21st of february I joined in the Share jam to try out some new visual material from my visual culture+lifestyle design/art-project which I named Alter Modern Times. The title is inspired by Nicolas Bourriauds´s bookAltermodern (Tate Publishing, 2009) and by Charlie Chaplin´s film Modern Times (1937). It is a journal based art project (video /sound /graphics /photography), which sprung out of the idea of what energies displacement creates, thoughts on what´s next after postmodernism and a will to explore and invent alternatives to the 9-5-lifestyle

This citation from the foreword of Altermodern pretty much sums up the base of my project. ”Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This ‘reloading process’ of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world.  /- – -/.

Under the threat from fundamentalism and consumer-driven uniformisation, menaced by massification and the enforced re-abandonment of individual identity, art today needs to reinvent itself, and on a planetary scale. /- – -/ It is neither a petrified kind of time advancing in loops (postmodernism) nor a linear vision of history (modernism), but a positive experience of disorientation through an art-form exploring all dimensions of the present, tracing lines in all directions of time and space. The artist turns cultural nomad: what remains of the Baudelarian model of modernism is no doubt this flânerie, transformed into a technique for generating creativeness and deriving knowledge.”

Alter Modern Times live audio visual performance:

#01 Share, Issue Project Room, New York City [US] 21 february
#02 O-Space, One Arm Red, New York City [US] 04 march
#03 Share, Issue Project Room, New York City [US] 16 march
#04 Hvorslev Kunstforening, Ulstrup Castle, Aarhus [DK] 16-17 april
#05 Volt Festival, Uppsala [SE] 5 june
#06 Norberg Festival [SE] 29 july
#07 Berlin [DE] TBA
#08 Paris [FR] TBA
#09 San Francisco [US] TBA

More posts on this soon!

Facebook invite here!

Photo: Ricardo Fernandez

More info:

http://www.share.dj – click New York

http:// …Alter Modern Times – project website up soon

It takes place in an old can factory in Brooklyn at a venue called The Issue Project Room – their mission is well described under Mission on their site: “ISSUE Project Room provides an open and versatile environment where both established and emerging artists can conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work according to their respective visions. Through an evolving collaboration with curators, artists and educators, ISSUE Project Room fosters a wide-range of artistic projects that challenge and expand conventional practices in art.”

Video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.”

The idea of doing something like this in Stockholm is very appealing to me! Get in contact if you feel the same vibe!

I’ve been meaning to write about the 8-bit scene for quite some time and recently something happened that gave me a very good reason to get it done.

Ok, forget what I wrote about street cred.

I have my roots back in the Amiga demo culture but saying that I was part of the scene would be to exaggerate. I was in a couple of demo groups but I didn’t really take part in any social events and my work was not spread to the rest of the world. I divided that part of my life to programming and breakdancing with the result of not being great at any of the two. It gained me enough street cred to avoid a beating and an understanding of programming that proved to be helpful later in life.

When Ilan Katin told me about the Datastorm party that was going on in Gothenburg parallel to Pixelvärk I got really excited. Datastorm is dedicated to the Commodore 64 and Amiga demo scenes. When we were done with the last Pixelvärk event and all the equipment was packed up, Ilan and I took a cab to an industrial area on Lindholmen in the outskirts of Gothenburg where the party was located. The party had already been going on for over 24 hours when we showed up just before midnight and they were pushing on for another 12.

We were greeted by a drunken, kind of aggressive looking Finn, shouting “AAAAMIGAAAA!”, like a battle cry, which was repeated by others throughout the venue. We came right in to the competition and demos were projected on a huge screen in the main room. These were the categories in the competition:

• Amiga demo
  A combination of sound, graphics and programming for the Amiga.
• C64 Demo
  A combination of sound, graphics and programming for the for the Commodore 64.
• Amiga bootblock intro
  Kind of the same as the an Amiga Demo but the it has to fit on the bootblock of an Amiga floppy disk, which is 1024 bytes. So basically you have to create something really astonishing with very few lines of code and simple music and graphic to go with that.
• C64 Graphics
  Graphics created on the Commodore 64.
• Amiga ASCII
  Graphics created with letters using a monospaced font. See examples here.
• Amiga music
  Music composed on the Amiga, usually using a sequencer called “tracker” deriving from the original Soundtracker software by Karsten Obarski.
• C64 music
  Music composed on the C64 using sequencers like SDI, JCH, DMC and GoatTracker.

