I began to trace the figure-of-eight shaped infinity symbol that is the Kinetica logo back to its origins as an early piece of research for this article. It’s been suggested that the symbol, also known as the lemniscate, or ‘lazy eight’, is a representation of an hourglass on its side. Obviously, this action would cause the hourglass to take infinite time to empty thus presenting a tangible example of infinity.1

Kinetica is a museum dedicated to the display of kinetic, technological and electronic artwork, an area of creativity which is sometimes categorised under the more generic term of ‘Time-Based Art’. Since occupying a large commercial space in Spitalfields Market between 2006 and 2007, the museum now operates as a touring programme of exhibitions, events and workshops.

The Director of Kinetica, Dianne Harris, had suggested in her last email that we meet somewhere in the West End for this interview, so that we could head to Canada House in Trafalgar Square afterwards for the opening of Schematic; the first of a two-part exhibition of New Media Art from Canada, beginning with Montreal-based artist Eric Raymond. After devoting some serious thought to whereabouts would be the most appropriate interview territory, I had suggested The Café in the Crypt, below Saint Martin-in-the-Fields Church, a timeless setting with plenty of space.

When I get there, I see that the church is undergoing quite a makeover, but the café is open as usual. I’m early. I hover for a while, take two painkillers I just bought to hide my hangover and head downstairs. At the bottom I’m forced to walk on headstones. The cool, dusty smell of the old building adds to my dehydrated shakiness. I’m both excited and nervous about the interview. Cappuccino at the buffet. Pay, sit down. Frothy, hot, strong coffee. I get shakier as I play with my laptop, sifting through the carefully prepared questions which seem suddenly rather obvious and unoriginal. ‘She must get asked that all the time,’ I think to myself.

Then I spot her. Dianne Harris, Director of Kinetica, in the red hat that her email said she would probably be wearing. The first thing she tells me is that she has been meditating in The National Gallery, or at least trying to meditate amongst the end-of-the-day hordes. She tells me how she thought it might be a good place to find some peace and quiet. I respond with my own story about The National Gallery: It was my first visit to London, and I’d been staying with a friend who lived way out in zone six. I’d been out all night and needed sleep, but couldn’t get back to my friends place, so I went into The National Gallery in the morning, and had the great idea of sitting on one of the nice leather sofas and dozing off in front of Whistlejacket, a large painting of a horse by George Stubbs. Then, after vivid dreams of strangely serpentine horses doing looping figures in an ice arena, I woke up next to a tramp who’d had the same great idea. I’m not sure if our mutual unorthodox use of public gallery space is the best subject to start on, so to break the ice I offer her a drink.

Setting Up

Dianne begins by telling me how the Kinetica team first started conceiving of the museum:

‘There’d been a few [exhibitions of kinetic artwork] in the Sixties, but not so much recently.’ She goes on to describe seminal shows at venues like the ICA, such as Cybernetic Serendipity (in 1968), but that there had never been a permanent platform for that kind of work.

The curator of Cybernetic Serendipity was a woman named Jasia Reichardt who became an important influence on Dianne when they were introduced early on in her career. Dianne describes Reichardt as a ‘realist and mentor’ who helped her to focus on technological art as a valid creative medium; and ‘asked so many questions and re-evaluated everything’ for her.

When I ask Dianne how she and the Kinetica team funded such an ambitious project in such a huge commercial space as the one in Spitalfields Market, she explains how the Irish Construction company, Ballymore, owned and built the building and were looking for a cutting-edge arts organization to move in temporarily. Kinetica were then approached by Future City Arts, who brokered a deal between Ballymore and Kinetica, and the museum was up and running within 6 months. Kinetica was subsequently supported by the Arts Council, amongst other funding bodies, which covered expenses for a whole year, and the museum experienced huge volumes of visitors from the very beginning, following substantial press coverage of the first exhibition, Life Forms, including a feature on The Channel Four News.2

Open As Usual

I ask Dianne about the reasons for leaving such a unique exhibition space behind, and the decision to exhibit Kinetica’s artists as a touring museum instead. She explains what a wonderful launch-pad the building was, but that it was only a temporary space to house something that is perhaps better suited to transience anyway:

‘I feel like Kinetica could turn up anywhere, rather than necessarily being governed by one building. In this way, the museum has gone truly kinetic.’

She goes on to tell me that having permanent space has opened up so many more doors than she first expected and the museum finds itself spoilt for choice in terms of where to go next: Kinetica is currently in discussions about a collaboration with The Cambridge Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, where new commissions are to be developed with Kinetica’s artists, who are represented in a similar way to that of a commercial art gallery. The museum has developed an amazing online shop of small-scale Artist Multiples 3 and also an ever-expanding permanent collection.

Dianne tells me about the many artist-led workshops that Kinetica organises with schools and community groups, with projects exploring important contemporary issues such as recycling and alternative energy sources, where participants are shown how to build kinetic structures such as energy-generating wind sculptures.

The museum has also organised a series of forthcoming talks across various venues, including the Science Museum’s Dana Centre, The Bishopsgate Institute, and Sudely Castle. They’re also taking part in The Concrete and Glass Festival in Shoreditch in October this year, and, perhaps the museum’s most ambitious project of all, The Kinetica Art Fair, which is due to open in February 2009.

While Kinetica is committed to running events in the UK, it is also developing an increasingly global reputation, and receives proposals from all over the world:

‘People hear about the museum largely online, especially now that it no longer inhabits a permanent space, (it usually comes first in search listings of its related subjects), but also from surprisingly widespread sources.’ One example Dianne gives is that of a recent request to exhibit Soundwaves (a Kinetica show from May 2007), from a gallerist who read about it in a small, local Brazilian newspaper. This kind of international presence seems particularly impressive for such a young museum.

Having answered all of my obvious questions, and many more unobvious ones that I only thought of when she had answered them, we walk up the stairs of the Crypt and back out into the daylight. As we wander across Trafalgar square to Canada House, we pass The National Gallery, and the conversation turns to meditation again. Dianne explains that the method of meditation she has been using involves a particular type of internal visualisation, and how during this mediation, her mind’s eye began to trace the figure-of-eight shaped infinity symbol that is the Kinetica logo.

Endnotes:

1. Wikipedia: HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_symbol”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_symbol

2. Channel 4 News HYPERLINK “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUPH-w_a0H4″ (05-10-2006) – Coverage of Kinetica’s inaugural exhibition Life Forms, featuring interviews with artists Elias Crespin, Daniel Chadwick and Chico MacMurtrie.

3. See http://www.kinetica-museum.org

Patrick Coyle is a London-based artist and writer.

Schematic: Eric Raymond continues until 6th June 2008 at Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London SW1Y 5BJ
Exhibition Opening Times: Monday – Friday 10am-6pm

Tim Exile goes pop!

Jimmy Tidey reports…

Planet Mu’s ‘200+’ celebration of their 200th release, held at Corsica Studios, promised to be significant not only for the numerical milestone it celebrated but also for Exile’s performance of his new material.

If you haven’t come across him already, Exile is the antithesis of the bored looking laptop DJ skulking around behind an inscrutable pile of electronics. His act used to involve using a headset microphone to harangue the crowd for feedback on what genre of music they want to hear before he ‘composed’ a glitch fuelled chaos of beats in the chosen genre, aided by samples of him making various noises into his aforementioned trademark headset.

But at Corsica Studios he gave a taste of his new direction, and it’s a genuine shift in style. The material on his new album is downtempo and although it still has the distinctive Exile-style mass of synths and glitches, the vocal is now the centrepiece:

Catchy, pithy and nihilistic phrases delivered as processed vocals borrow from booty bass and Adam Freeland to give the music if not a “pop” sensibility then a structure and theme that makes them compatible with three minutes of radio play; as always, having a catchy vocal makes music infinitely more accessible.

His performance matched the new style, with a lot of wild gesticulation and crowd interaction. Halfway through the set he ducked down behind the parapet only to reappear bare chested. As in every performance I’ve seen by him, he had equipment problems – I’m beginning to think he does it deliberately to add a bit of nervous energy to the performance.

With the headset microphone and singing along to pre-recorded lyrics Exile seemed every bit the pop star. Given the “Vice” generation’s predilection for exploring novel musical territory, sarcastic, vapid sub-political comment and the authenticity that Exile can derive from being a genuinely talented musician it’s easy to foresee his brand of music attaining a great deal of popularity, albeit with the more fashion conscious consumer.

Of course you can’t please everyone all of the time, and the audience at the Corsica Studios perhaps wasn’t exactly the target audience. The biggest crowd pleaser was an all-too-brief foray in to jungle, and there were mutterings of disappointment at the low BPM count of the set.

Apart from Exile the highlight of the night was a brutal dubstep set from Mary Anne Hobbs. It was certainly augmented by an ear shattering sound system. The toilets benefited almost as much from the punishing vibrations as the room they were intended to serve and I enjoyed watching transient ripples of sound energy coruscate across the trough of urine in front of me while taking a piss. An equally enraptured co-pisser reported that he could actually feel the bass traveling back up his stream of urine, although I’m inclined to suggest that it was probably due to drugs or an STD.

I don’t know if it was the quality of the sound system or Mary Anne Hobbs’ tune selection, but I did see a side to dubstep that I haven’t encountered before – for the first time I was able to properly have it to a tune that goes half the speed of drum and bass.

As for Exile, he’s certainly doing something very interesting, and he’s got plenty of musical ability and stage presence, but alongside all this there is a palpable sense that he has abandoned the creativity of his previous work in order to pursue a larger audience. I can’t say I could hold that against him though.

Richard Allday catches up with Scroobius Pip…

“Thou shalt always kill” was massive. Now you’re trying to establish yourself as a serious contender on the scene, supporting Mark Ronson on tour. Do you think having a ‘viral’ hit is a blessing or a curse?

Feels like a blessing to me! We recorded “thou shalt…” at the end of 2006. It was the first song we had written together and within 12 months we have played pretty much every festival, toured America, Holland, France and, of course, all of England! If it’s a curse its the kind of curse i can live with!

