The chapter discusses histories of audiovisual performance, including its ancestry in color organs, visual music filmmaking, light shows, cognitive science, and more - as well as various approaches to current practice including VJ’ing, live cinema, and digital media art performance. This one is not available online, but the book is available from the usual sources.

The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music includes original contributions from many international artists, including Karlheinz Stockhausen and Max Mathews. Chapters introduce the reader to the history and practices of electronic music, including electroacoustic music composition, perceptual aspects and sound synthesis. Considers recent contemporary trends and promotes new movements in this continuously evolving field.

Live: Blevin Blectum, David Toop, Sean O’hagan (High Llamas/Microdisney), Aleks Kolkowski (Recording Angels), Simon Bookish :: DJs: Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab / Monade), Janek Schaefer (Rummages The Oxfam Box as DJ Dedication), Iris Garrelfs :: Demos / Installations: Aleks Kolkowski - live CD recycling demo Dithernoise; Simon Storey - pedal-powered installation. Bring your old CDs to be recycled into vinyl records or for the Oxfam box. - Think: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

Sonic Recycler 4 is the fourth in an annual series; an event showcasing the many different strands of eclectic ideas in music, based on the idea of recycling. With performers, DJ’s, films, stalls and interactive presentations, it’s a packed evening of radical sounds in a lovely Thameside venue.

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]

During the 10 days of the festival, you will be able to see multimedia installations, AV performances, lectures, workshops, concerts and clubbing nights, between the Centre of Contemporary Art, the Spoutnik cinema, l’Etage, and the Zoo/Usine.

Ez3kiel (Jarring Effect – F) Live :: Shy Fx (Digital Soundboy - UK) DJ Set :: Samim feat Miguel Toro (Get Physical – CH/DE) Live :: The Bloody Beetroots (Mental Groove - IT) DJ Set
Chicks on Speed (Chicks on Speed Records – DE) – Installation
Meneo (Ninjatune / FluidOunce - ES) Live AV
Boombaker (DE) Live AV
Delacrew (ES) Live AV
Giraffentoast (DE) Live AV
Suguru Goto (IRCAM – F) Performance AV
8GB (Kiken.Corporation – ARG) Live AV
Gregory Shakar (USA) - Installation
V-atak (Vidioatak – F/BE) Performance & Live AV
Franz Treichler et Michel Favre (PIAS - CH) Performance AV
Kid Chocolat et Pascal Greco (Poor Records – CH) Performance AV
Collectif FACT (CH) – Installation
Dimitri Delcourt et Nicolas Field (CH) – Installation

The Special Player is an interactive performance in the context of transmediale 08 - conspire. Involving a sophisticated responsive motion tracking environment, four contemporary dancers and its visitors, The Special Player explores a massively disquieting conspirative narration.

In the performance, the ambient digital environment provides the dancers with a complex ‘Digital Aura’, which reveals the network behind the obvious. Relaying to the ancient human fears, The Special Player throws its visitors right in the center of a sinister conspiration. Using a secret motion analysis algorithm, The Special Player selects single visitors and equips them with overwhelming power.

February 1, 2008; 9:00 pm - The Special Player (interactive live temple show) - Presentation, performance and party
February 1, 2008; midnight - The Shaidon Effect DJ Set
February 2, 2008; 5:00 pm - The Special Player (interactive live set)
February 3, 2008; 5:00 pm - The Special Player (interactive live set)

I Am You: The Special Player - The Special Player is a result of an interdisciplinary cooperation project between international choreographers, contemporary dancers, the interactive live set group 02L > Outside Standing Level, the Berlin-based Picamotics/ATTOMAAKU-Platform and libavg, an open-source high-level multimedia platform with a focus on interactive installations.

Vision’R is the French VJ networks festival. Vision’R shows the state of VJ practices with the best of each singularity of our art, and presents what is building our art, questioning it from the inside (experimental VJing) and the outside (artistic expressions close to VJing). Fantasy wars are stronger than ever in the world. VJing, as a nomadic & polymorphous living media, can take position on this and act on.

