OTHER CINEMAS

lucas bambozzi
The VJs (video-jockey) work, as singular as it may seem, is part of the non-specific field.
The video, raw material of this provisional artistic configuration, in the past was more
live than today, and this text seeks some reference

regarding this journey.

What live brings to the surface in this digital and remix era, even if it is not a
necessarily new ingredient, is being fascinated by improvising, by the possibility of
creating something (regardless of how temporary and transitory this result may be) that
will reverberate before those who are still in the production process. Be this something
an image, a sound, an idea, a concept, or more probably an association of all these
things, this process will induce adrenaline in both the one who emits and the one who
receives. Loops, parallel editing or feedbacks (magic that is synthesized into the very
own concept of video art), generate communication flows in rough state. When well
done, this process is equally felt by the audience. And since there is beauty in
imperfection, I think that these situations really do not lack greater control. There are
already many protected situations and places: museums, galleries, theaters and serious
culture centers. The few openings that are left for experimenting should be taken into
consideration before they turn into institutions under the shield of a standardized cultural
production.
The new possibilities of association between sound and image systems have been
surprising even the most skeptical, who began to see the sensorial potential of these
situations in better words, new configuration from the convergence with electronic
music culture. After all, essentially, there isnt much that is new.
ILLUSTRATED REFERENCES
Panoramic screens or immersed environments made of seductive cinematographic
images exist since cinemas were still exclusive to amusement parks, passing by the

rubbish of the first years, by Napoleo de Abel Gance (1927) and by the displays on
Times Square.
Much of what is done today is really based on recycling previous experiences. Reappropriations and re-readings are resources established since the term media-art
appeared (or art-media). The loop is an essential element in this syntax, something
however that was inherited from practically all experiences from pre-cinema times.
Today, we notice procedures that are not necessarily new, but which have greatly
sophisticated the reproducibility phenomena: sampling, copy & paste, real time
processing. Remixing is becoming a defining concept in our era due to theses
resources. Nothing is created; everything is transformed. Would this be the novelty of a
new configuration?
The references intersecting in this scenario are very interesting. Each one, by doing so,
naturally searches some proximity with himself. Following this line of what is being called
live-visuals, in my reference trunk I find a source of patterns still up-to-date to today in
paintings by Viking Eggeling (the scroll paintings, which originated his Diagonal
Symphony today are a very familiar form in our graphic interfaces), in movies by Hans
Richter with his geometric solid and optical lines, (like in Rhythm 21, from 1921). I think
of everything that was called, pure cinema movie poetry (or absolute cinema), I watch
Anemic Cinema (1926) by Marcel Duchamp again and I verify that the largely used
graphics in the visual cultures Flash1 Generation has a constant re-incidence in the
modern 20s.
By the way, the experimental silent movies from that period inspired many presentations
involving improvisation between audio and video, which currently takes place in festivals
that address more instable medias (the Dutch Electronic Art Festival [V2_Deaf] in
Rotterdam, the Kurz Movie Festival in Hamburg, the RES-Fest, an itinerant festival
based in Los Angeles, the Back-Up by Weimar/Bauhaus, the Festival for Expanded
Media in Stuttgart, and others).
Movies such as Entracte (1924) by Ren Clair (script by Francis Picabia, music by Erik
Satie and scenes with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray) were re-visited several times
1

In Flash Generation, Lev Manovich, one of the most mindful observers of new medias there are many
mindful observers, but few venture into writing about the unstable describing the aesthetic common to all
current generation of makers that see in Flash software, by Macromedia, the base to create their works.
2