How is the tour going? You’ve a reputation as a pretty serious artist, but are there any high-jinks you’d like to tell us about? Are you looking forward to being back in the UK?

It’s all been great fun. I do have a reputation of being a serious artist but i really ain’t. Our live show combines a lot of weird and amusing stuff. Having some bearded guy preach at you for 45 minutes just wouldn’t be a fun night out!

How well do you go down in the USA? Are there many references they don’t get? Do you change your lyrics out there at all?

America has been great for us. The reception has been overwhelming. The fact that all these people know who we are and turn out for the shows is amazing. I don’t change too much. Sometimes, in Thou Shalt…, i swap Stephen Fry for one of my favourite alltime American comedians Mitch Hedburg. Often goes down well.

You’ve got a Chinese myspace. Are you big out there, too?

Have we?! Its news to me! We are just tying up a record deal in Japan which is really exciting but i havent a clue if they know of us in China. Or Japan for that matter!

Your videos are quite lo-fi, but they seem well produced. Do you need to spend a lot of money to make a good video these days, or is it all done on a shoestring? Who makes your videos?

Shoestring all the way! Since day one we have used a guy called Nick Frew. He is a genius. He made the Thou Shalt vid for two hundered pounds! And most of that went on feeding everyone. The budgets have grown slightly but it’s still very much relying on favours at this stage. We would love to have a big budget just so we can pay Mr Frew what he deserves! One day!

You’ve become very famous on the back of a very small amount of recorded material. Are you constantly working on new lyrics while you’re on tour? Is it easier getting noticed without the backing of a major label thanks to the myspace / youtube phenomenon, or is it still a lot of hard work?

It’s still a lot of work and we have more material than people realise. When we gig there are about 11 songs we currently choose from and we have just finished the album which has 13 songs on it and about half of them we have never played live. But, yeah, gigging is really important to us. We didn’t wanna be one of those bands that just relies on the internet for a career. Get up, record a song, upload it, go back to bed! In the 18 months we have been together i would estimate we have played over 200 gigs in around 6 different countries. We want to earn anything that comes our way.

You’re quite political. Are you an angry artist? Anything you’d like to get off your chest?

I’m a very laid back artist! I’m not that angry about much. I just like discussion. And putting up ideas and topics for people to then discuss. There are a lot of things in my past and in the world that have angered me but i don’t want to just shout to people about it then walk away. I want to put views across and see how people feel about it.

Your name is taken from an Edward Lear poem. Would you describe yourself as literary? Is a lack of originality responsible for the stagnation of hip hop in general?

I’m far from literary. I don’t read much but i do have a thirst for knowledge. I think thats what we should teach people. The actual joy of learning and using your mind as opposed to memorizing facts to pass exams. On the Hiphop front it’s tough. Because there are pools and pools of originality (Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Saul Williams, Aesop Rock, Polar Bear, Sway, Poem Inbetween People, etc) but they just don’t get the limelight that some of the more bland artists get. But that’s just the consumer nature of the industry. Whatever is selling will get the column inches.

And, finally, the question our readers most want to know — why do you wear two watches? One of our unkinder readers suggested that you might have two different girlfriends in two different time-zones. Care to scotch the rumour? Or are you really a secret lothario?

Haha. Thats a good theory! Its not true but it’s good! It’s no big thing. Way before i had any kind of exposure i worked in a record shop. I went to buy a watch from Argos and they had it in silver and gold. I couldn’t decide and had to start work soon so i went for the silver. By the time it got to my lunch break i was rushing through lakeside shopping centre to buy the silver! I wish there was a better reason! Haha. Thanks for noticing though….

Underground Resistance - Amazon (Underground Resistance)
For me this pretty much defines Detroit techno. It’s not too ravey, yet not too laid-back – in short a total anthem. I could run this on loop in my car and never remove the CD, and, as a matter-of-fact, that’s exactly what I did! To purchase go to www.submerge.com and for info check out TTI’s own interview with the legends here.

Sorcerer – Summer (Hellrazor Records)
This came out in ‘93 and I was like WTF. It runs at approx. 180 bpm which was already a pretty hefty statement back then. However, 3 minutes in the producers of this gem go through what sounds like the every ravesignal known to mankind and put everything through the distortion pedal. Needless to say the speed doubles up after 20 seconds…

Thomas Tallis – Spem In Alium (Gimell)
I’m a trained opera singer (I sang in one of Germany’s best boys choirs, Windsbacher Knabenchor, for 7 years) and still love classical music very much. Thomas Tallis, an English composer that lived from 1505 to 1585 wrote this 40-voice (yes forty, better believe it!!!!) motet for the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth I. I favour the mid 80’s recording by the Tallis Scholars which is outstanding. For more info and to buy a copy go to www.gimell.com

