The art of VJing (2009), An article for CBC

Exploring the art of veejaying, a new trend in the live concert experience

October 13, 2009, by Amanda Connon-Unda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLaLeUaAh-M

U2 is often touted as the biggest band in the world. Whether or not that’s true, they definitely think big when conceiving their concert set-up.

The group’s latest jaunt around the world, the 360° tour, features live video feeds with close-up shots of the band on a massive, cylinder-shaped screen. The screen, which can expand in height from seven to 22 metres, is composed of hundreds of hexagonal panels and thousands of LED lights. While Bono sings, colourful 3-D graphics twist and turn on the screen, morphing seamlessly in time with the music — warm red shades with golden glowing lines are followed by shades of aqua with textures and movements evocative of an underwater world. Coupled with the band’s music, these visuals ensure that the U2 concert experience is totally engrossing.

The man behind these sumptuous visuals is graphic artist Michael Paul Young, who designed them in collaboration with U2’s creative director, Catherine Owens. The 360° tour is just the latest demonstration of a new trend in music performance: the use of video content created on the fly. Instead of “pre-rendering” visuals — that is, fashioning them beforethe show — most bands with big tour budgets are hiring a “VJ,” or video jockey, to produce improvised visuals to accompany the music.

VJing for concerts has come a long way. It started in the art world with experiments like Andy Warhol’s 1966 travelling road show Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured performances by the Velvet Underground, and gradually moved into the realm of stadium concerts. The term “VJ” first arose in the house music scene in New York in the 1970s, when dancers wanted visuals to complement the music and create a totally immersive experience.

“[VJing] was an open system, and it was accepted as an experimental thing,” says Greg Hermanovic, a long-time software designer and visualist.

Johnny DeKam, who has his own live-visuals company in Los Angeles, remembers VJing at electronic music festivals in the 1990s. “It took some years for that to really start in the pop world,” he says.

In the ’90s, avant-garde electronic artists like Coldcut, Hexstatic and Emergency Broadcast Network began experimenting with improvised visuals, a practice that was picked up by more mainstream bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. On their current Lights in the Sky tour, Nine Inch Nails employ live 3-D rendering tools and an interactive touch screen device that frontman Trent Reznor can use to trigger visual and audio effects.

The idea behind VJing is that the images are live and constantly evolving. As a result, each show is a unique experience.

“I have to constantly react, and I am improvising with the live band. I have to push pads, to trigger effects,” says CPU, the VJ moniker of Bryant Davis Place, who has toured with the Black Eyed Peas. CPU alters the colours on a touch screen, creates patterns and remixes the live video feed of the show, as well as the Black Eyed Peas’ logo. He can “scrub” the video — which is like scratching a record — and manipulate the visuals in many ways.

“I keep the energy level going on stage during and in between songs,” he says.

“What makes a good visualist is someone who has a mastery over their technology but also an inherent talent or a formal background in creating visual images,” explains DeKam. “The art [of VJing] is in the kind of relationships you create.”

Modern VJing came into its own in the 1990s, with the emergence of more affordable laptop computers that were capable of faster processing.

“That was the big switch in VJ culture and what has given rise to its growing popularity in the last 10 to 15 years,” says Surya Buchwald, founder of Los Angeles Video Artists (LAVA), a group that started in 2003 to promote improvisational video art. Buchwald’s group holds workshops and attracts people with interests in music, animation, art and software development. At a LAVA meeting this past May, a VJ demonstrated something called Touch Designer software. The program was created by Derivative, an animation software company in Toronto.

“We wanted to make performing visuals as rich for the performer as possible,” says Hermanovic, Derivative’s founder. “So, the video mixer that we made, called Mixxa, is visual. You can see many stages of the mixing process in front of you while you’re performing. Many VJs are enslaved to keyboards and a mouse while they are performing, so we designed this mixer that can be operated with your fingers on a touch screen, and the buttons are nice and big.”

As the price of concert tickets continues to rise, people expect to get more for their money, DeKam says. “When they are paying from $50 to $100 for an arena show, they expect good video and good sound. They expect it to be a great show. I would, too — it’s a lot of money.”

DeKam created his own VJ software company, called Vidvox, in 1998. Since then, bands such as the Beastie Boys, Stereolab, Ladytron and the Grateful Dead have used his products in concert.

Live visuals at concerts are becoming increasingly sophisticated. “Before, we just cared about getting 30 frames per second up on the screen — we just wanted to get smooth visuals, and sometimes, they were of a low quality. But now, the quality is going up,” said Hermanovic. “As the software tools get better for integrating visuals and music, it will make performances a lot more rich.”

And as the technology evolves, DeKam envisions another kind of working relationship. “I don’t see a need to differentiate what a VJ does from what a guitarist does or what a keyboardist does. VJs have an instrument, and they perform [on] it. What needs to happen is integrating that person into the band the same way they would integrate a bassist. It’s the same kind of interaction that any band member would have.”

View the article on CBC’s site at cbc.ca.