during the last decade not only because of their visual solutions and stories but also
because of their intervention function2. Fragmented movies, which could work as a
sensorial space, are seen at a glance.
Even Man Rays movies (Return to Reason, 1923 or Emak-Bakia, 1927) emanated this
hybridism and this insubordination regarding categories (they were abhorred by the
audience), if defined as an artist cinema and not as dramatic plot.
But the best reference in terms of image treatment according to a musical concept may
really be Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Dziga Vertovs manifest movie, which
became a true language icon for several new medias that today indulge in some of the
elements introduced there. Totally contrary to the established cinema based in actions
and romantic love-songs (basic features of what would later be defined as Hollywood),
one can find there fine tuning with languages from the digital universe, which use layers,
suggesting hyper-text, fragments, repetition, recycling and simultaneity. What is done,
above all, be it through editing tables or specific software, has to do with editing, which
favors that same parallelism (a symbolic coupling) professed by S. Eisenstein in the
20s.3
Norman Maclaren, beginning in the 50s, was another maker who took the attempts of
interchanging the roles between image and sound to the final consequences. In
television, which already was created live, the experiences of more radically
incorporating improvise also happened in very interesting formats -- and really close to
art. An example was the worldwide broadcasting of Wrap Around The World,
commanded by Nam June Paik for the Seoul Olympic Games opening in 1988.
Connecting events in different countries that were mixed and returned by satellite in real
time, broadcasting became a mega-performance where objectivity and information were
substituted by a visual frenzy and non-sense presentations. Good morning Mr. Orwell
(1984) is the recording of another satellite-installation or transmission-art that should be
part of the baggage of one who ventures today to control live images.

Entracte was thought of to be shown between two acts of the ballet Rlache, by the same Picabia and achieved a
higher success than the event that supported it.
3

Serguei Eisenstein The Cinematographic principle and the Ideogram, published originally in the book Japanese
Cinema, by N. Kaufman - Moscow, 1929

When talking about Paik it is worth going back a ways in his path to remember his
famous image synthesizer, with Shuya Abe along with WGBH-TV in Boston in 1969 (a
rare moment in which daring, in art, meant an advance in engineering). Paik, an
undisciplined piano player, wanted not only an instrument in which images could be
played with a flow typical to music, but also intended to remove the reference of reality
from the video image, seeking distortions, abstractions, colorizing and synthetic visual
forms, confirming this long love affair between image and sound production procedures.
The famous CVI (Computer Video Instrument) by Fairlight or the PaintBox by Quantel,
were used frequently by artists such as John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald, Paul Garrin and
Laurie Anderson. Being the objects of desire of moviemakers in the 80s, this technology
promised to stir video manipulation into a different direction, closer to painting and its
gestures. Through pens that produced interferences on images generated by cameras
and pre-recorded material, many presentations consisted basically of live elaboration of
electronic screens animated by the sounds of jazz improvisation, minimalist plays or
electro-acoustic music. Musicians such as Peter Gordon and Ryuchi Sakamoto were
assiduous performers in the hyper-kinetic pictures by Adelic Penguins (1986) or Live
Video Dance (1987) by Kit Fitzgerald.
In the 80s, what was similar to what is done nowadays with sound beats over 120 BPM
had power comparable to the power generated by the rap movement and joined to a
phenomena pushed forward by a trivial invention: the remote control, used for the first
time in 1983 (which some like Peter Greenway celebrate as the coup de grce in the
conventional narrative cinema). The production of senses from zapping and image
repetition from the television universe [until that point devoid of permanence] saturated
the video with political connotation and eloquence ability before a broader audience.
This technique was called scratch-video and this title anticipates much of what interests
us here regarding confluences and interchangeable procedures. Images were
manipulated as one would scratch the vinyl with pick-up needles and the sense
produced resulted in powerful, visually involving works, and marked with a sometimes
hallucinating rhythm. Death Valley Days, by the English group Gorilla Tapes, is one of
those works worth being reviewed often. It is about a manipulation that could avail itself
both of an absolute control of image association as well as involving, in many cases,
generous doses of haphazardness. To completely annul the novelty of the VJ scene that
rings the media, those scratch-video experiences only lacked the necessary technology