SunnO))) – It Took the Night To Believe (Southern)
SunnO))) make the darkest music ever. Period. That’s why they inspire me so much. This is so dark it makes me laugh. Go and see them live, it’s supposed to be amazing, unfortunately I’ve never had the chance. In this track you can hear the voice of a guy that they locked up in a coffin in the studio. Forget the ridiculous Norwegian black metal with their flimsy synths and shitty mixdowns, this is the real deal!! Sunno’s website

Scanner – Scanner (Ash International)
The first work of Robin Rimbaud and certainly his best. This CD features nothing but odd noises and conversations he recorded using his scanner. It’s not really ambient and it certainly is no audio book – more like some sort aural manifesto of human weirdness. The CD is very rare and hard-to-find, I swapped my copy for a bunch of old panacea CDs, lucky me! Purchase (it’s been re-released) and more info: www.scannerdot.com

Do you think of yourselves as VJs?
Basically we are AV artists – we kind of get lumped in the whole VJ thing, which is our roots, but I think we are trying to do something a bit different now. We’re not just about clubs – we’ve played at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and at other art galleries. We did a thing in Nottingham a while ago where the audience participated by controlling the visuals and the music. The results were a bit chaotic!

I’m interested to talk to you about the equipment you use. I know there’s a whole variety of equipment that different VJs use. When we spoke to VJ Anyone he suggested that he liked the idea that a pair of DVD decks and a vision mixer should become something of a standard setup. What’s your view on this?
We’ve been using the Pioneer DVJs for about 4 years now, and we helped develop them too. The set-up we have at the moment is two DVJs, a pioneer mixer which has midi out that controls a vision mixer and maybe a laptop with a video sampler so you can freestyle over the top with samples.

People often say of DJs with laptops on stage that they might just be checking their emails and playing back something pre recorded. Do you ever worry that people can’t tell exactly what you are doing live?
I think it can be quite obvious when you’re doing visuals because people can actually see that you are triggering stuff live. If you’re watching a DJ with Ableton you can’t tell what they are doing.

How much do you want people to focus on your visuals? Do you want people to take them in passively or concentrate on a screen?
People are more used to it now. When we first started people would just stand and watch, which could be a bit disconcerting because we didn’t know if they were enjoying it or not. I think you have mix stuff; there are parts in the show where the emphasis isn’t on the visuals. It’s sync and triggering but you don’t have to be looking at it all the time. Maybe during a break-down we might have a funny clip of video that gets peoples’ attention.

One of the things the Eclectic Method said was that a bigger screen(s) helps give a more immersive environment, which stops people from ‘watching’ in the TV sense.
It differs from show to show, it’s always quite hard to get the set-ups you want. We played at Glastonbury last year with tiny screens which was quite nice, it meant people had to focus on the music. I’m more interested in the immersive stuff on the arts side, like the stuff we did projecting onto the Thames and holograms, that sort of thing.

Is there any technology coming up in terms of projections and holograms that you would like to build into a show?
We’ve always been really into that. We’ve got some friends from a company who are working on 3D screens which you don’t have to wear glasses for.

How good are they?
They’re amazing. They’ve only got them at television size at the moment, because it’s a very new technology, but they are working on larger. I’m not sure how long you could watch them for though! There is a bit of a problem with them if you want to film stuff because you have to film it from eight different angles. But if you do computer generated images you can do that automatically.

Companies like Pioneer have spent a lot of money producing VJing equipment and it’s easy to make a fairly Naïve analogy with the prevalence of DJing and conclude that the VJ thing is going to be very big. I was interested to discover that the VJs I’ve spoken to are often less optimistic. How do think things will evolve?
Well I’m not so sure. Very big acts like the Chemical Brothers have always produce visual stuff. At a lot of the nights we go to in Europe all of the acts have some kind of visuals. There are a lot of big name acts using the DVJs now as well – people like Roger Sanchez and Ferry Corsten, Jeff Mills as well. That’s interesting because most people in the VJ scene started off doing the visuals and came to the music after, where they are coming from the other way.

I’ve noticed that a lot of VJ world seems to rotate around this DJ magazine poll of the top 20 VJs. Have you got any feelings on that?
It does push the scene out there, I can’t really complain because we were number one two years ago, but then we’re not strictly VJs. That’s always a problem for the pole – I know this year there’s a couple of scratch hip hop DJs who just started doing it on DVJs. Those guys have no background in the VJ scene at all. I’m not sure it’s representative of what’s actually out there. I think they could be clearer about who is eligible; people like Inside-us-all do great stuff and really deserve to be there.

How would you like eligibility to be decided?
The people who put it together, I know Oli (VJ Anyone) and Addictive TV are involved, and they know enough to say who is really is a VJ and who isn’t.

I was interested to discover that someone has discovered a way of making final scratch work with video.
Yeah, I think its Serato actually. I’ve not tried it yet, it’s in beta at the moment but it will be very interesting to see how that works out. I know that DJ Food uses Serato and I think he’s going to get into the video side of things. He’s a really amazing DJ, so it will be interesting to see what he can do with it. I think it will open the VJing thing up to a whole new group of people. Serato seems to be used by a lot of hip hop and scratch DJs, all the people with the turntable skills to make something interesting happen.

