Saturday 11 August 2007

rhythm

The VJ and vjing is a performance for nightclubs. Live lights around dancing people, drugs: party time. Watch images is the main audience’s idea? The performance is nearest of music than of image, it is rhythm. The proposition is to make sense, but … not always. Is the sense something that happens just with icons, with images full of meaning? Some radical performances are those that suggest, that develop abstract images or make ordinary icons become abstract. It’s necessary to control the meaning for audience? Why to connect “cinema” with the performances? The space is different and it isn’t important to tell a story, to make sense like in cinema. In a way I imagine that our era is a sense one. We may know the world and think, but sometimes be affected by the rhythm.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I don´t believe a VJ permormance must be like cinema, I love to make permormances full of abstract images.

Joe Biturski said...

rhythm can exist in transmodality....in multiple forms....

Narrative as written is composed with a sense of internal rhythms , cadences, multiple pattern evolutions and variations in its structure, language,punctuation...

rhythm in visual media can be expressed and interpreted in single to multiple flows at once as the eye scans the visual plane....this is also true in graphic design theory as the amount of visual information must have "beats" from sparse to complex in sections of the grid in the plane during a viewer's interpretation/experience/immersion

rhythms are found in pauses, blank spaces, tonal shifts, shifts in scale, shifts in shading color and color symbolism......as well as in meteorology...climatology etc.....

cinema also can have rhythms in its scene lengths, pacing, cuts, sound to image variation in soundtrack,
in imagistic overlap or disparity and collision/collusion in more abstract film......

part of the beauty of rhythm to me is that it is so varied and so present in such a variety of forms...

Unknown said...

rhythm can be a feature of both temporary and spatial constructions. so, in that way, vjing is no closer to music than it is to graphic design or cinema. rhythm is not an indicator of musicality or visuality.

in any case, cinema is constructed as a fixed sequence (even though its sequentiality can be broken by different narrative resources: flash backs, etc.) and is seen in a fixed context (movie theater, home), whereas a vj performance exists in the midst of a space of flows.

a fragmented visual performance, which demands mobility (both perceptual, intellectual and physical) from the viewers can not be constructed in the same way as cinema, otherwise it will be condemned to misplacement.

it will be closer to a non-euclidean conception of space than to time, even if time can be thoroughly twisted into an apparent non-linearity.

cinema is something to watch; instead, a vj performance is a space in which to move around (and just occasionally watch, possibly while carrying a drink and chatting with friends)

i believe that vj's should acknowledge the fact that their performance can not be considered as an attractor just because it happens on a screen, suggesting a parallel with cinema. a movie is a strong attractor whose power lasts between 1 and 3 hours; a vj performance is something closer to an alternating magnet: you watch it, and soon you want to turn away. then you want to watch it again... the watcher doesn't even have to fill in the blanks! it is a new mode of viewing, an exciting space to explore...

Unknown said...

rhythm can be a feature of both temporary and spatial constructions. so, in that way, vjing is no closer to music than it is to graphic design or cinema. rhythm is not an indicator of musicality or visuality.

in any case, cinema is constructed as a fixed sequence (even though its sequentiality can be broken by different narrative resources: flash backs, etc.) and is seen in a fixed context (movie theater, home), whereas a vj performance exists in the midst of a space of flows.

a fragmented visual performance, which demands mobility (both perceptual, intellectual and physical) from the viewers can not be constructed in the same way as cinema, otherwise it will be condemned to misplacement.

it will be closer to a non-euclidean conception of space than to time, even if time can be thoroughly twisted into an apparent non-linearity.

cinema is something to watch; instead, a vj performance is a space in which to move around (and just occasionally watch, possibly while carrying a drink and chatting with friends)

i believe that vj's should acknowledge the fact that their performance can not be considered as an attractor just because it happens on a screen, suggesting a parallel with cinema. a movie is a strong attractor whose power lasts between 1 and 3 hours; a vj performance is something closer to an alternating magnet: you watch it, and soon you want to turn away. then you want to watch it again... the watcher doesn't even have to fill in the blanks! it is a new mode of viewing, an exciting space to explore...

Helen Potter said...

I would like to see some other firing VUs, as shown at hackaday´s site, posted at NetBehaviour

Perfect sample of vjing performance

athena said...

firstly vj genre is certainly not cinema .a good comparison would be cinema /theatre.vj genre is a very plastic form . unfortunately inhibited by its close proximity with electro music.this being an extremely linear euclidean form of music. therefore the resulting collaborations are usually pretty cliche in spite of the formidable tech invoved.

rhythm concept especially in occidental culture is very narrow in general. and in scientific terms quite behind our present era. binary rhythms for example in no way or form represent time per se.... time being of course not linear as amply proven in early 20 th century quantum theories.

i venture to say that time and rhythm are the same as we could not even exist for one minute without the millions of diverse rhythmsmaking up the structure of uiverse as we perceive it.

vj genre has quite a capablity to represent modern time perception as does varous forms of computer generated music. however , this is at present a rarity.

its an unfortunate comment on our epoch that unlike the so called renaissance in 14th century europe....art and science are very distant.
so many graphi artist and sound technicians truly believe that because they are good technicians that this means they will make good art . unfortunately that is not the case.
its true that in our era everything can be art
but does that instantly mean that it should?