Recent(ish) Visuals

Video of the Week #10

1300 photographs from a stop motion animation displayed at home and photographed again.  Great fun.

Feature on Dublin VJs in March Issue of Connected

Featuring me, Cool Hand Loop, Razz and Q-Pop:

You can download the magazine here.

Video of the Week #9

I’m Afraid the Party Has Been Cancelled by Alan Butler:

Video Projection: ‘Somewhere Along the Horizon’

Sounds: ‘EGOMOM’ (115 layer audio piece composed of the most popular artist of each genre of music on MySpace)

Installation: Black bin bags on walls and floor, Black Bin Bag Discoball, 2 x 200cmx100cm ink and adhesive vinyl on paper drawings

Video of the Week #8

The Softest Music in The World, by Turf Boon:

A “silent musical” which was also part of the What the Fuck is Video Art? exhibition in DEAF 2008.

Video of the Week #7

Big Massive Protest by Paul Timoney

It’s a big massive protest:

“When else do you get to join a group of other people and just shout and roar and chant about something that you just do not like, something that you would prefer didn’t exist or you want it to stop, you want it to change…?” (Paul Timoney)

Video of the Week #6

Simian Mobile Disco ‘Synthesise‘ by Kate Moross and Alex Sushon:

Simple concept and simple aesthetic.

Slightly irritating ‘Making of’ though. Shame it didn’t follow the same approach. Does it really need to be eight and a half minutes long?

Video of the Week #5

Three hundred letters will be delivered to random houses in Dublin city tonight.

The envelopes are addressed simply “To You” and inside is a small note with a love quotation and a web address which brings you to this:

Happy Valentine’s Day from Kamikaze Art.

What Doin’?

What have I been doing lately?

Well last week was an interesting one.  Last Wednesday I went along to the Slick DJ Irish Dance Music Awards.  I was nominated in the Best VJ category against Cool Hand Loop, Shakinda, Q-Pop, Ghost, the Stasis VJs and Aaron Dullaghan.  Charlie (CHL) won and did a little rap as his acceptance speech.  It seemed to go on for ages. I was very impressed.

It was really nice to see someone who does more experimental, and sometimes plain off the wall work getting a bit of recognition, as in general the awards were more about the commercial side of dance.  Charlie’s also been VJing for years, going back to when there were damn all people doing it in Dublin.  Gonna post up the transcript of my interview with him for WTFVJ pretty soon.  In the meantime, check out his homage to Lil Dave:

Then Thursday was the Arty Party in 4 Dame Lane.  The night was a bit of an experiment by Mia Doering, whom I know from when I was in NCAD.  There was some poetry and performance artists, live bands, art installations, photography, video art, and DJs and VJs (including yours truly).  If I remember correctly there was also a lady doing free hand massages.

Jane & the Vicious Circles were the only band I caught.  They were doing good and the atmosphere was great.  I was VJing for Doug Cooney and Giles, so I was as happy as the proverbial pig.  Initially I was wondering how the combination of spoken poetry and bands and DJs was gonna work, but it worked really well and overall the whole thing was a great success, so hopefully there’ll be more Arty Parties in the near future.

Then Saturday I was VJing for Henrik Schwarz in the Twisted Pepper.  Last April he played in Pogo in the Pod and it was pretty much the highlight of my clubbing year, so I was really looking forward to it.  There were two issues though:  Would Schwarz live up to my memory?  And would my visuals live up to Schwarz?

Henrik Schwarz is also a graphic designer by the way.  It’s pretty rare for a DJ/live act to turn around and demand that the visuals be turned off cos they’re so bad, but when you know that they’re probably a bit more visually sophisticated than average… you do bear that in mind.

Anyway, he played a brilliant set, and the atmosphere was just great.  I’d been playing his music on heavy rotation all week, so it was fun when my favourites came on, like this one and that one.  Henrik is also really fun to watch as he’s visibly really into it, and the crowd really loved him (lots of people I was speaking to had travelled from round the country especially), so I made use of a stage camera as well.  I’m not usually big into stage cameras at small to medium sized club gigs but it seemed to work, so maybe I’ll be using it a little bit more from now on.

So did the visuals live up to Schwarz?  I wasn’t so sure on the night.  I’d made some new clips that were playing around with the idea of visuals being “disco wallpaper” (literally animated wallpaper motifs), and other domestic objects like teapots pouring out teapots, cutlery and flashing lightbulbs.

I think I’d hoped to have twice as much of them though, as I hate the idea of my sets all looking the same.

Also it’s very hard for a VJ to measure how well their work is going down on the night itself.  DJs can just look out and tell by whether and how the crowd are moving.  But I think VJs just have to trust their own instincts and tastes.  It’s funny cos I’ve had nights where I’ve looked around and thought “Oh no.  This isn’t going down well at all.” and then months later had people tell me they’d particularly noticed and liked the visuals that night.  So it’s hard to tell.

I’ve been told I’m my own worst critic, but that’s not a bad thing in my eyes.  After all, who’s gonna come up to you and tell you your visuals were crap?

(I spotted a few nice comments about the visuals in an online discussion of the gig though, which I’ll take as a good thing.)

Video of the Week #4

His name is Q.P.O.P. and he means business: