History of VJ-Specific Equipment Development


The art if VJing is based technically on a variety of audio visual facilities which include both hardware and software that are produced generally for the audio visual industry or customized individually for VJs. However, things were not so optimistic at the early stages of visual art development, but the traditions of visual performance have rooted and gradually expanded until it all has transformed into what we now call VJing.

The advent of television with the first picture transmission experience dated 1929, started a new era in visual networking. The technology development level of the 1950s was high enough for the first investigative television men to emerge and work live but the good beginning did not make a good ending as television was steadily adopting a more fixed foundation.

The 1970s were good for both sound and video synthesizing hardware development, and New York, among other large cities, became a great meeting place for visual art lovers whose chief attractions were Experimental Television Center, the Hurrah nightclub, and Rhombex Studios where one could go for training lessons on a video synthesizer use. The famous innovators of those times, Steve Putt and Nam June Paik, were known to give a helping hand to the eager beginners by providing Television Center with experimental devices that every video artist could make use of. The right audience for the created content display was usually found at nightclubs and that finally resulted in a new underground TV emerging.

May, 1980 was marked by the first registered written evidence of a new ‘video jockey' class appearance. It was a paycheque given to Merrill Aldighieri by a New York nightclub where she gave live 8-hour performances in conjunction with a DJ to enhance music and light with imagery. To display her streaming content to the visitors the club was equipped with special screens that hung from the ceiling. Merrill Aldighieri has been an important figure for VJing development. She never stopped performing and experimenting throughout the 1980s and still works today travelling from time to time to present her best discoveries. Her collaboration with the pioneers of sound and animation Michael Snow and Stan Brackage helped her in her experimental work as an animator and film maker for the American Public Broadcasting Service and as a music show producer for Sony and MTV.

The video equipment production companies of the early 1980s released a few very important devices for the visual art further development. Those were the CEL Electronics Chromascope, the first commercial synthesizer, and the Farlight Computer Video Instrument, which was an advanced digital video tool for real time effect application. Computer software developers and television producers also took a keen interest in VJing and contributed significantly to its promotion. The early programs dealing with 2D/3D animation and video editing were a radical solution for a home Amiga PC user and were soon followed by still more specific software tools for the Macintosh. The first ever computer program designed for and by a VJ was Vujak developed by Brian Kane and the first VJ-specific program to be distributed commercially was Motion Dive launched by Digital Stage in Japan. The newest tools helped the artists create more vivid displays and present VJing in a most favorable light to general public when a TV series was launched first in the UK and then in Germany.

The VJs of the late 1990s made liberal use of specialized computer software on gigs (Aestesis, Advanced Visualization Studio, MooNSTER) and were able to advantage from a number of new hardware units such as a video clip player (VJamm, ArKaos) and a digital video mixer (Panasonic WJ-AVE5, WJ-MX50). The latter soon became a key tool among VJs no matter it was targeted for home or semi-professional use.

At the crossing of the centuries the leading role in a VJ's visual ‘theater' was assumed by Roland and Edirol hardware production companies. Their innovative products revealed a growing market to major music equipment producers and they shortly introduced upgraded hardware that was immediately utilized by VJs. Those progressive devices were the V5 Video Canvas (1998) and the V4 Video Mixer (2001). The first of them had a solid state disc to store graphic content and the second was notable for a MIDI device compatibility and was actually the first VJ-targeted video mixing unit.

The increasing demand for equipment on the VJing market stimulates corporations to offer up-to-date solutions for VJs; these are Korg Entrancer for live effect applying, Edirol CG8 for 3D animation production, Korg Kaptivator for video playback, etc. Cameras to get real time input from, rewritable video disc players, mixers of live television signal and prepared visuals are available from stock to get straight to a VJ's live studio.