Some musicians on the C64 and the Amiga use private “homemade” sequencers that only a few selected people has access to. Some even program their music directly in Assembler code, which of course is nuts!

Otromatic, Ilan Katin & GOTO80

A “demo” is graphics animated to music. It’s not performed live like a VJ set but programmed to fit the music and all effects are rendered in real time, so it actually bares a lot of similarities to VJing. A demo group often consists of musicians, graphics people and programmers (“coders”) but often members hold many roles. A good demo should contain great music and graphics but it also need to be innovative and skillfully programmed often challenging the limits of the platform. These machines aren’t anywhere near the capabilities of today’s computers. A C64 came with 64 kilobytes of RAM. The Amiga 500 came with 512 Kb of RAM that could be expanded to 1 Mb (or 1024 Kb to be exact). A harddrive for the Amiga was really expensive and held like 20 Mb, if I remember it correctly. Music wise these both computers have interesting music chips. The SID chip of the C64 has a nice and very specific lo-fi feel to it while the Paula chip in the Amiga is not as specific since it can produce a much better quality in four channels and makes it possible to do decent sampling. During the party the classic C64/Amiga scenester Mahoney released a Mp3 player for the Commodore 64. I yelled “FINALLY!” It kind of sounds like crap (due to the lo-fi sound chip) but it’s funny as hell that someone took the time to do it.

(Images by Otromatic, click the images to see them larger).

I met a couple of VJs at the party. The first one was the frenchman Julien Ducourthial a.k.a. Otromatic. He is still doing demos and artwork for the Amiga scene but he also VJs in the 8-bit style. He is part of the Up Rough Soundsystem that does various 8-bit audiovisual work.

I was curious about how Julien works so I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions (TMT= Me/The Midi Thief, OTR=Julien/Otromatic)

TMT: – Are you using the Amiga computer or emulators on PC/Mac/Linux when you work?

OTR: – Well I used to have an Amiga setup in the beginning, I used two Amigas when we were running gigs with the ParisHQ, an Edirol V4 mixer and using both exe files and Mnu software for animations but then I switched to Pikix vj tool on the handheld Gp2x when it came out and I’m still keeping this configuration, this is quite similar to mnu and amiga veejaying but with less heavy gear to travel with.

TMT: – When creating your artwork do you use Deluxe Paint or are you emulating the style in modern software like Photoshop?

OTR: – For video and animations I’m using Amiga titlers softwares mainly for dynamic 2d/3d animations and optimize them on the PC for palettes and file sizes purposes. For graphics I’m using Personal Paint and Brilliance on the Amiga and Pro Motion on PC.

TMT: – Is it important for you to use the original software / hardware to get  the right feel?

OTR: – Yes, it helps me getting it low-tech, and finding new approaches with those softwares today.

TMT: – I read that you felt a bit tired of the 8-bit scene for a while – how was that effecting the esthetics of your work?

OTR: – Yep, sometimes I think the community is very purist in staying 8-bit only and won’t open up to other fields (with exceptions of course). I hope it can go forward and drop some more experimental combinations! I’m more in to polymorphic releases,  just trying to adjust the mood and feel to what made the 8-bit aesthetic a cool and fun thing to enjoy!

TMT: – What do you have in store for your upcoming VJ sets?

OTR: – I took a break from VJing for a couple of years to work on graphics more than videos. I’m planning some more iconoclast vj approach, different graphic materials, breaks and glitches for my upcoming VJ sets, stay tuned!