To realize this potential and connect the festival with the present time, projects that go in this direction will be appreciated (performative VJ act, living installation, outdoor projects, critical workshops, experimental way to teach & learn, political expressions, etc.) but it s not an obligation.

The best way to escape the watchwords of an authoritarian power and to neutralize it is to resist it, being our true selves and not what it want us to be, rejecting its rules, inventing and expressing our way of living differently through art and creation, far away from its competitive ideologies.

So it’s up to you to send us whatever you want for Vision’R. As in the past editions, Vision’R’s program won’t be reflects of entertainment projects nor corporate ones. Clubbing contents or absences of content, without self-criticism won t be examined.

Until January 31, send us your propositions by e-mail only, including:

- photos or videos of the project (showreel) and pictures of you + on stage
- Artistic description of the project (intention text, theory or critical content, aims)
- Technical description with stuff you bring, Audio/Video outputs, and what you need

To send us a dvd of the showreel part, ask about it in the mail you ll send us with the other required information.

CONTACT : vision-r[at]reseaux-creation.org

Here is how: simply call a local phone number in your area; leave us a personalized sound, song, word or phrase; and DJ Tamara or I will mix your sound into the performance. You will even be able to hear it in a live webcast. Local phone numbers are available worldwide - from New York to Seattle, and Brisbane to Perth, plus London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, and Rio. This website will give you all the info you will need, both to participate and to hear the webcast.

The Cathedral Band performance will feature DJ Tamara, AJ Sabatini as the Chronicler and William Duckworth on PitchWeb, along with local musicians Stuart Dempster and the Seattle Chamber Players. So phone in your sounds, and then tune in to hear the continually unfolding story of Cathedral as told by The Chronicler.

The performance and live webcast will take place from 8:00 - 10:00 pm PST (GMT +8) :: Saturday, January 26, 2008.

You can find more information about the Icebreaker IV Festival, including the Morton Feldman marathon and talks by Alex Ross and Kyle Gann, on the following sites: On the Boards; The Seattle Chamber Players.

Cathedral-related URLs:

iOrpheus:
site: http://www.iorpheus.com/
YouTube documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIkLiRh1O0

The iPod Opera 2.0
video: http://cathedral.monroestreet.com/rss/ipo204.xml
audio only: http://cathedral.monroestreet.com/rss/ipo203.xml

Cathedral Radio
http://cathedral.monroestreet.com/wpan.m3u

Cathedral, the first interactive work of music and art on the web.
http://cathedral.monroestreet.com

Sonic Wargame will be running for two days: On January 29 there will be 3 rounds with 4 different teams in each round - On January 30 there will be 2 rounds with the best teams of the previous day, plus a final round with the best 4 teams of all.

If you are interested in participating please send an email to: sonicwargame[at]clubtransmediale.de

Please provide us with the following information:

- your name and email address
- how you want to join the game: as a musician, DJ or gamer or team
- which instrument, style or genre you usually play
- a link to a website with some information about yourself (if you have one)

After you have been selected you will get an email with the details for participation.

More information:

http://www.sonic-wargame.net
http://www.clubtransmediale.de/club-transmediale/sonic-wargame.html

On January 28, Xavier van Wersch will also play a solo performance within the festival, performing on his self-built electronic
instruments. More information on Xavier van Wersch.

Through her work Ana Carvalho explores ideas of identity, both theoretically and in her practice: she performs under the name Magenta Interior. Ana is one of the two editors of the project VJ Theory which compiles theoretical works about VJing and realtime performance and is interested in exploring ways for people to develop Artist Theory, theory based in practice, individually and collectively.

To create each performance, this performer misuses software or many technological devices not specific for VJing. Stories based in daily life are told through the selection of the toys and objects she uses.

In this workshop Ana will present her work to an audience as an opening to a dialogue. Attendees of the workshop are invited to bring examples (audiovisual, text, whether online or on DVD) of their own work or of other artists who also use a diverse range of technologies or create their own. This will be base for a debate on the creative ways of using technologies and an inspiration for new or ongoing work.

We hope to see you at both the performance and the workshop. For more information:
Ana Carvalho
Magenta Interior
VJ Theory