VJs and VJing


VJs, acting as professional public artists, use light projecting techniques and big-sized screens to produce a vivid real-time motion film by involving versatile media such as existing and live video streams and more visual arts. Entertaining the audience at festivals, concerts, clubs, sometimes together with dancers, singers, and actors, VJs give an artistic expression to their ideas on what an audio visual performance should look and feel like.

VJing may be defined differently depending on the predominating activities of particular VJs, but the underlying principle and the general technology are identical. With the help of pulsating rhythm and sound VJs perform live to create intricate combinations of visual scenes using pieces of video clips and images. It reminds the work of a DJ blending tracks but demands more of an artistic nature and a fertile mind.

A subtle division within VJs may not be evident to an ignorant person but is still meaningful. There's certain group among VJs who base their art exclusively on video management, experimenting with visuals and projecting them on screens to make impactful dynamic shows. Formerly called video jockeys, they have grown to become real visuals jockeys. It's very often that one's former skills one gets while making lightshows or dealing with similar performing art is of great help in one's new calling as a VJ.

But VJing is far more than a fanciful series of moving images, and other VJs make the most of modern multimedia facilities by combining video with music and thus enhancing the audience's perception into an all-round live experience. These audio visual shows have proved to be a powerful means of interaction between a VJ and his audience captured by an astonishing film that is developing freely before their eyes, without a hint to often rigid long established rules that usually govern the process of media creation. Neglecting laws and depending on no intervening opinions VJs create and practice their own way of immediate artist-to-audience collaboration, abounding in non-planned discoveries to both parties.

Like DJs occupying every modern club, VJs have recently been advancing themselves onto the club stage with expressive real-time programs that are much more of a show than a solely musical stuff produced by a DJ. Projecting their audio visual samples being currently mixed onto a display they manage to create a unique pulsating environment that contributes a good lot to the dances and the whole club culture.

Displays and screens are essential when it comes to VJing but beside these output devices a VJ uses a lot more other equipment, both traditional and developed recently especially for a VJ's use. Home hardware and equipment for television studios were the only means of VJing art development on earlier days but still have not been completely ousted by the latest mobile electronics that can be found on the VJing market nowadays.

A VJ's computer of today is not just a perfect specialist playback device to stream videos from different media sources. It's a powerful mixing and effect-applying unit allowing to join audio visual stuff and enrich it with showy effects and transitions. This has become possible with the rapid development of specialized software to meet the needs of a visual artist. As a product by a VJ is always an improvisation with newly collected stuff, a good input source such as a camera is a great provider of recorded video material to be re-arranged and then inserted into current or future performances.