(You can also download the file in it’s original Amiga format.)

I captured this slideshow by Otromatic at Datastorm. The music is made by swedish chip tune artist GOTO80 (Anders Carlsson) who is also in the Up Rough crew. The piece was made with an Amiga 1200 and was prepared a week before Datastorm but was finalized during the party. The piece is inspired by C64 Petscii & old school megademo graphics. The slideshow is of course also available for download in it’s original Amiga format.

I also met another VJ, Markus Hamburger a.k.a. Rudebox and Yonx (Rudebox on the music and VJ scenes, Yonx on the demo scene). He is currently about to get his master in science from Chalmers in Gothenburg, has a pretty tech approach to VJing and in his thesis work he has been doing some interactive video installation using Processing, Quartz Composer and VDMX in combination with Ableton Live. Markus is member of the international audiovisual crew Up Rough Soundsystem. As of a couple of days, Markus and the Up Rough Soundsystem are new members of the Swedish VJ Union.

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There are some other people (not present at the Datastorm party) that are worth mentioning in relation to the 8-bit scene and VJing: Raquel Meyers is a name that keeps on being mentioned. She does a nice blend of techniques and I especially like the Polybius performance with GOTO80 (thanks to Ilan for showing me this!) that is based on an urban legend about an arcade game that drew people insane.

Paris Treantafeles is another VJ who mainly uses hand held game devices when performing. He comes highly recommended, even the United Nations loves him.

Last but not least, probably the funniest thing seen at the Datastorm party was the release “Svenska Narkotika Polisföreningens c64 tidskift nummer 2″, a C64 floppy magazine about narcotics allegedly published by the Swedish police force. A group of anonymous purists from the C64 scene (probably undercover police officers) have urged me not to publish any of the pages. You simply have to download it yourself and run it through a C64 emulator. But I tell you – it’s worth the trouble!

I’ve had a week to come down from all the stress of arranging a festival. Pixelvärk turned out really great due to a nice collaboration with Gorki Glaser-Müller, some contributing organizations and the power of our VJ community with the Startsladd boys in the front, doing a tremendous job. We also did a smart decision by working with the set designer Erika Weissenberg and two assistants Niklas Andersson and Jesper Nilsson all of them proving to be invaluable. I thought I’d break down the festival as brief as possible in this blog post. Ok, well you know me, it won’t be THAT brief…

The Gothenburg Film Festival’s opening party at Trädgårn’

We got off to a rough start by being two ours late to the venue due to some trouble checking out the rental car. We had rented one projector and brought two of our own but we had hired the rental company to hang all three of them. They only hung one (badly, attached with two loose screws) and refused to hang the two others since we were a bit late. Also, the film festival had made a late decision to wrap the room in white “photo paper” as they called when telling us on the phone two days ahead (destroying our original plans for the room). They made us believe that it was the kind of paper used as backdrops in photo studios which sounded ok at the moment. These proved to be A2 papers taped up on the wall by a very stressed producer. But we had two screens at our disposal so we ripped down half of the papers and got started hanging the projectors with the help of Gorki’s Magic Arms (both the product and Gorki’s own arms of flesh and bone). We were done about the time the doors opened but we weren’t supposed to get our VJs started until late, so we just got a logo running and went downstairs for drinks. Oh, and another drama that played out two days before the opening party was that the film festival totally misunderstood the need for music in the house-techno genres and had booked DJs playing everything from motion picture soundtracks to love ballades. We got that sorted out however and we’ve got Kid Sid and Jethro playing for us which was an excellent choice.

Daniel from Startsladd was so eager to get started that he opened 45 minutes early. Great to see that enthusiasm but I think he might have fired of a lot of his material those first 45 minutes. The last part of their set, the Startsladd boys had Kid Sid and Jethro and they fired of some new great material that they’ve had prepared for the Pixelvärk week.

