VJing as a Totally Personal Experience
Like world-famous music bands, collectives of VJs travel across continents these days and demonstrate to people their skills of arranging, mixing and interpreting visuals against an electronic music background. A real time motion film presenting multimedia content in most unexpected ways is a great attraction and a true revelation to people who might not get involved in electronic music rhythms elsewhere and for whatever other reasons.
Technology and similar technical stuff are significant when dealing with audio visual content but many talented VJs are keen on preserving something of an amateur's perception of things. As opposed to a professional's view, an amateur's approach can give them the freedom and excitement of real life, which can make their art more lively and natural and enrich it with personal experience. That does not at all mean VJs are not professional; they actually are and take every chance to practice their skills but perfection for its own sake is not their aim. Their driving force is life which is brilliant in its imperfection, which is dynamic, vibrating and new every next moment, so the spontaneous and intuitive manner of their both work and play is their most important factor.
Like other arts, VJing is highly personal. Whatever happens in the life of a visual artist will have a certain impact on his performance. It may be just a small thing like a cat dashing across the street, a curious magazine story or a long-awaited trip - you will get the glimpses of them all, ingeniously mixed, streaming throughout his visual stories. When images come from life and your art incorporates your inner motivations, your work intuitively comes in contact with the feelings of your viewers, and that's how VJing gets interconnected with cultures and the epoch we live in.
It is generally believed that VJing is a totally contemporary product, something never existed before, which may not seem quite correct if we look at it from a different angle. Getting publically involved in a sort of spiritual trance has always been an urge among people who gathered for a tribal meeting around a fire to perform rites, play drums and sing chants. Lights and shadows, sounds and visions have been part of the human experience throughout our history and they are still there and are made a wide use of when it comes to any of the performing arts, including theater and cinema. So like an artful adherent, VJing explores new realms and reveals the hidden aspects of the existing ones. The personified approach to art helps VJs develop and promote quite a new way of thinking and living. While expanding the appeal, manifestation and essence of visual art and finding their enjoyment in the process, VJs master quite a number of occupations. Some of these are unique like space or light manager, others are more common and relate to graphics and film making but when it comes to VJing they sound and feel different. For someone this quaint combination may remind of a game, but it would be more accurate to look at it as belonging to the realm of music, because audio and video contents usually go together.
When we speak of VJing it's commonly electronic music that we deal with, and a VJ acts here as a messenger with multiple missions to perform. Images that are being created to music during live sessions are truly the visual embodiments of sounds being played, with a VJ being an implement which is there to help music not only get heard but also get seen. The catching and vibrating environment that is born as a result attracts crowds of new fans and promises a triumphant future both to the initiator (a VJ) and his assistant (electronic music). Finally, movie visitors can benefit from VJs' shows, too, and find much deeper sensations than it could be possible when sitting passively before a cinema screen. The personified nature of VJing is close to our minds and hearts because its images make us engage in the act.