to create a more immersing and synesthetic environment, which only happened more
recently due to the evolution of video projection systems.
Some writers also say that the kind of loop used by scratch-video became widely
identified as a way of criticizing the very own media culture. Repetition proves ridicule
and hypocrisy. It enhances what goes by unnoticed in the media flow surrounding TV
and advertising.
It would be unfair not to mention some performances by Eder Santos, be them the first
ones, with a marked more commercial tenor or the most recent ones made in
partnership with Paulo Santos, one of the Uakti group members. Even using a structure
similar to the one used in television, Eder was always very skilled with improvising and
had great intuition extracting surprisingly expressive forms from rhythm and visual
textures.
There was never a lack of references and stimuli to search for these experiences still out
of place, still undefined as to the place they would occupy and in which circuits they
would succeed. Today, more than ever, one can see the richness contained in this kind
of border. Lack of definition is presented as a challenge for creation and instability is
currently defined as the new means single and great specificity.
In the 1st Forum of Expanded Media, organized at the Federal University of Minas Gerais
by the FAQ/feitoamos4 group during the Eletronika Festival in March 2003, one could
detect certain maturity in the debate regarding the expansion perspectives generated by
the new medias in the field of what is being generically called live-images. The term itself
involves an increasing spectrum of medias and resources, which allows us to think the
expansion not only as to the intersection of supports and procedures, but also suggests
internal expansions, within the medias involved.
Autophagically and endlessly, other possibilities intervene in this path of media
expansion and improvising practices between image and sound. One talks about Data
Visualization systems, which regards the gathering, organization, storage and
availability process of digital data. This process is really a typical phenomenon of digital
The Feitoamos [which also calls itself FAQ] is a group of artists specializing in presentations where the narrative, the
building of an immersing environment and a musical-scenic performance are essential for the works concept. The image
manipulation is only one of the other elements that add to the live execution process.
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times, which is radically changing the way of presenting data. They are automatic
mechanisms to see or represent information that before were read only in their original
form, sometimes through elementary graphs, if so.
However, the human processes of interpreting these data are not to be despised, since
they are capable of recreating images through the wonderful filter of subjectivity.
Only to reinforce the obvious: once all is written through numeric codes, there are
several recently created mechanisms that allow converting information bits into images.
One of them, well known by Apple PC users, is the iTunes, which features a resource
called visualizer that is supposed to decode musical data into abstract and almost
always elegant visual forms.
These systems, which make good use of digital datas most basic condition (their
numeric constitution), are being extensively discussed and even are starting to be
spread as a new category of art or as a new field to be explored by software creative
programming, meant to be used by a community formed around audio-visualizers (refer
to www.audiovisualizers.com).
In the same manner, programs such as Flash are acquiring fame and status of a
propelling toll for new aesthetics (even if some suggest that the lightness of their
graphics and vectorial lines indicate more a return to modernity rather something that
can be called new). Important festivals and events such as the Whitney Biennial is
designating specific categories in their program for projects produced exclusively using
Macromedias software even before Lev Manovich published his article in Nettime
<www.nettime.org>, which created the endless controversy on endorsing a commercial
and closed software to developers this would be an exciting chapter on its own. But
rather we are or not confusing technical pattern with aesthetics, the fact is that a
program has never been this divulged in the commercial, academic and artistic
environment at the same time, to a point where it overlaps the current concept of video,
even in its more flexible digital possibilities as the Quicktime pattern. Typical Flash
particularities such as re-organizing vectorial graphics, possibility of manipulating from
programming scripts and its potential of creating very light files significantly broadened
the use possibilities not only regarding animated graphics but also regarding figurative

images (photographic, videographic and cinematographic) specially from the MX

version.
In terms of programming, not only Flash but also other Java resources are allowing the
appearance of interactivities dreamed by videomakers and VJ candidates since video
was put in a computer. Several websites (check links, at the end of this article) make
real sensorial manipulation machines available to the public through audio and video
fragment on-line editing. That is, the VJs ideal is now available for any Internet user,
without the need for any formation or specific knowledge to manipulate it.
The wish to touch the image, imagined by Paik and for a whole generation that, like
myself, has always flirted with the confluences between image and sound, became true
not through complex techniques or expensive machines but through programs available
on the web. KeyWorx (originally Keystroke) and the extremely simple Vernacular (by
artists Howard Goldkrand and Beth Coleman, available for free at the Electronic Arts
Intermix website) allow any user to transform their text, image or audio files spread
inside their computers into very interesting and convincing kinetic elements in terms of
visual complexity and interaction via objects.
Although the interface is unfamiliar even for those who are familiar to editing videos by
their PCs, the required techniques are not far from the mouse controlled drag & drop and
some few notions of color, luminance, scaling, 3D effects and other typical digital video
parameters adjustments.
Frustrating for those who thought that they held a valuable secret, but liberating in terms
of media and associated thoughts expansion. Whose merit is it? The brilliant and
unknown script developers? Of whoever dared to copy & paste following their own
authorship parameters? We are in fact in the digital ready-made era, in other words, the
remix. It is worth than to recover the VJs or whoever is in front of the keyboards
sensitivity and technique. Their look and their ability to shout something out to the world
are valuable.