When Bopa got in charge of the visuals she had to deal with Kid Sid who was really showing off behind the turntables and doing a lot of fast tempo changes. Bopa handled it very well even though her midi controller was broken. I guess that’s one of those moments when experience really comes in to play. Her visuals were really beautiful and together with her musicality really formed a great set. She was using a PC laptop running Resolume and Macbook Pro running Modul8, mixing the two in the Edirol V4.

Johan Holm from Vidiots finished of with their signature graphics based on glowing light effects but also surprising with some hand drawn content somewhere in the middle. Working the musical climaxes very well, Johan finished off strong. He had a little mishap touching our scaler/switcher unit causing the image to scale down a bit but that didn’t stop him at all. That unit came to cost us a bit more trouble later on and I think we should build a cage for next time or at least put it out of harms way.

In the large hall next to our room there were some VJing going on too. VJ Union member Hie from Visual Bandits were doing visuals for the controversial hip hop act Maskinen. I just got a short clip from it and my camera freaked out from VJ Hie’s frequent strobing during the chorus. I really liked the stalking rapist quality in the visuals for “Den som inte dansar” (chorus goes: “The one who doesn’t dance is a rapist!”).

The Bopa lecture

No sleep for Anna and the Pixelvärk crew. The lecture was held in the afternoon and we had a good turn out with people from different fields within art and design. Anna was showing her work and had a nice conversation going with the audience. One of the topics that came up was video loops for sale. Anna used to be involved with a project where they sold music with visuals. The discussion turned to video that is sold on sites like vjloops.com and whether that is good for the VJ community or not. Anna claimed that it’s good for all VJs since if more people (VJs and DJs) demands visuals, the clubs must invest in the proper equipment. This was talked about in the context of VJs creating their own content or buying video clips made by others.

A new week started and the Pixelvärk crew worked hard on promoting the rest of the Pixelvärk program and filling up the upcoming workshops.

The first Modul8 workshop

Andreas Apelqvist and Dan Nordgren from Startsladd held the first workshop in the basics of the VJ software Modul8. It was really fun to watch them going over the whole interface and what every little thing does. Even as an avid Modul8 user I picked up a few new things.

The Johan Södeberg lecture

The first and only lecture held on the Cinemix stage in the Gothenburg International Film Festival’s tent on Järntorget. The tent was actually a really good venue for lectures and you’re pretty much sure to have a big audience. Johan Söderberg, director, composer but maybe foremost known as one of Sweden’s best film editors. Johan was talking about the new education program in Audiovisual design that he is launching at the University of Dalarna as well as showing some of his work. The discussion really got going when people started asking him about where he got his video clips from and how the copyrights were handled. Söderberg pretty much divided it up in commercial work where big money is payed for all rights and non commercial projects where he simply “steals” as he puts it. As the the discussion got deeper the line between commercial and non commercial work got really fuzzy and Söderberg himself really couldn’t or wouldn’t draw a line. As some people in the audience seemed a bit skeptical one film maker thought that film makers should offer some of their archive material free of charge for people to experiment with.

Audiovisual Collaborations

In the afternoon Ilan Katin, our guest from Berlin, held a lecture in audiovisual collaborations. Showing some work from three very different artist collaborations he painted a picture of what could be done in this field. As a fourth example he showed Lance Blisters, one of his own collaborations and talked about how the project was structured and even opened up the project files. Ilan finished up by performing one piece live.
This was also the first lecture being offered as a live video cast. Unfortunately however, we didn’t get the sound working properly which was a real bummer.

