VJs and Club Culture

of technology, music, and art to create an interactive experience for the individual participant/listener. While intermedia serves as a important element in all aspects of club culture, my focus will be on club VJs or “video jockeys”, and more importantly how this element of club culture works to revolutionize the intermedial possibilities of video in conjunction with musical performances. While a VJ on MTV cues up prerecorded songs and plays them for a cable audience, a VJ involved in club culture mixes video clips with music in a live performances in front of an audience. Fusing the video with the music results in an intermedial field ripe for exploration and new discoveries. When Dick Higgins states, “In intermedia, on the other hand, the visual element (painting) is fused conceptually with the words” (Higgins, 52) his statements illustrate the process of intermedia. Fusing the visual with the audio makes VJing a digital intermedia between sight and sound.

Inside club culture, VJs are quickly becoming the club based artists taking the most advantage of new computing technology. Programs such as Macromedia’s Photoja

video mixing deck anything is possible, and the future is a blank canvas for audiovisual exploration by VJs in club culture and beyond.

VJs have been known to mix pre-recorded sequences and 3-D animations with live footage from the club, including the DJ and the dancers. The effect is transforming. A hyper visualization of past and present tense backed by the intermedial mix of music

and visuality. The same sentiments were echoed in the intermedial teachings of Dick Higgins when he said, “...a conceptual fusion of scenario, visuality and, often enough, audio elements” (Higgins 53). If club DJs are predominantly disc jockeys - roving record stores finding the latest, greatest, vinyl to sample, then club VJs are surely video jacks - taking as needed from broadcast channels, internet quicktime video, and making their own visual imagery to create a new, varied, visual distortion. As Tony Grant of the VJ team, Synergy, states, "We are trying to create a certain synergy - synergy between the music and the video, synergy between the crowd and the VJ, and synergy between

globe. Each Wednesday, Coldcut does audiovisual sampling straight from their studio, and diverse artists ranging all across the globe from Vancouver, Canada ambient freaks to Brighton, England dreadheads host and perfom on their own programs. With the continued increase in cheap bandwidth and cross promotion amongst clubs, artists, and the internet, television’s growth on the ‘net is becoming a cheap, and readily avaliable medium for artists who want to showcase their VJ wares outside of the confines of clubland, corporate dominated networks, and/or cable outlets.

Some topics in this essay:
DJ/Club Culture, Coldcut Hexstatic, Dick Higgins, Douglas Kahn, Brett Leonard, DJs VJs, Douglas Kahn’s, Brighton England, Grant VJ, VJAMM VJ’s, club culture, music video, video scratching, club vjs, vjs club culture, djs vjs, intermedial possibilities, dick higgins, using software, audio visual, aide computer,