THE IMAGE MANIPULATION PHENOMENA

Thinking of medias takes us naturally to think about new technologies. But the reverse is
also true. The technologies today are at the medias service, (and it is not exaggerated to
think that religion and war also fight their priority battles, their propaganda in the media
field). The medias perform this unmistakable promiscuity with the current technique, be it
high or low technology.
And there are projects reinforcing these barriers in a very interesting way. The concept
of Generative Art for example, keeps in check not only the author but also the audience
itself. Works that regenerate and acquire complexity regardless of the inputs (selfgenerating), although are not complete novelties in the artistic field, continue to bother
critics and curators anxious for some stability regarding image technology related
concepts. The concepts involved in this case spread in such manner that they become
unfeasible in this article. They are the results of the aspects of a digital revolution that
moves below the surface of the great cinema.
The experiences previous to the current context (those here mentioned or forgotten) are
increasingly finding in the digital apparatus the perfect tool for the radical exercise of
duplication, reproduction and sampling possibilities. The presumed novelty consists
therefore by the confluence of digital procedures with the phenomena involving
electronic music culture. There, the explosive mixture is ready.
The sense of participation is reborn in this environment reinforced by ecstasy, by the
collective contact, by the trance provided by music.
On the other hand, the idea of authorship, remains in the unknown terrain of relativism.
In one side there are groups producing image banks for other VJs to use. In a world
allowing infinite reproduction, it makes sense that images have no owners. On the other
side, in this unprotected terrain, the pointed assertion of personal aesthetics is what
generates some sort of differential.
It is especially from the intersections of this kind that medias expand and result as
impure, seductive, provocative. In the loop of history we return once more to Gene
Youngbloods concept of expanded cinema (Expanded Cinema, 1970 available on-line
<www.artscilab.org/expandedcinema/book.pdf>).

The novelty of what is done today is then more easily identified5. What is complicated is
to accept how hard it is to be original in this con text. Looking back there will always be a
more or less close relation to several references placed by the medias turbulent history.
Some are inclined toward Paik, others seek inspiration in the scratch-videos, others in
the traditional cinema or in Mekas or Brakhage, an aesthetic as a model. Others realize
that all they need is already available on the Internet.
The fact is that the VJs work, while gaining an over-exposure in the media, stimulated
the spreading of a type of cinema without dramatic narrative, with little content and
diluted concepts. Some discuss the purpose of so much manipulation (a mere editing
exercise) and some consider these experiences as a kind of wallpaper for parties.
But what is promised is that a real time video processing would have supposedly the
ability to potentialize previous experience in a sensorial level never seen before. In fact,
the technologies opened truly new forms of manipulation and formulation of a narrative
more penetrable to live happenings instabilities. And these experiences are gaining
much with the interactive systems. The virtual event synchronism precision with actions
from the real scene can be truly absolute. Software normally dedicated to electronic
-musical synchronism is being increasingly used in this kind of video performance. If
sound marks are able to automatically generate visual pulses, or if the audience itself is
able to unchain events in the image and sound plan, now the "performer" can dedicate
himself to a kind of general regency of the several instruments composing this
orchestration. In addition, the concept of the system per se is becoming more and more
a complex design of interfaces, aesthetic concepts and media management. And that is
not a small task.
INTERFACES
During the 90s the computers cultural function changed. Before, it was a tool, now it is
a means: an information vehicle. We do not remember that approximately 10 year ago
the computer will still considered as a simulator for typing machines, drawing canvas,
architecture or design drawing board.
I also believe that the union between DJ's and Vj's became evident in festivals agenda worldwide due to one simple
motive: they realized that these parties were able to fivefold the amount of visitors in an electronic art festival. At the
end of the event, by adding the visitors in the exhibitions to the public attending the parties, the result was the joy that the
sponsors were missing.
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Intrinsically, we are interacting not only with a machine but also with digitally coded
cultural forms. Such interfaces basically consist of metaphors used to contextualize and
organize data in the computer, be it as icons, hypertext, metonyms or other association
forms. The interface suggests interactivity by intuition, by cognitive recognition, by
approximation.
But the existing interfaces are still poor. Interactions by typing keys or mouse clicks are
very limited contact points between man and computer.
A relationship such as this suggests that the millions of years spent in perceptive
evolution should be despised and that our facilities with expressive language should be
ignored. The development of interfaces should take the power of language into account,
including the poetic connections, the cultural values and subjectivityi.
The interactivity we are really interested in, is almost always the result of a physical,
sensorial and/or gestural process. Systems in which the computer activates mechanisms
placed in remote environments and physical spaces are becoming more and more
common in the daily routine (an immediate example are de speed meters that manage
photographic cameras and activate the sending of traffic tickets). But as with almost any
hardware, these are manufactured for some kind of industry, almost never for art
production.
The imaginable perspectives for a situation involving images and audience for example
can potentialize multi-sensorial experiences. Let us return to the aspects revealing the
newness of performances involving live-images. Groups such as FAQ/feitoamos are
increasingly interested in situations in which all senses are mobilized. This collective
participation, the potential of interactive Technologies and experimenting with the
interface, still allow the discussion of the relation between the senses and the redistribution of roles. The predominance of sight in organizing the visual world, just as an
example, can be radically questioned. Other forms of contact, other sensitivities tend to
be standardized.

