Live music is where the artists ideas really come alive. It's one thing to listen to your favourite DJ mix, producer, band or whoever at home but there's nothing like quite experiencing that same thing right in front of your eyes. For me personally anyway theres few things more enjoyable than live music and while the music would play the biggest part in that for me, another big aspect would be the visuals especially when it comes to live electronic music. They almost go hand in hand and any good club or touring dj/producers would have some form of visuals to add another element to their show. Artists such as Amon Tobin, Aphex Twin and Tool are examples of musicians whose approach to visuals adds more depth to their music.
It's an area that I find interesting and in an effort to find out more I interviewed two excelellent Cork VJ's - Paul Power of ENFP visuals and Claire Guerin. 
How did you get interested in VJing?
Paul: I got interested in VJing about the time I started going out. I’d love checking out the visuals wherever I went out and chatting to VJs about their work. When the UCC Dj Society were hosting the Battle of the DJs back in 2008 I really wanted to get involved, so asked if I could make a few video clips for the Battle. I got a VJ program off the net, Arkaos, and started making video clips for a whole week beforehand so that by the time the battle was on I had a bank of 200 video clips. Using the keys of my laptop I’d ‘play’ the video clips like a synth (my poor keyboard never forgave me). The content was all random video clips from movies, documentaries and a few clips I had taken myself; it was all very haphazard. But I got a great reaction to it and soon after people stated calling me asking if I’d be interested in doing a few gigs at clubs for their nights. Ant from Generic People was great, got me my first big gig with Tom Middleton in the Bodega, man I was so nervous!
Claire: When I was in art college I was always interested in video, and my main focus was video art until my final year when I decided to venture into performance art. The performance work I did was very well received, however performance art is not very accessable to most of the public and which in a sense makes it very limited to what space performance art is appropriate in. I also really enjoy collaborating and this was something I wanted to do more of. In 2009 a few people I know were putting on some gigs in the Infirmary in Cork. That venue has a vaulted ceiling with no windows, so as a gig space its quite dull visually. So that was my first gig, a breakcore gig in the Infirmary. And ever since then I’ve got gigs and performances, I regularly get asked to do new collaborations at gigs I play at.
How many gigs have you done?
Paul: I couldn’t tell you how many gigs I’ve done over the years, though a few stick out. I’ve performed all over Ireland and even in India when I was living in Mumbai, probably the most stand-out gigs have been the last two Life Festivals, Dj Bone at the Pavilion, Headhunter last year with Dubculture, Daniel Wang with It’s Music and Caspa at Blue Frog. To be honest I’ve played at loads more gigs that have been brilliant but I’m normally so focused on doing visuals I miss most of the night! I play from around 10 to closing most club nights so that’s nearly 5 hours of continuous play, which can be extremely tiring. I couldn’t tell you how many nights I’ve been asked how a gig went and I’d just go blank. It’s funny because my visuals are so audio-reactive, I think it’s because I play minute-to-minute, my focus is on the beat and rhythm, not the song as a whole.
Claire: That’s a tough question. Less than 100 and more than 40. Sometimes I have three performances a month. I like to play in collaboration with lots of different types of music, festivals and events. I try to do something outside of Ireland at least once a year. In 2009 I did a VJ installation and performances in a forest in Tokyo in collaboration with sound artist Paul Hegarty, I also played in Brighton that Christmas in collaboration with Wrong Music and their Djs that year. Last year I went to Szczecin in Poland and did a residency and exhibition in a Victorian steel works. I was invited to Tokyo again this year, but I’m still working on funding that trip.
How much gear is involved with it?
Paul: I started out with just a laptop connected to a projector using cut up movie clips, now my setup is a little bit more complicated. I use a newer version of Arkaos called GrandVJ on my custom 64bit laptop which is hooked up to a MIDI keyboard (Oxegen8 32key I think it’s called) and a Behringer BCF-2000 MIDI controller. All that can be routed through my Edirol V4 video mixer which may have a camera giving me a live feed and a backup DVD player with some stock clips from my sample library looping on it. My sample library now consists of some 2000 video clips, from a huge variety of sources. I hardly use any ‘pirated’ sources anymore, there is a wealth of open-source material to play with out there. I record and produce a lot of my own video clips these days.
Claire: In the first year I managed to buy a projector second hand. I got a very nice midi keyboard on Japan for performances, with which I can set stills or video to keys. I use mac only, so software is expensive but its also the best you can buy. Lots of cables too, you never know if you have to plug into an old projector or TV. Depending on the project and the venue some of the equipment VJs use can already be on site. Setting up is a huge part of VJing, and often where the projection is placed can make or brake the piece. I often have to comprimise certain aspects depending on budget, and putting the projector in a safe position. Its quite tricky at times. A lot of the money I make at gigs goes into buying new equipment.
Is there any main influences you have in terms of VJing?
Paul: I try to be as original as possible, that said I have some major influences in my work, who doesn’t. I remember seeing Coldcut at Life festival in 2008 which blew my mind, and I’m a big fan of Addictive TV. Both those artists use sound in their work, which I have yet to try, but their style of playing would relate very close to mine. Style-wise my focus is on live video with middleweight effects overlayed and some motion graphics. I try not to drown my work in graphics and use the motion of a video to convey speed and substance of the music that’s playing. There are loads of blogs out there with hundreds of videos, each one more amazing than the last.
Claire: Nam June Paik who as far as I know influenced most of the recent VJs, he makes very interactive pieces like putting a wireless camera in a beach ball at festivals and throwing it into the crowd. The Whitney brothers (pioneers of Arabesque and visual music) who during world war 2 used a machine gun from an war plane as a projector for coloured light. Did you know its said that Andy Warhol invented Vjing for a gig with the Velvet Underground in the 1960’s, but I am not a huge Andy Warhol fan… I’d argue visual music is much older than that.
How important is it for you too like the music to add visuals to it?
Paul: It’s very important, but I wouldn’t be prejudicial to any sounds. I’m a big fan of electronic music but I’d listen to nearly anything once. I’ve played with bands and djs alike. The worst gigs aren’t decided by genre, but by content. I remember playing to a few gigs where I wasn’t a big fan of the genre and I actually really enjoyed the gigs, a welcome surprise.
Claire: I often have no idea what the sound is going to be like. I do have a personal threshold for certain types of music, but that doesn’t effect me when I’m mixing video. Every year I play concerts with sound artists, and they improvise their whole sets. Which keeps me on my toes I can tell you!. I enjoy a challenge, and the more open I am to the sounds the more varied the venues are. It also allows me to make work with different tones and intensities. At the gig in Brighton I did a set with stills of dog turds, politicians and members of the Royal family. Last year in Camden Palace for the poetry and noise festival (‘The Avant’ ) I did a set with videos of micro organisms with sound activated distortion effects. I like to really get into the atmosphere of a venue and the mood of the audience. And as John Cage once said ‘I find laughter preferable to tears’, I want my visuals to be for the audience and to enhance any collaborative performance I’m a part of.
Would you like to do it full time?
Paul: Of course! It would be great to work as a full time VJ, but that’s a long way off just yet. It can be quite hard to earn money with VJ’ing as most promoters and clubs tend not to consider visuals as that important. I think a lot of people don’t realise how long we play for and how much preparation work goes into a gig. A song lasts about 4 minutes, most of my video clips last 3-10 seconds each so that’s a lot of time to fill, while keeping the theme and style of a night relevant.
Claire: I really enjoy doing it, but it takes a lot of preparation. If I had to do a concert every day I wouldn’t have time for anything else. Many bands have a VJ on tour with them. A few months back I saw GodSpeedYouBlackEmperor!, their VJ was using old school Super8 projectors which is really labour intensive but it really added a great deal to the show. This year I’m teaching myself to video map and I’m trying to make at least one music video a month using only VJ tools. It’s a real process of trial and error being a VJ, but it gets easier every time.
Is there such a thing as having a ‘practice session’ or do you just go in and do it on the fly’?
Paul: For each night I’d spend a few days beforehand listening to relevant music (the artist’s work or that specific genre) and creating banks of video clips to play. Each day would be a process of adding new clips and adjusting previous banks. Then on the day I’d try and respond to how the night is moving, maybe a specific song will come on that has a specific theme, say Starkey’s song Lost in Space, and I’d create a new bank on the fly. You can only be 99% prepared for a gig, no matter how much you prepare, something will come up that requires a bit of imagination and quick-thinking.
Claire: When I first started I would practice for a few days, figuring out the effects and how the videos looked projected. I felt that pre-preparing too much made me listen less, and depending on how the projection is setup for the performance it effects the videos and can sometimes make them look esqueue. I always have a large cache of various videos just incase I have an aesthetic emergency after setting up in a venue. I now make short text animations for gigs in big venues of the bands names and stuff like that well in advance. The odd time I get requests for certain imagery from my collaborators, but I prefer to work with a tone rather than a subject matter or theme.
What advice would you give to any aspiring vj’s out there?
Paul: Get active and have fun. I’ve always encouraged people I’ve met & know who’ve shown an interest in VJing. At the moment we have an informal collective of VJs called VISION. We hosted a VJ night last year for VJs to get involved and we often use the Ctrl Alt Delete and Modulation nights to hones skills and bring new acts in. I run a blog called Visually Challenged on tumblr which brings all the VJ and motion graphics work I find online together. I’d recommend it to any starting or established VJ to check it out for some inspiration; I know I get loads from it. I’d also say that you don’t have to be able to create amazing out of this world visuals from the start. Most nights are open to letting a VJ come and play for free if they want to try some visuals out, and if you’re not being paid then there’s no pressure if it doesn’t work or you aren’t happy with it. I would also encourage people to get chatting with VJs at clubs, most are only too happy to chat about their work (so long as they aren’t playing) and love to get a bit of love from the crowd they’re performing for.
Claire: Always be prepared, bring doubles of any cables you need and always bring more than one type of cables with you (HDMI, composite, VGA, svideo etc..). Take a good look at what kind of visuals you like and why : Is it something simple? Is it something fractal? Do you want to use a huge festival stage with rigging? Do you want to do video mapping? Do you want your video to be interactive? Do you want to use TVs? Do you want to use a live feed?. There are so many options out there, and mapping out your interests is a fantastic way of shaping your own unique style. Its one of the latest live art forms out there, and its an exciting time to be a part of it.
BIG THANKS TO PAUL AND CLAIRE FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DO THE INTERVIEW.
CHECK OUT THE ENFP FACEBOOK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND CLAIRE GUERIN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND SAVAGE VIDEOS.
Wrap it up there G : Weekly Round Up
18 hours ago
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