Category: RAPS

After reading chapters from The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), I find that live audiovisual performance is defined as time-based, media-based, and performative “contemporary artistic expressions of live manipulated sound and image”.¹ It heavily focuses on improvisation: contents are captured and presented simultaneously while an action is happening and the use of technology allows for realtime production. It is a generic, broad term that extends to all manner of audiovisual performative expressions, including practices such as VJing, live cinema, expanded cinemas, and visual music.² It is inclusive because it also covers specific works that fit within neither of the particular expressions mentioned above, and “does not comprise a specific style, technique, or medium”.³ We are able to find “complex dynamics between the presence of the artists and the meaning for the final result presented to the audience”.⁴

Live cinema according to Mia Makela is similar to VJing but is being shown in a setting such as “a museum or theater”.⁵  However, it is more conceptual than the VJing context and suggests “instantaneous feedback between the creator and the public”.⁶ Live cinema can be developed with loose, linear narratives, and is of “extensive freedom of configuration” and thus suggests “improvised, free-flowing abstractions”.⁷ Artists such as Toby Harris employs “continuity within and between episodes [in live cinema], invite[s] the audience to construct narrative and cultural critique”.⁸ Live cinema asks for appreciative audiences from whom there arises “in-the-moment awareness, responsiveness and expression”.⁹ I see an interesting hierarchy is formed among various live audiovisual performance styles: artists agree on live cinema being “in essence artistic,” and therefore can be set apart from VJing. Unlike VJs who follow popular trends so as to seek simple but effective audiovisual experience in more commercial circumstances (such as club environments), live cinema takes place in “a place equivalent to that of film auteurs, whose goals ‘appear to be more personal and artistic,'” and asks for more conceptual feedback from the audience.¹⁰ 

VJ

This is a typical VJ performance whose audio and visual are manipulated in real-time, designed for club environments. There aren’t any specific deep meanings to the audio or visual, but they together form a “cool,” “high” audience experience.

Live Cinema

This is a live cinema show by Writer Duncan Macmillan, director Katie Mitchell, and video director Leo Warner. They use basically all the settings that cinema/film production needs to produce the work. It is a narrative about The Forbidden Zone, which asks audiences to sit down and appreciate it just like watching a film. The visual effects are all manipulated in real-time. Compared to the VJing example above, it’s quite obvious that live cinema performance is more thoughtful and artistic.

Live Audiovisual Performance

This is a Kinect light audiovisual performance by Robert Henke. It is achieved by live light projection that is responsive to the designed audio. It is abstract, conceptual, providing an immersive experience at its own flow.

Reference

1. Carvalho Ana, “Live Audiovisual Performance,” in The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), 131.

2. Carvalho, 135.

3. Carvalho, 131.

4. Carvalho, 133.

5. Menotti, Gabriel, “Live Cinema,” in The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), 85.

6. Menotti Gabriel, 87.

7. Menotti, 87.

8. Menotti, 89.

9. Menotti, 91.

10:. Menotti, 93.

The concepts of VJ-ing, Live Cinema, and Live Audiovisual Performance are connected with each other in certain ways. They are all performed in real-time; they all need a good combination of audio and video. However, they still tend to show some differences in the way of performance and the content of a performance. Live Audiovisual Performance, firstly, is the broadest idea among them, which can be the summary of the other two. It can be audiovisual performance in any kind of scene, including clubs, museums, and exhibitions. VJ-ing, for me, represents random and free. It seldom relies on narration and careful preparation, as the performance is strongly related to the audience. The atmosphere it presents is reflected by the performance of not only the VJ but also the audience, which furtherly restricts its site to nightclubs or live houses where the audience tends to get more involved in the performance. If VJ-ing is shown in a cinema or museum setting, it would become a Live cinema. Live cinema is more like a combination of VJ-ing and cinema, as Menotti mentioned in Live Cinema“, it “encompasses forms of audiovisual performance that actively engage with traditional cinema to graphic conventions” (85). Based on the concept of VJ-ing which includes liveness and performance, Live Cinema shows a narration through its process of performance, which makes it more personal and artistic, as it is no longer random and can be remembered by its audience. Therefore, Live Cinema artists tent to have a kind of priority to VJs to some extent. According to Makela, a Live Cinema artist introduced by Menotti in his book Live Cinema, “Live Cinema creators feel the need to separate themselves from the VJ scene together, in order to establish their own artistic goals, which would rarely find an appreciative audience in a club environment” (93). Admittedly, the status of their audience are different, as the audience of VJ-ing has more interaction with the performer, while the audience of Live Cinema is quieter and sitting in a cinema scene. However, one can not easily separate them or even show a hierarchy between them, as they are both performed in real-time, they share some same methods, and most importantly, they both reflect and express the artist himself. They are art, but just with different content. 

