome meeting, he’s a true original.

What attracts you to Quartz Composer?

If you look at a modern Mac desktop running Motion, you soon realise we’ve reached some kind of threshold in the development of all this realtime stuff: we can proverbially vj with after effects. Translating that to the realities of what you need as a performer, Vidvox’s VDMX combined with Quartz Composer seems the dream ticket. Still in beta, and with an interface that is yet far from streamlined, it does the magic trick of handing you the keys to the studio, where every bit of kit is free. Want another preview monitor? There you do sir. And if there’s some visual trick or bit of interactivity it can’t do, chances are you can make it yourself in quartz composer and it will load in as if it were coded by Vidvox themselves. At the high-end, thats pretty empowering. And if your needs are more specific still, you can take your “plug-in” QC knowledge and make native Mac apps yourself with a bare minimum of code, or if you’re willing to take the plunge (and its well worth it), then you’re extending QC itself with custom coded plug-ins or partnering QC based rendering engines with bespoke interfaces. If you’re on a PC and feel the ninja-fu, go immerse yourself in the world of VVVV. You won’t have the system-wide integration enabling things like VJ apps using it for plug-ins, but you’ll get a much richer environment to build your own castle with.

Video content and improvisational abilities are important for Vjs, but beyond those aspects, what ways have you enjoyed video artists involving themselves in simple or sophisticated ways within events / environments?

The ford project certainly grabs a handle on the future we were promised, where it isn’t just about ever bigger tvs broadcasting ever more channels with ever fancier graphics: its embracing of the audience through user-generated content and face-to-face interactivity really changes the relationship between media and the masses at events. The VJ set that was the most pleasant surprise to see last year was a beautifully simple operation from exyzt, who took a little wireless camera and ran around the clubspace and stage with it, always getting nice motion and feeding it into a framebuffer on a laptop, controlled by a playstation controller. So their performance was the two of them dancing, one with controller and one with camera, sampling and triggering on the fly and wiggling the joysticks to overlay graphics on the action. Fun and a consistent visual flow that fed the club back onto itself in the best way. As exyzt are a bunch of supertalented renegade architects with a string of huge installations and production pedigree to their name, it was doubly interesting to expect some mapped space super production and instead see something so simple. And of course, they hit the same theme of embracing the audience there.

What’d you learn from your AVIT experiences, and how do you feel about the global network of VJs today?

AVIT marked the moment in time when VJing transitioned from people-inventing-vjing-in-isolation to VJing being a recognised term and vjs being networked up in their home towns and beyond. Fuelled by the internet, there was a mounting pressure for VJs to meet each other and actually see VJ practice that wasn’t their own, and avit was one of the main releases for that: it started as the physical spin-off or incarnation of the then-new and skyrocketing vjforums.com. In the UK, three years after our first event we produced a week long symposium that really hit home to us that we’d met our objectives and the vj world was established: the work was good, the networks were in place, organisations were forming and taking up the baton. So now, for me, the focus has to be delivering on the potential of VJ practice, which means groundbreaking works, which means putting rocket boosters on interesting projects and talented people. Who and how, that’s an interesting project, and a continuing one. [posted by Sean Healy aka Jean Poole on Sky Noise]

I met David in 2006 at Mutek, and got to know him and his work through his excellent curation of our Vague Terrain issue on locative media. David’s creative practice is quite varied, and perusal of his recent work reveals interests in improv performance, modified timepieces and insect orchestras.

A shorter version of this interview was previously published on View on Canadian Art.

Your Warbike project (pictured above) takes the commonplace activity of cycling through the city and monitors telecommunications signals to transform the modified-bicycle into an instrument. Could you talk about the history of this project and how it relates to your perception of sound and the city?

It’s funny, to call cycling “commonplace” is a pretty urban perspective, and specific to cities with a vibrant downtown. I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto where bicycles certainly weren’t something that were commonplace outside of recreation and a mode of transportation for children. One of the interesting things I think about this project - and other bike projects - is that it gets people on bikes who wouldn’t normally be there. The downside, of course, is that some people have spent too long off a bike to feel comfortable trying the artwork. It doesn’t do much good to say, “Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike”.

The project started as an experiment exploring wardriving software when I had just acquired a wireless network card in 2003. A popular wardriving software for some reason had MIDI options in the preferences, which is kind of bizarre for a networking program. I had written a simple program to turn that MIDI data into sound and would ride to and from my school building with my laptop on and the speakers up in my backpack.

What I found was that on my rides, my perception of the space had changed. This was a route that I took several times a day, so I thought I understood the spaces. But the backpack was screaming at me something different, that there was something else going on here that I couldn’t perceive.

The experience of hearing aspects of a space, or learning something about them in a tangible sense, is far more powerful than being told explicitly, which is an abstract way of knowing something and removed from direct perception through one’s own senses.

The Warbike was my effort to share that experience with people. I thought that my changing relationship to the space was fascinating, and I’d hoped that others’ experiences would be as well.

Well, on the topic of other peoples experience, how did you find that people responded to the project at the Sound Cycles and Mobile City exhibition at Interacess? I imagine an artwork that you take for a ride may have proven a bit challenging for some people.

Well, interaction is an interesting challenge. Just because you as an artis find an activity that is incredibly fun, doesn’t mean that the public will react in the same way. The hardest hurdle is just making people feel comfortable to interact with the work. Artists and children are already accustomed to touching interactive art, but others aren’t. We’re raised to do things we have permission for, and it’s hard to convince people that they have permission to touch something.

