As of what I know there are no education packaged as a VJ- or live audio visual artist-education, although there are of course an unlimited amount of courses out there fitting our area of expression. (Me and Martin Söderblom have a workshop/lecture series coming up in Stockholm, and possibly other cities.)

What I want to tell you about today is the theory course I took at School of Visual Arts in New York City. A very good lecturer and artist, Ofri Cnaani, gives two interesting lecture series. The one I chose was The Fourth Dimension: Video, Space and The Broken Screen. Her own description:

“This course offers pathways through the visual language of nonlinear narratives, split screens, fragmentary visual planes and their relationships with space and spatial design. We will read, view and discuss contemporary examples from selected projects made by artists, filmmakers, designers and architects that speak to these issues. Through critical discussions students will gain a fresh look at new practices of art-making that make use of emerging technologies.

Topics include: object and projection, video and sound installation, multichannel video work, digital media and architectural space, non-traditional spaces, and video art in public spaces. The course is guided by the work of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Joan Jonas, Doug Aitken, Lars Von Trier, Jane and Louise Wilson, Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Robert Wilson, Douglas Gordon, and Matthew Barney as well as by concepts and pronouncements by critics and visionaries such as Rosalind Krauss, Lev Manovich, Walter Benjamin, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rem Koolhaas.”

The course is more focused on the aesthetics of film, and not so much motion graphics/what we usually see by “VJs”, but when it comes to theory the course is spot on for us working with visuals/VJ-ing. The reading and viewing really gave me new words on several things I have beeIn trying to discuss within both academics and practicing artists. That is sometimes complicated within a relatively new and emerging art form, not having a very developed set of definitions. In short, highly recommended!

Register for this class here.

Another interesting course by the same teacher is The Fourth Dimension: Between The Cinematic and The Theatrical

Ofri Cnaanis website.

Additionally, you can find VJ-related hands on courses in NYC at 3rd Ward.

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 Sound and Images in Contemporary Communication, Magasinet, Falun [SE] 11 november
#08 Paris [FR] 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

I would like to recommend The Dreamfactory! This event takes place in Stockholm 23-25 of April and is organised by The Swedish Film Institute.

There is going to be for example film screenings by students at The Dramatiska Institutet and The University College for Film and Mattias Bergbom, working in Hollywood will tell us about his visual effects! And lots of other things! More information, click: http://www.sfi.se/dromfabriken

This link has been spreading through Create Digital Motion and VJ Forums. It’s a manifest directed to people hiring VJs and deals with what you should think about to make your VJ happy and get as much out of the performance as possible. The author of the manifest is the New York based VJ Zarah Cabañas aka “Lady Firefly”.

Respect Your VJ
About Respect Your VJ and Lady Firefly on CRM

Last spring me and Hinke Berggren did a VJ demo and discussion at the Interactive Institute in connection to the kick start of Arvid Engström’s project “Mobile Collaborative Live Video Production”. Dejakru has also been involved when Arvid later did interviews with VJs regarding how we work in live situations.

The first reports are now available for download. In the big main report, Engström investigates how VJs work, how teenagers use their cellphone cameras and how to build an application that will let you mix live video from cellphones in a VJ fashion. The application goes under the name “SwarmCam” (an earlier name was “WeJ”). After a pause in the project they are now back up and running and we are hoping to see some samples this spring.

For you theory heads out there the report is up for download in pdf-format from this link.

You can find more reports from Arvid Engström here.

Ana and Brendan from VJ Theory asked us to spread this through our network. The book that is printed on the print-on-demand service Lulu costs only $13.70 and is available for downlowd for $5.44. You can also read the text for free at VJ Theory’s homepage.

+ Updates from VJ Theory project ++

VJ Theory.net intends to develop a community actively discussing and reflecting on philosophy and theory related with Vjing, performed media and realtime interaction.

1- VJAM THEORY

At last the book VJam Theory: Collective Writings on Realtime Visual Performance is ready and available for purchase. For those of you who don’t know, the book is the outcome of our third experiment in collective theoretical writing, VJam Theory. You will find on the website the necessary information to buy the book online: http://www.vjtheory.net/realtime_books/vjam_theory.htm
The original transcript will continue to be available at VJ Theory website for free: http://www.vjtheory.net/vjamtheory.html

2- UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS ON THE WEBSITE

VJ Theory will be publishing new texts online on a monthly basis, through a period between October 2008 and March 2009. At the end of this period, realtime books will publish a print version of these texts (as many people have requested). We are also attempting to make the site less Anglo-Americocentric. We will be publishing non English versions of the texts (whenever possible), in order to make the site multilingual. Should you have a text that you would like us to publish please get in touch. If anyone would like to translate some work we would also like to hear from you.
Our email address: ku.oc.oohaynull@yroehtjv

3- MAILING LIST

We are also establishing a mailing list. Instructions on subscribing are available on the first page of VJ Theory web site (http://www.vjtheory.net).
In this way you will be kept up to date on new work appearing online, events and discussions on and off line.
As usual, should you have any suggestions for projects or essays you would like us to publish then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Best Regards,
Ana and Brendan