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MTV co-founder Bob Pittman appropriated the term for his MTV presenters.[1] To this day the term VJ is still a disputed name. According to some VJ’s “The difference between a VJ on TV and a VJ in a club is the same as the difference between a radio- and a club-DJ”. According to others, a VJ[2] is again much more than just a club VJ. For these people the most important aspect of VJ-ing is the live connection between the sounds and images, be it in a club, theatre, exhibition hall or in small gatherings. Nevertheless today’s VJ is often seen and regarded as a follower of the House and Techno scene. And the aesthetics are mostly compared with those of video clips that get broadcasted by different music channels on television. I like to point to other events that have helped to create the basis for contemporary VJ performances, in the process it will become clear that the discussion around the term ‘VJ’ is not surprising.

ancestors

Back in history, in the 17th century, the Laterna Magical stirred up a lot of commotion. As its name implies, the public was invited to see something magical. The first lanterns were already invented in the 17th century. And although they impressed the audience as sheer magic, the idea was fully development in the next century. This was mainly due to the heavy and impractical size of the apparatus. With technical improvements, the lanterns became more transportable, and therefore their popularity grew. People started to experiment with projecting images on smoke or mirrors, which created a feeling of transparency and immateriality. At the turn of the 19th century this lead to a whole series of especially ghostly performances. The most famous of all were the Phantasmagorias by the Etienne-Gaspard Robertson, Belgium. His intentions were clear: "I am only satisfied if my spectators, shivering and shuddering, raise their hands or cover their eyes out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them; if even the most indiscreet among them run into the arms of a skeleton."[3] Through the rest of the century, special buildings were built for performances that immersed the audience in a spectacle of light, sound, smoke, and smell that invoked both emotional and bodily sensations. However hard it seems today to recognise the powerful effect of the illusion, many observers stressed the convincing nature of the apparitions. “Robertson described a man striking at one of his phantoms with a stick; a contributor to the Ami des Lois worried that pregnant women might be so frightened by the phantasmagoria that they would miscarry.”[4] The synaesthesia of images, smoke and music was improved by the various lenses that got developed for the lantern, which made it possible to project overlapping images that even gave the impression of movement. Although the magic lantern has always been regarded as the precursor of the cinematic experience, it has even more similarities with VJ culture in our time. This is especially true for the early experiments where the magical and illusionary effects were very important. This live element is more connected to live VJ performances than to dark rooms where people watch an edited movie.
There were also experiments to connect light with music. In 1725 Louis-Bertrand Castel writes about a 'clavcien oculair'. This ocular harpsichord (later better known as colour organ) would consist of two coloured discs that were connected to a harpsichord. Castel investigated the analogies between light and sound and with this organ he wanted to paint with sound. Although he never managed to build his organ, various people picked up on his writings. Castel based his findings on observations in the field of physics, but the psychological and philosophical implications form the essence of his research: "Not in dreams, but especially in the state of dizziness preceding sleep, or after listening to music for hours, do I feel the correspondence between colours, sounds and scents. It seems as if they all rise mysteriously form the same ray of light and, subsequently, reunify in an amazing concert. The scent of deep red carnations above all has a magical effect on me".[5] He wanted to use the organ as a means to paint with light. To this day his writings are still popular with many artists that are looking for ways to (scientifically) make a composition by using light. Descriptions of the sort as described above are also reminiscent of the effects of psychedelic drugs that were in use during the Romantic area and later in the second half of the 20th century.
Another important influence in the history of synaesthetic performance was the German opera composer Richard Wagner. In 1849 Wagner proposed the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk in his article 'The Art-work of the Future'. Wagner believed that the future of music, music theatre and all the arts lay in embracing the Gesamtkunstwerk, a fusion of the arts. He used his operas as a vehicle to create an immersive experience in which, as Wagner wrote, "the spectator transplants himself upon the stage, by means of all his visual and aural faculties." A few years later he opened his own theatre, the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Germany, where he reinvented the conventions of the opera. With its employment of Greek amphi-theatrical seating the Festspielhaus focused the audience's undivided attention on the dramatic action by using surround-sound acoustics, darkening of the house, and the placement of musicians in an orchestra pit.[6]
What these three approaches show towards the synthesising of sound, light, images and architecture is a difference in perception, which is also visible in our VJ culture[7]. Boldly speaking, can the above mentioned attitudes be seen as the distinctions between film, science and performance. Again this can also be discerned in today’s VJ practices. Interesting but maybe not surprising is that with the growth of technology, ideas and perceptions changed. The far-reaching possibilities of print, photography, film and radio transmission lead in the beginning of the 20th century to new ways of thinking.

the beginning of a new era

The technological improvements and the more ready access to different and new media influenced the making, perception and distribution of art. New things were possible because new electronic developments were taking place. Different environments were created through new interpretations of light, image, sound and motion. Through technological inventions people could communicate more easily and express and exchange ideas on a broader scale. Old traditions regarding the use of sound and images and the function of art were questioned, even society itself came under interrogation. In the early 20th century all the insights of new ideals and developments came to an explosion. Counteractions showed themselves in the ideas of the Dadaists, the Symbolists, the Futurists and the Surrealists. These groups reacted against the massification of a changed society and especially against the institutionalisation of art. Although they had different goals and used different means, an overlapping concern was to open the eyes of the public by showing them a different world in which art was merged with daily life. In some cases the audience was urged to take the setting into their own hands, by asking them directly to intervene in the performance or installation. Exemplary for this period was, across diverse disciplines, the principle of montage. In montage, the elements as such all carry potential meanings, and they acquire their final meaning in parallel with corresponding elements. The delivery of the general meaning occurs in the reader's mind through the reconstruction of the connections between the elements. Today many VJs still use this method, but the more popular word ‘mixing’ replaced montage. All the efforts at the beginning of the 20th century were intended to create a sensation and to make contact with the public through different means.
After the Second World War actions to create a synthesis between performer and public were intensified. In the minds of John Cage and Allan Kaprow the public itself had to participate in the performance to get the most intense experience. In destroying theatrical conventions they anticipated the synaesthesia similar to discotheques and the experience of participating in mass spectacles. These happenings, performances or installations were new forms of art where the participation of the viewer was seen as a necessity. An important aspect of these Happenings was their role outside the art world. The word Happening was chosen by Kaprow to underscore the role of these performances and to avoid any connotation with the art world. According to some new media theorists, it was this transformation in art that prepared the ground for the interactive computer installations that appeared in the 1980s. Moreover I would suggest they also set the ground for DJ/VJ performance that also came into development in the 1980s.
With the introduction of television and video, artists increasingly became concerned with bringing art and technology together instead of art and life. What were called ‘Intermedia’ events took the place of Happenings. The Intermedia performance is described as drawing from both theatre and cinema. By walking into the performance environment the audience would set off detailed film images and activate overlapping time projectors, thus changing the imagery and the time frame of the performance. Although this caused for a lot of suspense and excitement and was more than anything a sensory experience, it didn't call for a total illusion where the viewer would be absorbed into a different world. These Intermedia events can be seen as variations on the early dioramas, magic lantern shows and colour organs.
Even though all the experiments done in the first half of the century were very different from each other, all of them had a compelling urge to be different, to surpass the conventional styles and to bring live back into art. Many did not want to escape anymore from daily life, but show the public that live had changed and was worth living. The introduction of video and especially television created a massmedia market. For the first time there was a medium and a means, or so many thought, to enlighten the crowds. They hoped for a prolongation of their ideas in this new technology.

