As a new occupation appears in recent years, VJ can be explained as a visual jockey or visual jammer. Visual Jockey comes from “video performance artists who create live visuals, in parallel with a disk jockey” (106). They are also called as the visual jammer is simply because the way they mix the video. As a counterpart of DJ, what VJs do is mainly what DJs do on music. VJing usually blends various image formats, such as real video loops, generated visual material, found footage from movies or photography and their structural fragmentation, and creating collages and mixes. VJing has created a visual format that defies traditional forms of visual narration (108).
This new visual format can be distinguished easily and relies a lot on its liveness and performative. The existence of VJ themselves is important since the audience cannot tell if it is real-time performance or not without a people standing on the stage to perform. What’s more, according to Eva Fischer, much as in electronic performances, which go well beyond the act of pressing the play button, it is not sufficient for something to be defined as a “VJ performance” to produce a video clip which is played back and projected. VJing — like any other performative format — stands for liveness, transience, and uniqueness. But even more than, for example, a live cinema performance, which usually is based on a dramaturgical audio-visual concept, VJing is pure improvisation (7). This means the VJ performance during that certain time and place is liveness, performative show that is unique and cannot be copied anymore. This also corresponds to one of the most valuable points of theater shows (musicals), when fans always buy the same show many times since every show will be different, even though the shows happen on the same day, in the afternoon and in the evening.
However, VJing still has a long way to go. The call of “visual wallpaper” happens where competitive behavior occurs in the dissatisfaction of many VJs, who report being treated and perceived increasingly unfavorably by hosts and audiences compared to the musicians (113). VJs have long been treated unequally compared to the artist, since what they do is usually creating the atmosphere rather than telling a story especially in clubs (115). In order to clarify their occupations, most VJs will amend their jobs by a second or third job title. As a musical fan, I appreciate the visual art form of VJ very much based on its uniqueness and performative, and I hope that it can be an art form accepted by the masses one day.