What’s your next project?

The next thing is our DVD with some videos for our last album which didn’t have any video with it, and also some of older material which has only been released at low quality on CD-Rom. It will probably come out in around 2009.

Interview with Eclectic Method

Interview with VJ Anyone

Interview with Cuisine

What is AV social?
It’s an off-shoot of another event called Vectors. That was at The End. Vectors lasted for 2 years, but then I got really busy and had to give it a rest. Then I got to be no. 5 in DJ Mag’s top VJs list, and I thought that gave me the profile to make a difference and highlight emerging artists. There wasn’t really an event that was focused on VJing in London, which is ironic because London has so many VJs. AV social is the simplest title I could find that describes it – it’s a social event for promoters and VJs so that they can network. It’s for both established and up-and-coming acts. We also get people from the manufacturers like pioneer and Pioneer to come down.

How hard do you think it is for a promoter to introduce visuals to their night?
It’s easier than it used to be, but it’s still difficult. At the same time it’s added value for the night, but it’s not just a novelty like pogo dancers, you’ll have to orchestrate it, for example having a lighting guy who makes sure the lights don’t go on the screen.

Speaking to Cuisine, their objective is to make the VJ as central to the night as the DJ. However, they still said they don’t get many people down who are there for the VJing. What it does do is really set their night apart from the others.
The advantage of booking a VJ is that you get a different crowd down, normally more sensitive to cinema and visual arts – people who go to festivals like Sonar or Futuresonic, not druggy punters. You can’t make those people pay attention if it’s not what they’ve come for.

Can you see those kinds of people getting into VJing in the future?
I think that’s starting to happen, but it’s not a ‘big thing’ at the moment. There are people out there doing more commercial stuff as well like corporate events and so on, with mixed results. When people interview me they often ask ‘is VJing going to be the next big thing?’. It’s been big before, in my 10 years in the business it’s been big about 3 times. It’s like asking ‘Is drum and bass going to take over from house?’ not really, it’s just another thing.

Presumably you can foresee growth just through the technology getting cheaper?
Definitely. The main advantage of the technology becoming more accessible is that it becomes transparent. People don’t pay attention to how many projectors there are. There are so many people who say ‘how is it done?’, rather than paying attention to what is being said through the medium. If you carry on using really cutting edge technology you carry on drawing a veil over the narrative aspect of visuals. Visuals have a strong heritage with cinema, design and even architecture; because you have to make people more conscious of the space they’re in when using visuals. If you are using a vocabulary that is constantly new, i.e. using new technology, people are going to be learning as they experience it. If they become more familiar with it, for me, it’s more interesting because you get to do things like storytelling or conveying an experience. Your performance is more to do with the expression of artistic vision.

I’ve noticed there are no fixed bounds to the technology that a VJ can use. DJs usually use two decks and mixer. I wondered if VJs did the same with two DVD decks and a vision mixer, the scene would be more focused and easier for the public to understand?
I’ve been pushing that for a while. I’ve been touring for about 6 months, doing between 2 and 4 gigs a weekend, flying everywhere. I’d love to put on rider the equipment I need and just take an external hard drive, but at the moment I have to travel with DVJs and all the equipment I need. I’m always jealous of DJs just taking records or CDs. It’s also expensive for me to buy something new every time it comes along. Let’s not forget that DJs used vinyl long after there were more modern alternatives. The only reason they have been so successful is that they’ve had so long to develop the technique.

Do you think VJs have a slightly easier time than DJs? There are so many DJs out there, while if you’re a VJ there isn’t so much competition to come up against.
It’s give and take. There’s a smaller audience to tap into. You can be a big fish in a small pond, and the VJ scene is relatively small. One important thing is that you can access visual arts grants and British Council grants. I think a lot of DJs are tapping into the VJ world to give themselves an angle.

Are you an artist or an entertainer?
Maybe a year or two ago I was very faithful to my roots as a club VJ. I love the heritage of clubbing which goes all the way back to disco; house music is the direct descendant of disco. I loved the attitude of house music, it focuses a lot on positive energy. More recently I’ve found that a little bit one dimensional, and I wanted to explore more sophisticated stuff, so I’ve been getting into grime and dubstep. I’ve been doing a solo dubstep gig for a while now alongside my more mainstream stuff.

Do you use a lot of video samples in your work?
I like to use samples a little bit because you tap into the collective memory, for example if you use a Star Wars clip everyone has seen Star Wars so everyone is going to understand where that comes from. My position on copyright is that if you are stopping people from using samples then you are stopping artists from tapping into collective memory. I use sampling for less than 10% of my performance, but it’s good to have that palette available. The danger with using samples is that if you are working with a high profile person, if you get filmed by a broadcaster they might have an issue with rebroadcasting it. I’m not that much into Coldcut type films though, I’d never put a dancing President into one of my films, it gives me a rash just thinking about it!

Have you ever done any bootleg stuff?
Not officially, but I have been commissioned to remix Manga videos.

