Is VJ a Subculture? Clubs today have become a major entertainment factor for young people. In the clubs, VJs have been able to reach to the "real" people, the ones you would not expect to find in an art gallery or a museum. Clubs and raves became the natural space for a VJ to show his work. The visuals work well with the clubbing scene. The VJ has become a live performer who works side by side with the DJ mixing visuals to the music rhythm. The club became the perfect place for a beginner VJ with a limited budget and limited access to technology to show his work to the public, and since most clubs don't have house VJs and visual equipment, getting work as a VJ or a "House VJ" is relatively easy. All that is needed are digital video footage, a computer, software and a projector. While the demand for projected visuals in clubs has grown, talent and creativity was not as important to the club owners as they saw the VJ as a visual technician more than an artist who is cheap to deploy and good enough to satisfy the crowds. In "Where the Stress Falls", Susan Sontag writes that she dreads "the ascendancy of a culture whose most intelligible, persuasive values are drawn from the entertainment industries" and which has spelt the "undermining of standards of seriousness". Young people today are used to seeing and being surrounded by advertisements and content that influence the way they live and shop. Clubs are a cultural product which is based on trends and fashion, so in that way they are no different than any other space where advertising can be used. "...[A]udio-visual media in our culture are indeed the basic material of communication processes. We live in a media environment, and most of our symbolic stimuli come from the media." (Castells, 2000, p. 364) Club owners use the screen as a cheap advertising tool by requesting the VJ to project advertisements and rotating logos. On the other hand, when given the chance, most VJs are happy mixing and projecting anything they can get their hand on. It is therefore common to see a VJ project a logo or a promotion for a product that was not discussed before entering into a financial agreement with the club. The VJs are giving this free advertising without judgment and are being exploited. When left to their own devices VJs tend to use video loops of a psychedelic nature. Those visuals follow the same design that is used to promote the events on club flyers that are often designed by the VJs themselves. "After using 3D Studio for several months we developed our own and we still believe unique attitude towards mixing visuals for clubs. Everything is live and original. From me, Fraser, mixing industrial or psychedelic computer graphics overlaid over more computer graphics, to Dan mixing computer graphics with pre-recorded video sequences from various sources." Due to the lack of creative criticism from club owners and clubgoers and the fact that VJs were finding it easy to get their "foot in the door", clubs became the place for experimentation and has often resulted in projected material of bad standards and lack of understanding of the media by the VJs themselves. This did not matter to the people who come to the clubs as they were not paying much attention to the projections anyway as they were there to dance. McLuhan describing the television as a cool medium in that the viewer's experience in front of the screen is passive: "...the viewer is the screen. He is bombarded with light impulses". (McLuhan, 1964, p. 341) The club "viewer" was not there to watch the visuals but to dance. For the inexperienced VJ this was not an accepted reality. "In their quest to get their work (as well as this of their peers from the VJ fraternity in most cases) appreciated as it should, they often aim to compete for the top spot usually reserved for the DJ or main music act. Unfortunately, this can often translate as a race to capture the audience's undivided visual attention with the screen(s) becoming the dominating focus of the space rather than a complement to the other visual stimuli such as lighting, decor as well as the stage performers and the audience themselves. Content becomes everything and having a cinema-style environment to the club where the whole audience is glued zombie-like to the screen(s) is seen as a satisfactory outcome." (Bernard, D. "Visual Wall Paper", in www.vjtheory.net, October 2006). However you look at it, VJs have overcome the hurdles of having to please an art critic or gallery curator to get their work displayed. VJs' invented art space was the club instead of a gallery. They were showing their work to the masses with little or no artistic criticism and by doing this they have managed to naturally develop as a subculture. Not out of rebellious awareness, but out of naiveness and necessity. According to Sarah Thornton, "the word 'subcultural' [is] a synonym for those practices that clubbers call 'underground'.' (Thornton, 1995, p. 8) "Subcultures are best defined as social groups that have been labelled as such [...] Communications media create subcultures in the purpose of naming them and draw boundaries around them in the act of describing them." (Thornton, 1995, p. 162) Hebdige defines the meaning of a subculture by stating that a subculture needs to be identified by its own style. According to this notion, the style of the VJ is the technology. If we are to accept Hebdige's claim that style is what defines a subculture then by using technology as a style, the VJ is claiming its uniqueness as a subculture. Technology as a Style? When Robin Rimbaud, an established visual artist from Scanner was asked about the importance of technology in the VJ culture he replied: "any future is impossible to imagine without it [...] Technology is aligned with developments