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Kurt Heintz, editor of e-poets:
The VJ today is an emerging artist archetype. Like an
e-literature artist, the VJ works in -- and sometimes
struggles with -- new media. Like a hip-hop artist,
the VJ is often consumed with "mixology" --
seeking the right blend between music, image, and moment.
Like a performance poet, the VJ performs in time before
an audience. Like a poetry video artist, the VJ works
in the cinematic domain hybridized with other arts.
Some VJs aim purely for "eye candy" while
others aspire to fine art. Many aspects of a VJ's work
harken to arts often celebrated on e-poets.net.
As VJs elevate the creation of video art toward performance
at a real-time improvised pace, artists in related disciplines
should be hearing echoes of their own work, coming back
at them with more fantastic technology. The computer
and attendant live imaging software, the DVD player,
and digital effects units are standard gear in the kit
of many VJs.
But visual improvisation, the ability to create original
video art in the moment with little forethought, is
beginning to approach the degree of lucidity practiced
by hiphop spoken word artists and jazz musicians. Not
long ago, such technology confounded improvisation.
Today, it accelerates it. The massive amounts of customized
technology needed ten years ago by performance groups
such as EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) have faded
away, replaced by systems that are highly portable,
cheap, and aesthetically flexible. As the conceptual
processes underlying jazz have now come to electronic
visualization in a broad manner, we can say that technology
has changed, and for the better.
This is just the kind of transition in technology that
signals a watershed moment, and enables the emergence
of a new art. So now is a good time to get acquainted
with the mixology if the image. To that end, e-poets.net
offers a conversation with European VJ, SOLU, as she
dialogued with Aussie writer and VJ tech' maestra Jean
Poole.
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Published
in
3DMag, Australia
You
can find the interview also here:
http://www.e-poets.net/
http://blog.gmane.org/
http://vjglitch.tribe.net/threads
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