Here is a sample of Live Cinema from the 2018 Live Cinema Festival:

It is easy to tell the narration in the video, as it gradually passed from the blossom of a flower to the connection between the flower and the person, which evolves step by step. 

The following is an example of VJ-ing from Pfadfinderei, a Berlin-based interactive media artist:

For VJ-ing, it is more about to create a kind of atmosphere that can bring the audience closer to the whole performance, instead of telling a certain story or idea. Comparing with the Live Cinema shown before, the Pfadfinderei live show is more like a collage, which contains all kinds of elements that can be used to bring the liveness to the whole scene, instead of showing something on the screen as the Live Cinema. 

A main part of our class on granular synthesis was on paralleling three fragmented clips from one video source in one common output and mixing them in interesting ways. The assignment focused on experimenting with sounds which are the results of fragmenting the chosen video. In accomplishing the assignment, I added effects and filters to each three individual audio outputs and added a fourth audio input through inserting a sequencer, which I planed to use as a base layer.

In the first stage, I played with the twisters controlling the selected fragments and the length of them in order to look for a possible rhythmic line for further development. I chose a short sample from the broadcaster’s speaking voice for the first video input, a sample of repetitive noise for the second input, and for the third input, I went back to the broadcaster’s voice but slowed down the speed to create an extended voice effect. After trying different modules, I decided on a few for the submitted patch — the RETUNER module for the first sample from broadcaster to make him sound digital and robotic; the REVERB 2 module and a low pass filter for the second abstract sound sample to make it sound deep in space and clearer without the disturbance of noise; the FLANGER module to make the extended broadcaster voice sound more like a soundscape rather than a recognizable human voice. I only created a simple ground layer because of having no clue of how to incorporate a relatively complicated sound into the already fast-paced, busy, and overwhelming layer of sounds. I used a SEQUENCER, a KARPLUS oscillator, and a comb FILTER to make a typical synthesized sound which repeats only one note after a certain interval, enriching the pre-exiting short samples of sounds. I find myself constantly looking for sound effects which drastically alienate the familiar broadcaster voice from the original footage and transform it into something heavy and eerie, that’s probably what makes granular synthesis so exciting — completely altering something through approaching the materials with a different scale.

Link to GitHub: https://gist.github.com/HoiyanGuo/a52409458567e4bfde65626580504aec

Live audiovisual performance is a much more border concept than VJs and live cinema. It includes the concept like “expanded cinema” as well. It is a popular form of art now, people can see it at every event and ceremony. Live cinema is not like the ordinary cinema which conveys the information to the audience unidirectionally, but it takes audiences’ feedback at the same time. Both the live audiovisual performance and live cinema have the characteristics of “live”, which means they are unpredictable, brings more excitement and surprise in the performing. 

From the reading I feel that the author thinks Vjing is inferior and has less creativity since he talks about “We imagine that VJs would be more like commercial directors for hire, paid by the hour, dealing with second-hand material, willing to follow popular trends. Meanwhile, live cinema creators would occupy a place equivalent to that of film auteurs, whose goals “appear to be more personal and artistic.” ”

Vjing is creating the relationship between viewing and hearing, while live cinema is creating a conversation between those who play the live cinema and the audience. 

As for me, I feel that VJ also involves a lot of creativity, the leading way of making the relationship between video and audio changes all the time, so VJ brings uncertainty as well.

Audiovisual live performance:

Vjing

about live cinema: