Summertime in Sweden means less VJ-ing. We’re recovering from the dark winter by enjoying the sunlight. However, we’ve seen an increase in VJ activity in late spring / early summer the last two years which is a good thing. VJ-ing used to be centered around the dark parts of the year over here.

The Swedish VJ Union writers will take some time off to recharge the batteries. But who knows, maybe some of us can’t keep away from the keyboard despite the massive heat wave? Subscribe to our RSS feed to be sure to not miss when the next post hits the net.

By the end of the summer we will start reorganizing the site a little bit to get a better structure and some more functionality. We’ll also introduce a new interview format where you will meet interesting people from the world of VJ-ing and related fields.

B6, DJ/Producer

The Volt crew came back with yet another festival at the concert hall in Uppsala. I recognized a lot of faces from last year. It feels like Volt only invites their friends to perform, but with friends like these, who could blame them? And if it wasn’t for the friendship, we wouldn’t be there either.

The VJ line up was actually pretty much identical to last year. Me (The Midi Thief) and Ben (Synthetics) from Instructions, Morrsken, Lysbang and the Vidiots, Joel Dittrich and Martin Söderblom. The Field had brought their own VJ, Victor Tarre, who did wonderful visuals for The Field’s live set.

There was a part in Tarre’s visuals that looked like they were parts of a music video. It was made with few clips but cut in a very neat way. I got hold of Victor Tarre and asked him a few questions about his techniques and work process.

TMT = Me/The Midi Thief, VT = Victor Tarre

TMT: Is this material from a music video?

VT: The idea comes from an early draft of a music video for the Field that was never finished. Originally I thought of using the studio footage and the outdoors footage with 50% opacity composed on top of each other to create the feeling of “a giant” that uses buildings and things as instruments. This technique has been used in many movies before special effects, 3D and tracking was invented. The technique is based on having a lot of contrast in size between the two clips that are matched against each other. For example, a book could become a container, a cassette tape could be a car on a street, a bridge could be a harp.

When the footage had been filmed and captured we realized that it was a bit slow and boring having these clips multiplied on top of each other. Axel’s (The Field) music is not at all boring, rather funky and danceable. The music is built up by fragment and to use the same fragment approach on the movie clips seemed to work out great.

A display of Victor Tarre’s techniques

TMT: First I didn’t realize that it was live visuals. It was so tight that I thought it was triggered from Ableton Live over MIDI sync. Also because of the few clips used, it seemed unnecessary to use a VJ. So I was surprised when Axel told me that your were mixing it live. Could you tell us about how you synced up with Axel and what hardware and software you were using?

VT: I use software from the stone age called Wirecast that is made for editing live television. The program is really simple but since I only have film clips and never use graphics or typography interactively during the performances, Wirecast does it’s job. The synchronization is an illusion. The brain wants to put images together with sound and since it’s a pretty intensive play with perspectives or brains will fix the rest. But of course, I have different speeds that I know works when the clips work together the music’s BPM.

Me and Ben were happy to have received the evening’s prime spot, The Le Petit Orb live set, a streamlined version of the legendary British The Orb. Graphically we were more in sync than ever and we were really pleased with how the evening turned out. You can read more about the gig on our blog, www.instructions.se

Joel Dittrich and Martin Söderblom

Martin & Joel did a marathon set in one of the DJ rooms. I stopped by during the Chinese DJ act B6 and it both looked and sounded great. They had talked to B6 before the gig and decided on an abstract theme. The Vidiots were doing visuals for Shinedoe, a female Dutch DJ and remix artist. They had left their midi controllers at home but luckily we cold lend them ours which I think are the exact same ones as they usually use. It took a little while for the boys to get into the groove but once they did they delivered a potpourri of great Vidiots VJ classics. I didn’t get to see Lysbang’s nor Morrsken’s sets but it’s always a pleasure to meet them.

The Vidiots visuals for Shinedoe

The night ended up with a VJ/DJ Sandwich party (oh no, not THAT kind of sandwich…) in the hotel lobby. We had Gabba techno girl Funky Tuna, techno legend HÃ¥kan Lidbo, Shinedoe, me, Ben, Joel Dittrich and a sleeping Martin Söderblom. Pretty cheerful crowd that no outsider could break into and believe me there were attempts. There was this strange fellow that showed up. Picture this: A middle aged man, kind of buff in sweat pants and a yellow busy Ed Hardy t-shirt, eye shadow and a plate of french fries. He started rambling about having 4 mille alcohol in his blood and having to leave his Porsche (stuffed with no less than four Fender Stratocasters) around the corner. He also claimed to have been bitten by a cobra about a week earlier and he had a red swollen leg to show for it. None of us had any muster left to deal with this guy so he wandered off to the hotel shop and started stealing ladies underwear (at least that’s what it looked like because I… that’s what it looked like).

It might not be the perfect timing to promote another German VJ festival but I just got a message from Norbert at the VJ Festival in Erlangen, close to Nürnberg in southern Germany. It’s organized by the FETE crew (Freunde Elektronischer Tanzmusik Erlangen) and it’s their first festival. You will find the call for entries at their website.

I’ve been to Erlangen myself a few times and I can recommend the city. I don’t have a clue about the quality of VJing in Erlangen but let’s find out!

Toby Harris a.k.a. Toby *spark did a presentation of his first manufacturable prototype at the Visual Berlin festival. He just finished editing a video from the presentations that contains a few revelations:

1. The unit will have a fade curve control so that you can mix from a flat blend to a flat add.
2. It will be ethernet enabled so that you can use several d-fuser mixers in master / slave mode. It also makes it possible to write a OSC library for the unit.
3. It has a screen and a menu.
4. The unit’s software is open source and will be available on line as soon as the mixer is released. This makes it possible to add more functionality to the mixer.

There are still a few things to do before the mixer goes in to production so there is still no release date yet, but “soon” toby says. Regarding the pricing it seems like he is still on track, to quote Toby: “£750/$1000 is very much the plan. If you budget for that, I think we will be in a good place, you might even get a surprise”. So the pig is out of the sack, now lets anxiously wait and tap our fingers…

Link to Toby’s original post. Video by Pedro, photo by Andreas Apelqvist.

The Swedish techno legend, HÃ¥kan Lidbo, has teamed up Berghs School of Communication. The students were given one track each to make a visual interpretation. The most significant audio elements in the music should have  a visual counterpart and they should synch together. The project has been collected on a DVD that you can buy from HÃ¥kan’s web site. A release party will be held tomorrow night (Wednesday june 16) at the notorious 2:35.1 night club at Berns in Stockholm. Watch more examples at HÃ¥kan’s web site.

Video by Philip Cronerud & Richard Feldeus