the rise of youth culture

The BabyBoomers of the 1960s expected more from live than just a television set in their house; they needed to be free and wanted to make their own decisions. The younger generation was beginning to create a sense of identity and empowerment for itself that was unprecedented. They were trying to make their own lives and rules, different from the conventions of the mainstream culture. At the time, immense changes were taking place in America's culture and political field. The civil rights battles, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, women’s liberation and the rising anger over the war in Vietnam caused a lot of distress. The younger generation, especially, was turning against the system. This new consciousness fed the psychedelic movement that was taking shape around the same time. Although the Psychedelic Movement was mostly seen as unsafe, because of its experiments with hallucinogens, it set the ground for a real ‘youth culture’. Drugs and their hallucinatory effets were creating a new internal consciousness within the new generation, transcending the conservative societies in which they lived. Pop and rock music played an important role in this liberation process. Much of the music was inspired by mind-expanding drugs like LSD, natural or synthetic Mescaline (Peyote cactus roots) or psilocybin mushrooms.
Andy Warhol was one of the first artists to bridge the gap between popular culture and art. In 1966 he created the show 'The Exploding Plastic Inevitable' (EPI) to introduce the music of The Velvet Underground & Nico in the United States. This show can be seen as the first close step towards what we now call a DJ/VJ performance. During the whole show there was a mix of music, image, colour and light. The cinematic homage to the EPI by Ronald Nameth managed to capture the experience in which form and content became synonymous. The film was made in the tradition of synaesthetic cinema, a tradition in which one is made aware of the process and effects of perception; that is the phenomenon of experience itself. Synaesthetic films are made out of different layers and fragments in such a way that one image is continually transforming into other images. Images are being orchestrated in such a way that new realities come out of them. This process was later used by many VJ’s.
Shortly after EPI, Warhol opened his own ‘club’ called the ‘Factory’. Parties were given where performers and public mixed, the one being indistinguishable from the other. These parties and other newly opened discotheques were linked to the psychedelic movement that also started in the 1960s. The psychedelic rock movement continued to expand during the ‘70s, but it lost most of its hard core after the early ‘70s when rock groups toned their music and lifestyles down. It returned however in the late ‘80s and ‘90s when a new sound - techno and electronic music - was performed at what came to be called House Parties.[8] Once again the music was intensified by the taking of a new drug, MDMA or Ecstasy.
The 60s have been regarded by a lot of people as a turn in thinking and action. "The zeitgeist of the time was the final collapse of a certain kind of thinking. The seeds were sown for feminism, for the whole notion of cyberspace, ecology, and the whole philosophy of Gaia."[9] After these exorbitant times people calmed down and oriented towards themselves. The new technologies had not given them their ideals, politicians were hardly listening to people and the great ‘joie de vivre’ that bloomed after the second world war retreated in its corners.

landmarks

In the late 1970 and start of the 1980s a new sound surfaces in both Europe and the United States. A sound that had its origins in disco. An early discotheque was not just a place were you could dance, it was a custom-made environment, where the décor and the ambience were as important as the music. “[The DJ] experimented with lights and mirrors in the club, and saw himself as doing more than just playing records: his selections were responding to the crowd, controlling the atmosphere on the floor”.[10] With the arrival of new technology, the drum beat and the synthesizer, the disco sound changes and an electronic feel surfaces. This cleared the room for House, Acid and Techno music.
1977 marks the time in history when this new technological tool - the synthesizer - is introduced, which becomes paradigmatic for a shift in attention. That year bands and singers from different musical backgrounds start making use of this new technology. At first the new music was only popular with a small group of people. After the second Summer of Love in 1988 things changed and the new Acid House became widely accepted and very popular. The spirit of the House scene was one of togetherness, happiness: the gateway to collective community action and euphoria. This was reflected in the staging of the events. The House Parties were large gatherings of people who came to enjoy the music as one united group asserting their identity.[11] Although some people claim that the VJ came into play to give the parties a more profound look, a face or even an icon, it was much more a new element, an addition to a culture. Parties consisted of music, lights, paintings, live shows and many other things. “At ‘Die Macht Der Nacht’ (1989/1992), we had hairdressers, still photographers, high wire artists performing over the dance floor while everyone danced below, fire artists – including fireworks artists!!!, theatre, black light artists, as well as other assorted goodies I’m sure I’ve forgotten. To say nothing of all the little stands selling various products made by the culture. All these elements were totally secondary to the main element of the evening – the PEOPLE getting together and communicating with each other”.[12] These days House music was more than just something to dance to. It was a huge shared secret, incomprehensible to the mainstream. A whole generation was in on it, meeting at motorway service stations in the middle of the night to follow coded directions to illicit parties and dance until dawn. The police and local government officials hunted down these outbreaks of outlaw spirit that spurred hundreds of thousands of people to break into warehouses and set up sound systems in remote fields. But by the mid-‘90s the now more generally termed ‘dance music’ retreated back into the clubs, opting for constraint and control, and in the process created its first generation gap.
The year 1981 marks another important step that was of importance for the intertwining of sound and image and the future of video. Music television station MTV started non-stop broadcasting of music-video clips. These clips were intended to boost sales on the music charts. In the meantime the clips also provided the singer or band with a more profound image. By overturning traditional conventions regarding imagery a new visual language was created which reached thousands of people at the same time. With the coming of digital video editing this became even more apparent. Regardless of all that can and has been said about the advantages, disadvantages and meaning of this new phenomenon, the fact remains that it did lead to a stronger connection between music and visuals. Many VJs today still say they are inspired by all the visual manipulations and effects in music-video clips.
Although visuals were seen in clubs before, it was not until the introduction of House music that visuals become aesthetically synonymous with the music. Different people started around the same time in different places, but all had the same goal: trying to create a real-time continuity between image and sound. The aesthetics, goals and material they used were as varied as the people producing them. Important to realise is “that this is a music that came into existence because it could, a way of life that has always stood at the very forefront of change. Designer drugs, drum machines, synthesisers, samplers, speakers, lights, lasers, motorways, mobile phones – dance culture has always taken the very latest technology has to offer and twisted it to its own hedonistic ends. But it has also been the forefront of social change. Clubs have always been places hidden from the everyday world, where we can experiment with new identities and lifestyles, where people forced out on to the margins could find space to escape, dance and feel free. Where they could transcend”.[13]

differences and similarities

The first VJs in the mid 80s did not conceive of their work as an extension from the world of music or art but, rather, they regarded their work as a form of progressive social communication. Their goal was to develop new theories and practices regarding visuals, music and social ideology (i.e. how to best communicate social messages within the rapidly changing technological environment). These attempts can be regarded as prolongations of earlier happenings and intermedia performances, but also as a continuation of the writings by Castel, where people tried to connect visuals and lights to the music both in theory and in practice for example by means of ‘video organs’. At the heart of these experiments was the presumption that the power and scope of sound and image in perfect balance could best meet the needs of these latest challenges. As described above, a club was seen as an environment wherein one would not run away from reality but, rather, get the inspiration and renewed mindset to improve the conditions that exist within reality. However, as culture became more and more commercialised, the social messaging which permeated the initial period of video mixing was replaced in great part by the flashings of the individual VJ.
The House parties of the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s shared parallels with the sixties. The starting years of club culture, 1988-1991, coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tianamen Square Student Protest and gave birth to the Love Parade, Mayday and Techno. The House and Techno scene exploded as a social force throughout the world.[14] The imagery of the VJs was mostly realistic, which engaged the clubbers into an involvement with life, and when it was abstract is was used as a means to give an alternative example to the processed MTV visualising of the day. A fundamental change started in 1991, when the DJ was placed at the centre stage. “It was because of the energy and excitement generated by the global House Nation that the industry decided to invade the club scene at the end of 1990 and throughout 1991”. [15]
1994-1995 marks the point were commercialism finally supersedes the idealism of the first generation. The new VJ was without politics. In the spirit of the House scene people in the mid 90s wanted to create beautiful images and create positive icons that are uplifting and will “give you a boost and a positive vibe for the whole day.”[16] There was talk of a new age, about opening new doors of perception, but everywhere you went these were nothing more than vague notions. “This was a movement about feeling, about friendship and fun rather than serious thought”.[17] People demanded more than the disco glitter ball of the 70s, a few flashing lights or liquid slides. They wanted a total experience, colourful images that bounced on the screens that hung at the side of the dance floor, multiple coloured lasers, fire eaters, magicians, exiting live acts and MDMA, pleasure in pill form, the instant escape.
The art of the VJ of the second half of the ‘90s had become as diverse as the different styles in music. Everybody seemed to work with digital technology and everyone could be a DJ or VJ. The more generally termed ‘dance music’ retreated back into the clubs. Many people abandoned the large (many commercial) raves to start their own experiments, leaving inclusiveness for constraint and control, but making their own decisions. In the process they created the first generation gap. The background of the VJ had also changed. The pioneers in the VJ scene were experimental filmmakers, people from lighting companies or artists who had been trained in art academies. The second generation of VJ’s formed collectives with people from different traditions. Some had their roots in computer programming while others in graphic design, film directing or sound. These collectives were the perfect example of the cross-disciplinary collaborations that found their heyday in the mid and late 1990s. By this time the differences between VJ’s are enormous, many VJ's start editing their material live on a computer which could change and recompose the material in many ways. Some use found footage and other film material to tell their story others produce their own footage. The way of working very much reflects the 1990s post-modern culture that was reworking, recombining and analysing already existing media material to make sense of the world. At first the motto for the performances was to use as many colourful images as possible that would change fast and apply as many layers as you can. Noticing that this strategy was not very satisfying, many VJs started to focus on their own identity.
This forming of an individual style and identity brought about different performances. Many VJs left the clubs to perform in cafés, theatre shows, shops, art galleries and museums. Today we see a VJ playing in different locations and if it wants, the public can see a different style every night of the week, from graphics, video, found film footage, television show material, computer generated abstracts to slides. But are all these different people VJs? And do they still consider themselves a VJ? Looking at the diverse history of live interaction performances between sound and image, its ancestors and the ground that was shaped for the VJ to perform its task, it seems almost impossible to come up with just one term. VJs who are playing more outside than inside a club tend to see themselves not as VJ but more as a visual artist or visual performer. Also those playing in clubs are not fond of the association the word VJ has, as it often gets treated as a minor detail in the entertainment scene. So other names come across like visual jockey, visual performer, pixel jockey and visual mix artist. Hopefully these different names will do justice to a field that is as diverse as the images they create.

this article was written for microscope session, ms_DVD 2.0, http://www.ds-x.org/

notes
[1] Strikingly the term VJ gets still associated with MTV. On a well known VJ mailing list eyecandy Stefan G. tells a nice anecdote: “Funnily enough, when MTV were scouting around for ‘Presenters' six months or so before they started, they put out a call for VJs to send them demos – Everyone who was a working VJ at the time sent them MAD multilayered mixes thinking that's what they meant! They had to put out another press release clarifying that they defined VJ as an on-air personality not a visual mixer! Shows how corporations can co-opt & redefine our own terminology, 20 years later even VJs think that the term was invented by MTV...” (Stefan G. on eyecandy, Wed Mar 14, 2001, 7:49 pm, Message 7206).
[2] I use the term VJ (Video Jockey) here for those people who mix images with sounds in a live setting.
[3] http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/PHANTASMAGORIE.html
[4] Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (1995) p.150
[5] Frans Evers, “Transcript of the Permanent Flux lecture”, in: Permanent Flux (De Balie, Amsterdam, 1999)
[6] http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/contents.html
[7] These three examples (and the others that will follow) do not, of course, do justice to the variety of experiments that took place in these centuries, for the purpose of this article it would go too far to mention all the different influences. The examples given best show the similarities with today’s VJ scene.
[8] Even though the name 'House' was originally adopted from the legendary 'warehouse' in Chicago, the 'Spirit of House' developed in the ‘80s due to the more frequent use of private houses for parties. This situation arose because either they could not get past the bouncers in established clubs, and/or these clubs were too expensive. Source: Localizer 1.0 The Techno House Book (Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 1995)
[9] British avant-garde filmmaker Peter Whitehead, in: http://www.britannica.com/psychedelic/textonly/psychedelic.html
[10] Sheryl Garrett, Adventures in Wonderland. A Decade of Club Culture (London, Headline Book Publishing, 1998 – paperback 1999) p.6
[11] The German House cultural community (with centres in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich) explored socio/political ideologies and directions far more than any other country. This was due in no small part to the lack of commercial and political/police pressure that existed in the US, UK and (to a lesser extent) NL. As a result, it created the world’s most sophisticated and broad-based community. And the video show was an integral part of this phenomenon, whose artists were respected as equally as their DJ colleagues. See also: Peter Rubin, ‘A bit of the past, a bit of the future,’ in: Localizer 1.0 The Techno House Book (Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 1995)
[12] Peter Rubin, ‘A bit of the past, a bit of the future,’ in: Localizer 1.0 The Techno House Book (Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 1995)
[13] Sheryl Garrett (paperback 1999) p.3-4
[14] “One of the most revolutionary aspects of House culture was that they were the first generation to truly begin to actively organize like-minded communities throughout the world via cyberspace. Up until 1989/1990, House culture looked at the computer freaks as weird nerds with big eyeglasses who did nothing but sit in front of their screens all day. The ‘nerds’ thought of House culture as ‘druggies, dropouts and losers’. Around the turn of the decade, the two finally joined together. Once these two subcultures began working cooperatively, an ever-increasing number of social experiments in cyberspace followed, which laid the foundation for any number of social directions which exist today (message list projects and events, blogging, coordination of international funding and support resources, recognition and communication with third world youth cultures, creating bridges between street culture and traditional art communities, etc. etc. In other words, the identification and coordination of the global House Nation movement”. Peter Rubin, July 2004
[15] Interview with Peter Rubin, Amsterdam July 2004 (forthcoming 2005)
[16] Jim Cook, “Shallow happiness never lasts”, in: Flash Art, October 1999
[17] Sheryl Garrett (paperback 1999) p.112

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