I know that people often say that when DJs have a laptop on stage they don’t know what’s being done live. You mentioned that you have a laptop on stage, I wondered if you worry about this issue?
The danger is that people think you are checking your emails. The solution is to use a midi controller, because then you are using a musical instrument. I use a Korg Microcontrol, which has 25 keys, faders and a drum pad. In a way the midi controller is hacked, because it’s intended for music, but now it works with video. You can look like a musician, and behave like one stage, but you’re actually controlling the video.

Can you explain your working method?
When I perform with a DJ, which is my bread and butter, it’s a case of being flexible to improvise with the music that someone else is providing. That means I tend to use a laptop because it allows me to skip between videos quicker. I use Resolume at the moment but I’m looking into Modul8.

When I do A/V performances it’s quite orchestrated, I use DVDs a lot more. In the same way as DJs have eight bars of music at the beginning of records to beat match I make DVDs with eight bars of just a beat and a small rhythmic visual cue, so that I can mix DVDs.

How do you feel about the DJ mag top 20?
It’s very helpful, for example if you look at Addictive TV, they’ve been number one twice and said ‘we’re the top VJs in the world’ which is great. It’s helped me to a lesser degree, I was ranked no.5 in 2005, and I got a call from Nokia, and got to tour Europe and South America. It gives attention to people you wouldn’t see otherwise. It’s a straightforward popularity thing, you can’t be the best VJ because who is going to judge?

Any projects coming up at the moment?
We’ve got an AV social coming up in April in the Tate Brtain. They open the building up late one night a month and have some kind of event. It’s a really big challenge because the audience will be up to 5000.

I’ve also got a collective called NE1CO. I’ve been working a lot with big clients, and they’ve often said that it would be easier to work with me if I wasn’t an individual who might get sick or something. So I’ve decided to make it so that we are a collective who can all replace each other. To an extent we are challenging the idea of the artist as an individual.

Back to VJing Feature

Interview with Hexstatic

Interview with Eclectic Method

Interview with Cuisine

How do you feel about being called VJs? I know you’ve released an album called ‘we’re not VJs’
First and foremost we are DJs, we play the music, and we know from technical mishaps that our sets work without the video! We often describe ourselves as video DJs.

Can you tell us a little bit about your performance Technique?
We play a selection of instrumentals, hip hop, breaks, electro and DnB, off CD decks. Over the top of this we use Pioneer DVD decks to play video and acapellas synchronised with the instrumentals. This means we can scratch the video and the vocal over the top of the instrumental, which gives us plenty of room to improvise. All our sets are completely live in that sense, and we hardly do any planning. At the moment we are trying to work more on turntablism.
We’ve got an enormous library of stuff to dip into when we are playing – Ian [Edgar] is our video collector and we get to take round a big crate of DVDs when we play live. I like DVDs, I’m always dropping them everywhere and spilling beer on them, having them ransomed….

That’s actually happened?
Yeah in Sao Paulo, but fortunately the promoter bought them back for us. I think it was a matter of honour for him, we did say we didn’t want him too!

Do you think it would be helpful if there was some kind of core concept of the VJing ‘thing’ that people could identify with? I’ve spoken to other people about the DVD decks/vision mixer becoming a standard.
I think at the moment it’s a question of picking your own niche really, and there is quite a lot of healthy rivalry. It’s a question of trying to do something a bit fresher.

Do you see a link up between specific musical genres and video ones?
At the moment there is a grass roots movement to sync up audio and video effects – delay, and reverb etc. for visuals. Through that I suppose we might see that some audio effects in a specific genre translate to a particular kind of visual.

How do you think your style of performance fits in with the range of styles that are out there?
For us the music and the audio must go together rhythmically. If you don’t do that you have to look for some kind of other way for the audio to hold hands with the video, if indeed there is audio. Our AV experience is about making the music more enthralling.

We draw a distinction between ‘arts’ and ‘entertainment’. We see ourselves as entertainers, and although we might try to stop and make you think for a bit occasionally, its never for long enough to make you feel uncomfortable. We have played at events with more arts orientated acts who have made audiences less comfortable through the intensity of the visuals.

I wonder how immersive you aim to be? I can imagine there might be a worry that the audience would simply be watching TV in a club.
There was a concern early on that visuals might take the focus away from where you wanted it to be, but it didn’t turn out that way. It helps a lot if there is more than one screen, if you can have a couple of walls then it almost turns into a very impressive light show.

Where do you source material from?
We’ve actually done some work with the Getty film library, which was fantastic because they have such a large collection of old material.

Where do you stand on the legalities of gathering material?
There was no decision at the beginning to keep everything above board, but it mainly is. All of our live performances are covered under VPL, which is equivalent to the arrangement the clubs have so that DJs can play music without paying rights. It is controversial if we try to sell our material, and I understand entirely why! In the past we have put out limited amounts of bootleg stuff, because we felt we were doing something new and that justified it.

Do you have any feelings on where copyright law is going at the moment?
Absolutely, it’s relaxing. You just have to look at the deal that the four majors have done with youtube, giving them pretty much carte blanche. They know they can’t control distribution, but attempts to make money out of copyright material are more and more the focus of litigation.

