Category Archives: vj

Rolling With Sam

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Sam goes to the science museum and the day gets remixed.
How this came about is my friend Ryan Gerard took the student he was tutoring to a science museum. When he came by my place, I was showing him my VJ software (Arkaos), and we loaded in his photos into the software, then linked the VJ software with a keyboard in the Logic music software, so the sound and the images are pretty much synchronized. See my recent video Han River VJ Demo for another example of this linking between the VJ software and the music keyboard.

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Autumn in the Tropics

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An underwater electronic meltdown filmed off the coast of Miyakojima Island, Okinawa, Japan in 2006. I hope this captures some of the awesome feeling of snorkeling far out from shore on a sunny day. I love seeing the bubbles, breaking the surface, and feeling the difference between air and water. The light and color dance everywhere.
The music is “Automne” by Seafran. I’d been to Miyako in June, and collected a lot of underwater images with my Olympus camera. I still want to edit this footage using the water sounds as music, but that’s technically difficult – and as I was working on this, my friend Seafran sent me a few of his tracks, and I thought this one matched really well.
I threw a lot of the video clips into my VJ software, Arkaos, and visually jammed along with the music for several takes. Then, using Final Cut, I edited together the better takes.

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VJ at Loop Gallery Party

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Keith from Kungga organized this party at the Platform L Loop Gallery. Here’s a few clips, and then more description below.

This is footage taken of a sound+video installation by Seafran (Francois) from France. These days, he is seen around Seoul DJing dub and reggae. I don’t know if there’s some particular explanation or story behind this installation, but anyway it’s cool just as it is. Music producers can take note that one of the pieces of equipment hanging from the ceiling is the Boss 303 Dr. Rhythm Sampler. Some of the sounds are coming from the installation, and other sound is just spilling over from the live performances that were happening on the lower floors.

James White has been doing some really cool live looping stuff lately, mixing up his fun rhymes, didgeridoo, ukelele, and mini-korg. On this night, his performance was right near where my VJ station/installation was set up. I pointed my camera at him and did my best to interact with what he was doing, by effecting the camera footage – you should see that in some parts of this clip. I love my Kaoss Entrancer which basically lets me run in a live video feed and effect it with my fingers.

As for the party itself, it was a wicked night with a really good turnout. I think Keith’s goal was to bring together a lot of different artists from different backgrounds and create an event where they’d mingle, interact, and collaborate. The party spread through the three floors of the beautiful Platform-L Loop gallery in Hongik, Seoul. I think there were drummers, dancers, a Korean traditional music group, amongst other performances. I didn’t actually get to explore much, because for most of the night I was trying to sort out why my video signal was all distorted. After much grief, it turned out that something was set to PAL which was supposed to be set to NTSC. So I never really got to do what I was trying to do with my own installation, but then again I’m not sure I really had anything specific in mind to do anyway.

Anyway, this party really represented the best aspects of the current scene in Hongdae, an area of Seoul near Hongik University, which has the reputation as being Korea’s premier fine arts university. The surrounding area is a vibrant area of cool little buildings, quirky bars, art schools, galleries, and even woodworking shops.

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VJ at Hilltop Hoodz & Epik High Show

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Excerpts from March 2005 party at Club Hole in Seoul, party hosted by Liquorice Pizza. I filmed these scenes while VJing. I was in kind of a pit on the right side of the stage. The line-up for the party was pretty deluxe, including Australian hiphop artists Hilltop Hoodz and the famous Korean group Epik High. Also there were MC Hara and a Korean b-boy crew Expression. I’m not sure about the name of the opening group (they weren’t on the flyer), but the traditional Korean flavor they brought to the hiphop was wicked.
I had a camera on the DJ booth, as well one in my hand, but I think the DJ booth one was knocked at some point and I wasn’t able to reposition it till later in the night, when I did manage to get some good shots of the Epik High DJ.

The second clip above is some brief excerpts, showing a few of the VJ scenes, which I recorded onto VCR, showing some of the noodling I did with the live camera feed using the Korg Kaoss entrancer, a live video effector, through which I was feeding the camera signal. Filming with one hand and then live effecting that flow with the other hand. It was a lot of fun.

Here’s the flier for the party. My name’s not actually on the flier as I was a bit of a late addition to the party.

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