The second is making sure that the audience is comfortable with the method of interaction. Bikes, it turns out, are not one of the comfortable methods. If the Warbike was exhibited in the country, maybe people would be more comfortable with it. But there aren’t many networks on country roads, so the Warbike is fundamentally an urban cycling project (Although, come to think of it, using it in areas with fewer networks is a little more rewarding. You do feel like you’re discovering something secret). Many people are afraid to bike in the city (and for good reason!).

There wasn’t a lack of people wanting to ride it, but there definitely was a type of person who was just happy knowing what it did without feeling the need to ride it. Some were uncomfortable cycling, others it seemed just didn’t think they would get more out of the work by experiencing it. You can’t win ‘em all.

[david mccallum performs i swallow]

I know that you frequently work in software environments like Max/MSP and Pure Data. How has being fluent with code affected how you address technology in your work?

I wish that I were fluent! I think that what I do is more hacking than programming: I use my limited skill set to bash other people’s tools into submission for my own purposes.

I’m a strong believer in the craft of new media. Contemporary art seems to have divorced itself from the artisan history of the arts, and I don’t think that because the tools in new media are abstract that it’s somehow a field where it’s okay that the designers are also not craftspeople. There are aspects of a medium that you can only understand by experience. If you don’t understand the medium, the work itself risks being naiïve. This isn’t guaranteed, but the risk is higher. I also think in some sense all artwork, despite the content, is also a comment on the form and medium - and how can you comment on something you don’t really understand?

You also run the risk of been seduced by aspects of the tool. Early new media was fascinated with technology and the technology became the end, and not just the means. It was an important process to go through, but I’m certainly glad we’ve outgrown that. Now that we have a better understanding of technology we can hopefully divorce ourselves from the fetishism and appreciate it as what it is: a tool. Not understanding the medium runs a dangerous risk of falling into the gee-whizardry of technology. I’ve seen too many middle-aged artists making astoundingly boring art works exploring virtual reality and computer-rendered spaces. The sooner that artists stop using Second Life, the better.

By all this of course I also mean to say that working with technology is fun! I learn much more about myself and the work by working through the problems myself.

[david mccallum, personal art noise thing (PANT), 2005]

I’m a bit less weary of virtual worlds than you are, but I certainly agree that “craft” is something to strive towards in any medium. That said, could you perhaps point out a few examples of media artists whose engagement with technology falls into line with your ideals? What are some artists an projects that have directly informed your work?

I’ll try… People like Garnet Hertz, David Rokeby, Mark Böhlen, Leah Buchley, Ken Gregory, Jim Ruxton, Darsha Hewitt and Stephanie Brodeur, Rob Cruickshank, just to name a few. These artists make beautiful work that also comments on the medium of technology and our relationship to it, which I think is tough to do if you don’t engage the medium

I used to say that a conceptual artist is someone who doesn’t understand the medium that they work in. Now I’m starting to wonder if conceptual artists actual believe that conceptual art is itself a medium, which is kind of terrifying; even philosophers need to learn to write. [posted by Greg Smith on Serial Consign]

The goal of the Handbook is to be a signpost, a source of practical information and content that bridges the gap between new users and the platforms and resources that are available, but not always very accessible. The Handbook will be slowly filled with articles written by invited artists and specialists, talking about their tools and ways of working. Some articles are introductions to tools, others are descriptions of methodologies, concepts and technologies.

When discussing software, the focus of this Handbook is on Free / Libre Open Source Software. The Handbook aims to give artists information about the available tools but also about the practicalities related to Free Software and Open Content, such as collaborative development and licenses. All this to facilitate exchange between artists, to take away some of the fears when it comes to open content licenses, sharing code, and to give a perspective on various ways of working and collaborating.

The digital artist handbook is brought to you by folly and has developed out of ongoing consultation with artists working with technology, which has shown a need for removing the barriers for artists to use digital tools. The project is supported by Arts Council England.

From August 2007 until January 2008, the editors of the Handbook were Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux of GOTO10.

Moving Forest of the PEOPLE’S FRONT is conspiring with KEIN.ORG and INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action) in a call for an INSURGENCY act. The Russians took Moltke bridge. The prisoners took JVA Moabit. We take the prisoners. We are all 129a. The walls are blasted. The data are mined. The phones are tapped. The lives of others. We listen through walls. The cities of others. We walk through walls.

Moving Forest, conceived by Shu Lea Cheang (Plenum, nodeLondon06) and Martin Howse (xxxxx, nodeLondon06), is a 12 hour 5 act sonic performance operating with public wifi and mobile technology - an expandable citywide operatic manoeuvre / intervention. Derived from Kurosawa’s film version of Macbeth, Spider Web Castle, Moving Forest renders the film’s final sequences (12 minutes in length) into a 12-hour ’sonica’ of grand scale. Moving Forest reinvents a modern edition of a Castle Central (here: the House of World Cultures) and a city in revolt. Inside the castle, the downfall of the assumed power; outside in the city, the mobilised urbanites march with generated sounds of insurgence towards the imaginary Centre. Moving Forest collaborates with sound artists to compose acts and scores, at the same time, drafts a PD (pure data) conspiracy scheme, performing live with citywide performance transmitted by wifi.

[AKA the castle] is a temporal performance troop bringing together visual artists, writers, soundists, silk threaders, codedecoders,
macromikro, boombox mass, mobile agents, wifi fielders and urbanites to realize the 12 hour Moving Forest.

CALL for DS Revolt: go northwest 20 Allied Clearing House :: CALL for Radio Gun Revolt: Symphony of noise :: CALL for AIR: GAMEoverTAKEoverOVER :: CALL for transmission: autonomous transmitting units :: CALL for netstreams: Conspire and take remote control

CONSPIRE Transmediale08, Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
KEIN.TV is a virtual, adhoc video production unit with a mobile internet connection via satellite
INURA a network of people in action and research in urban environments.