Any big technological developments on the horizon?
The pioneer SVM is looking very exciting. It’s a sound and vision mixer and it should be very interesting. It will be a bit pricey though.

I’ve got the impression that the whole AV thing is almost on the cusp of something, do you feel that?
Well yes, the technology only becomes more accessible and there are more and more people doing it. However it’s felt as though we are on the cusp of things for some time now.

What projects have you got coming up at the moment?
Our magnum opus is going to be a DVD with all our own music and a rights-free video, so that we can actually sell it this time! We all produce music, I do a lot of breaks, and then we will invite guest performers in too. The video will be from the public domain, and stuff we shoot ourselves, for example of the guest performers and of us on stage. We want to start work on it very soon, it’s a big project.

Back to VJing Feature

Interview with Hexstatic

Interview with VJ Anyone

Interview with Cuisine

What is Anti VJ?
Anti VJ is focusing on big outdoor productions and video installations – anything that’s not a club night. We are into using projectors to create a light environment.

And can you tell us a little bit about Cuisine?
It’s been running for a year and a half, I was running a night before called Chien, where I met with VJ Crustea. The main concept was to make sure that the visuals had the same importance as the headline DJ. We fly in people from France, Germany, Switzerland…

So is there an established European circuit?
It’s getting there, we find people through VJ forums, looking at peoples’ videos on the net and VJ Crustea has been playing around Europe for a year and a half now. We’ve got a network of people we like to work with. France, Germany and Swizerland seem to have a lot of talented VJs at the moment, things are really happening there.

It’s interesting that you go abroad to source a lot of your talent, is that because there isn’t so much going on in the UK, or just because that’s where your roots are?
The style of people like VJ Anyone, who I know you’re speaking to as well, is an example of the UK ‘style’ of VJing, although I don’t want to generalise too much! Its quite graphic design based and less abstract and ambient than what we are into. There are definitely people who we haven’t got in touch with who are doing stuff that we would be really interested in, but there is less of a mix in the UK of VJing technology and arty/forward thinking VJing. Here it seems to be more about clubbing.

How does the Cuisine aesthetic differ from that?
We are really interested in visuals being more an element of décor and the architecture. We think of it as light engineering, in the sense of lighting for theatre stages – using the lights to create a visual environment. We’re not just projecting graphic design and extracts from films onto normal screens. We are very interested in using projections as a source of light to create an atmosphere.

From what you’re saying the lighting you use is a lot to do with creating an ambience, do the visuals at your nights tend to be synchronised with the music?
It depends on the environment, and what equipment people work with. With Cuisine people do all the visuals live, and loop the video live to follow the music. They try to make the loops build up in the same way as the music.

What kind of equipment do people tend to use at your nights? I’ve been discussing this topic a lot with the other interviewees, particularly with respect to having a standard DVD decks/mixer set up.
It would be good to find set ups like this in clubs. I think things are moving that way and we can hope to see changes in the next year or so. It’s quite similar to what happened when DJs started to ask for decent CD decks or specific mixers with effects. Having said that, DVD decks are just one way of doing visuals, and a lot of people use laptops and can’t do what they want with DVD decks.

The most significant change for us will be when you can turn up at a club and there is already a nice set-up of 3 or 4 projectors, in the right place, all cables ready and you just have to plug in at the back of your laptop! Imagine if DJs still had to move the PA where they want it and plug everything in themselves, every night!

Do you get many people using unusual equipment?
We’ve had a couple of guys from Cornwall called Fata Morgana who do something really different. Instead of using a computer they use 5 or 6 8mm projectors which project onto a little screen, which is filmed by a camera and then re-projected. They use old film, physically slow it down, and scratch it live. It’s totally different from anything I’ve seen before.
We are also working on using mosquito nets cut into strips which hang from the ceiling in many layers which we project through. It gives the impression of visuals being suspended above your head; it makes it much more immersive.

I wanted to talk to you a bit about the practical aspects of promoting a visual oriented club night. You’ve mentioned that you want to put the visuals on an equal footing with the music, do you get people coming down for the visuals?
Very few, it’s not something that’s in clubbers’ culture. There are more and more people paying attention though, and even if people don’t know what’s going on we get feedback from people who enjoyed it and remember about our night because of the visuals. The idea is to get people a bit excited about something they haven’t seen before. Even if people know Timbuk2 [the venue for Cuisine] we want them to feel a bit lost inside.

What have you done to promote the visual side of the night?
We did something called Electropicnic, where we took a generator, a small PA and our projectors and went to the park and did music and projections.

Did you get permission for it? How long did you get away with it for?
No we didn’t but they all went really well. In one park we did it on a couple of occasions for 3 or 4 hours. We did some right in the middle of Bristol which didn’t last as long.

I know that Bristol’s police aren’t always that happy with that kind of thing, how were they with you?
The police were always very professional and really nice about it. Sometimes they just assumed it was official or that we were students doing a project or something.