The VJ jam

Trying to do three things on one day is very hard for a small team like ours so I’m very happy that we really pulled it off. The VJ jam took place at Nefertiti in collaboration with the club The Eye. A collaboration that we pulled out of the hat about a week before the festival since our other plans really didn’t work out. To add to the difficulties, all of the equipment could not be rigged at Nefertiti before the gig. It’s a jazz club and they have concerts earlier in the evening so they didn’t allow any equipment on stage. We hung the projectors the day before which was a pretty time consuming job due to a very low ceiling which complicated things. Once again Gorki’s Magic Arms saved the day (not his real arms though, since he had to leave town for a meeting this day). After the jazz club was done we only had about an hour to rig three screens, a video wall as well as the VJ table with mixer, splitter and all cables. This is when the greatness of the Swedish VJ Union came in to play. Everybody helped out causing us to magically finnish somewhat on time. Even our guest, Ilan Katin was dragged in to helping out. But I think he was kind of pleased doing it and experience the spirit of our little community.

Each VJ set was split up to about 30 minutes per VJ act. I had some technical difficulties with our equipment so the first 10-15 minutes were spent getting creative with the blue screen (a good point was made that we should have taken us the time to set the projector’s default screen to black). I was followed by Ilan, Lysbang, Fetish23, Morrsken and Startsladd who all had very nice and memorable sets. The decision to add the old school video wall was great. We got our name up there and everybody had a good time playing around with the computer dedicated to the video wall while not performing, dancing or having drinks.

I must also lift my hat to Sankt Göran and Cazuma, the club organizers and resident DJs as well as Trickski, the DJ act visiting from Berlin. They performed very well and the dance floor was packed 5 minutes after opening the doors. I wish that could happen in Stockholm…

The Morrsken lecture

Can’t say we had a massive turnout for this early saturday lecture. But Linnea really did a nice presentation (her first of her VJ work) and we had a good conversation going. This time we also got the live cast going so we had some additional viewers on-line and more people keeps on watching the saved video stream. Linnea was, among other things, talking about living in a small community with lack of good clubs and visuals as well as being a woman in the VJ-world, something she claimed didn’t really effect her that much.

The advanced Modul8 workshop

The last thing on the Pixelvärk program was the advanced Modul8 workshop held by Ilan Katin. Many of us were tired from the VJ jam the night before and only had a few hours sleep. This didn’t stop us from having a great workshop. Ilan’s methodical way of explaining and de-dramatize things made it really easy to understand. After showing how to make our VJing more effective and fun with midi controllers and giving more insight to the module system as well as creating your own modules, he got down to more advanced concepts such as multi screen projection with the TripleHead2Go device, video mapping and controlling lights with the DMX protocol. He really made it seem like piece of cake and it reminded me of when my design teacher once said “Aftereffects is nothing but Photoshop with a time line, nothing for you students to worry about”.

Pixelvärk will be back but I’m not sure where and when. The only thing I do know is that I need some time before I’m involved with a project like this again, so it won’t be next week. For those of you living in the Gothenburg area, keep on the lookout for Gorki’s project Pixel Lab. They will continue with lectures, workshops and lab sessions for people interested in all forms of VJing.

Here’s Ilan Katin’s view on the Pixelvärk festival.

I was going to see this spectacle live at the Gothenburg Film Festival but spaced out (or time traveled as I call it) after having two beers(!) and missed it. Must be the age… Anyhow, the concept was so awesome that I went straight home to google it. Nils Berg Cinemascope is a band that plays along with their favorite Youtube clips of people playing instruments. “This is the smallest band with the biggest opportunities”, as they describe themselves on their home page. The band consists of Nils Berg (woodwinds/electronics), Josef Kallerdahl (bass), Christopher Cantillo (drums). And I’m supposed to give photographer Miki Anagrius credit for the still image.

I noticed that nobody is credited for mixing (or cueing) the videos. What’s up with that? It’s a pretty essential part of the performance. And maybe that part could be done a little bit better. But even if so, it’s a bit charming that they project on a bed sheet and that they probably are using a very simple (and unexact) way of trigging the video clips.

[Edit:] Nils Berg Cinemascope has now joined the Swedish VJ Union. It’s fun to get an audiovisual act that also is more a than v. Here is their profile page.