in 'Technology always influences my work through new forms of software tools, plug-ins and media servers. They all add more features than the previous version. More options [...] it's all about more options [...] the future will be brighter, higher resolution and cleaner sounding.' (Virkhaus V. in D-Fuse, 2006, p. 74) By describing technology as a style to the VJ, it does not imply that it is by any means unique. We live in a world where the latest gadget is what defines us socially. Technology has become cheaper and accessible. Technology is in an ever-growing state of convergence with a direct impact on the VJ technology. In order to obtain these ever growing needs for technology the viable way for the VJ was to aim to the mainstream, to get out of the underground clubs and raves and commercialize in order to make more money. "...VJ scene seems to be split between the 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' forces. In general, the attitude is 'either/or' - underground vs. overground, commercial vs. independent, black vs. white. In my view, the VJs should take back their vision!" (Haas, L. in D-Fuse, 2006, p. 98) VJs have diversified and engaged themselves with practices that expanded out of the original idea of the club VJ and the underground culture. How has this affected the term VJ? Hebdige sees media and commerce as "incorporating subcultures into the hegemony, swallowing them up and effectively dismantling them". (Hebdige, 1979) While underground artists are happy to sell their vision for money and allow advertising to manipulate the content of their work, advertising agencies look to subcultures for inspiration in order to develop new ways of communication with the younger generation and to sell their image as fashionable by using subcultural styles. It now becomes apparent that the use of technology as a style by the VJ is the cause for its commercialism and the troubled definition of what a VJ actually is. Technology cannot be a style and the result is that the VJ has not defined his style correctly and according to Hebdige, cannot be as a subculture. The result of this is that VJing has not been defined as an art form and some may say that "...it will forever be seen as a kind of service industry." (Earls, E. in D-Fuse, 2006, p. 21) Conclusions By using technology as a style the VJ is "selling' the underground club culture for the purpose of commercialism, thus rendered itself a pseudo subculture. "Of course, technology does not determine society. Nor does society script the course of technological change...Indeed, the dilemma of technological determinism [...] the belief that technical forces determine social and cultural changes [...] is probably a false problem, since technology is society, and society cannot be understood or represented without its technological tools." (Castells, 2000, p. 5) For the VJ to succeed as a subculture there is a need to focus on developing a style. "Rather than celebrating the convergence of technology [...] we should use new media technology as an opportunity to question our accepted critical concepts and models." (Manovich, 2001, p. 291) VJs should think what type of technology could be suitable for their work. "I generate most of the content from abusing the MX50 mixing desk. But I'm interested in the idea of making things from imposing a limitation, and getting to know the instrument I'm using. Otherwise everything is a bit crap a year down the line when they bring out EyeScrunch IV or whatever, and all your stuff looks really dated." (Scopac, in D-Fuse, 2006, p. 84) Castells argues against McLuhan by saying that by McLuhan defining the medium is the message, McLuhan Galaxy was a world of one-way communication, not of interaction" (Castells, 2000, p. 370) and states that "in the new media system, the message is the medium. For instance, if feeding the musical environment of teenagers is the message [...] MTV will be tailored to the rites and language of this audience." (Castells, 2000, p. 368) Following this argument, it may make sense for the VJ who works in the club culture to create content that clubbers want to see and focus less on what the powers of commerce want him to show. It is often the lack of access to technology that brings out the most interesting work. Lack of technology can help focus and build a creative process rather than use plug-ins and special effects software. In her essay, Digital Culture - The View from the Dance Floor, Helen Cunningham gives an example of young people in a youth club creating visuals with very limited resources: 'The club visuals team I observed doing some of the most interesting work, have a number of tricks in which they use low tech equipment to simulate high tech images. At one of the club nights I attended they projected a slide onto a record turntable which was covered with mirrors. The image reflected off the mirrors onto a large wall and created the effect of a moving rippling image and many presumed it was using a computer graphics package.' (Cunningham H. in Sefton-Green , 1998, p. 135) The "VJ" label has had a massive impact on the way it has been perceived by those who wish to be included within it or decided to ignore it. To some it helps define what they do and how to present themselves. To others it has become a restrictive term that confines their artist interests and capabilities. To all that are involved with the term VJ there is still a perception that they are number two and can never be as famous as the (superstar) DJ. After all, the term VJ has been closely associated with the term DJ from its very beginning. It may not be a far-fetched assumption that at some point VJs will start labeling themselves as DJs - for Digital Jockeys! |
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