You’ve had experience of promoting club nights without the visual aspect, how much extra work do you think the visuals make?
There’s different ways of doing it but there’s quite a lot of stuff to learn. It’s going to take you a few hours just to set up the technical stuff before the night, you have to know what kind of equipment your VJs want to use and think about compatibility. Just by doing it you start to find all this kind of stuff out. It’s like having people perform live music – a lot more work than just having a DJ.

I’ve had various responses when I’ve asked people about whether the visuals scene is getting bigger and more popular, what’s your view on this?
It’s a tricky one because it is more common to see moving images in a club environment, but I think it will go the same way as music. There will be a lot of local clubs projecting MTV wallpaper crap. But it’s a good thing because it means that VJs won’t have to take projectors out with them. There are more and more specific live visuals events happening, so that’s going to help to build up a culture and a community. Also, this year we’ve noticed a lot more interest from cities in running big outdoor light shows and projecting onto monuments and buildings. That’s become much more common over the past year.

Do you think that’s due to people becoming aware of the technology?
Yeah, but it’s still expensive. The kind of projectors you need to project on a building are between 25-50 grand to rent a few projectors for a few days, and there still aren’t that many around.

Is there any technology coming up in the near future that you are really looking forward to?
Yeah, every few months you see something on youTube and it looks incredible. We are really interested in holograms. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film Minority Report, but the “touch screens in the air” should actually exist very soon, so that’s pretty exciting.

Back to VJing Feature

Interview with Hexstatic

VJ Anyone

Interview with Eclectic Method

Having worked with a number of ephemeral buildings in London, the group secured their legacy with a six-month residency in a disused car showroom and parts centre on Bristol’s Cheltenham Road. Originally squatting the premises as a reaction to the wasteful neglect of such a prominent building, the project quickly gained the support of the local community. The street-facing ex-showroom became a glass-fronted, walk-past gallery featuring the cream of Bristol’s artistic endeavours and offering an outlet for those factions of the artistic underground who could not or would not find gallery space. Other internal spaces became rehearsal rooms and the setting for workshops, talks, film-nights and various cabaret performances from the Invisible Circus – the group’s performance wing. An epic finale show ‘The Road To Nowhere’ sealed the fame of the group, the building and the ethos of the project. And a newfound legitimacy beneath the moniker ‘Artspace / Lifespace’ facilitated the group’s progression and purpose beyond a single structure.
Doug Francis – Artspace / Lifespace founder commented at the time:

“We could all be a bit more aware of the spaces around us and the potential that might lie in them. Many buildings fall into disuse easily and people will all too readily complain when these places become an eyesore, or an attraction for crime or anti-social behaviour that can damage the surrounding area. We’ve shown that all it takes is determination and commitment to a project to completely turn somewhere around and make it an asset to the community.”

The car showroom was begrudgingly returned to its owners but the point had been made. Redundant space had been recycled into a thriving, multi-use arts hub. An eyesore had been turned into an asset. To say that it had all been done on a shoestring budget would be disingenuous; Artspace / Lifespace’s means consisted of volunteerism, donation and sheer, unwavering determination.

Unofficial accreditation from the council and mentorship from various parties allied with the energised team of volunteers and affirmation of potential. After several other offers made themselves available, the Artspace / Lifespace team were offered the chance to take on the Old Pro-Cathedral and Steiner school in Clifton. They took it.

Six months on and you can see the progression the group has made from their last venture. The Pro-Cathedral is nothing short of a triumph, housing a luxurious burlesque bar / lounge room, grand theatre and colossal Cathedral altar room.

The entire project encompasses many of the cornerstones of Bristol’s creative heritage and status quo. The theatre room – its parquet floor still garnished in the faded markings of a onetime sports hall – is, quite literally, one giant mural. Graffiti artist Xenz has spent many hours atop a scaffold tower adorning the walls with overwhelming vistas in implausible detail. It truly is a Sistine Chapel for the 21st century, its themes drawing from those of the project itself: beauty from decay; use from disuse.
Artistic Director Doug Francis took a moment out of his seemingly endless schedule to pass on a few words:

“We’ve received some financial help this time round. The developers Urban Creation have been hugely supportive and we have a great working relationship. We’ve also received support from the Arts and Business fund, the Scarman Trust and the Arts Council. But it’s still been really hard for us. We’ve really only managed it on the strength of the people who’ve helped out and given their time. That continues to be the case every time we put on an event… We are very excited about our winter season at the Pro-Cathedral. We feel that now is a crucial time to re-establish the creative profile of the city and lead by example, to some degree, in combating urban decay and environmental degradation nation-wide, with a fresh creative approach to an old social problem.”

The Pro-Cathedral is now a fully-fledged venue, having just been granted its full licence. Running under a temporary licence up until now, all of its shows and performances have sold out. With Bristol’s Old Vic theatre currently closed indefinitely, the Tobacco Factory theatre calling for financial support and Bristol Hippodrome cancelling shows due to “poor ticket sales” perhaps it is precisely Artspace / Lifespace’s idiosyncratic brand of participatory culture that is needed to motivate and inspire the masses.

Ed Williams