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Meanwhile there is a paradox: the new interfaces that we see ahead make typically
analogical manipulations feasible. An invention considered brilliant such as Final
Scratch6 carries great anachronistic sense. Although everyone searches interactivity
forms outside the computer (the term out-of-the-box is another denomination full of a
generalizing tendency), it is interesting to see that today a VJ wants to adopt techniques
associated to a pickup.
Some justify not without reason that computers are simulation machines and it is very
natural for them to simulate other medias, more ancient or not.
IMAGES AS MUSIC - ANALOGICAL X DIGITAL
In the search for a more consensual analysis I risk saying that there was always an ideal
of producing images the same way a musical instrument is played. Following Final
Scratch, the most up-to-date manipulation experiences favor processes typically linked
to music. VJ Spetto is seeking ways of substituting the computers keyboard by musical
instruments (from interfaces commanded by midi signals), where it will be possible to
play the images, withdrawing a bit from the computer and qwerty keyboard reference.
The video manipulation software borrows from the audio universe not only their
interfaces and their intrinsic logic but many times are the same ones [Max/MSP, Nato,
Jitter, Image/Ine]. Others, more preset presentation oriented, grow rapidly and profusely
[KeyWorx, Arkaos, Isadora]. But there are a myriad of possibilities. Curiously, an icon of
this universe is still Theremin7, which reads signals provoked by the proximity of hand or
body.
What is interesting in these experiences? Why is the sense of Manipulate so sought
after? And what does art have to do with it?
The digital renders feasible and ties at the same time. In spite of all advances, the digital
wants a more organic, more tactile contact with the image. And when disguised as art
the digital craves freedom from its condition. It is a syndrome of the media art. It tends to
rebel against itself, against its function as media.
6

The Final Scratch is a device manufactured by Stanton which plays the music available in a computer as if it where on
vinyl (the system features two special vinyls, that store codes and run on Linux), thus allowing change of rotation, the
scratch, moving forwards and backwards and other hand manipulations known by DJs. It is basically an analogical-digital
interface, with similar for interaction not only with music but also with images.
7
Instrument created in 1919 by Leon Theremin (Lev Thermen).

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As I already Said in the beginning of this reverie, the video was born live. The recording
came afterwards, especially as a way of eliminating the goofs of live television. And
today imperfection is an adrenaline-driving element.
What changes? Access? Maybe. The two-way broadcastings are no longer a privilege of
major broadcasting stations, or exception artists as Paik. But there is interesting
subtleness. The perspective of interchange between artist and audience is continuing to
make followers, even if the interactivity is considered a phenomenon from last century.
And what takes place in the perceptive field still surprises those who believe in
interaction with a purely technical device.
Forging one more paradox, it is possible to say that in an era where the original sense is
lost, live performances are presented as unique works. The circuit formed around liveimage events is a type of celebration between not always connected communities: a
mixture of entertainment, pleasure, cultural happening and digital lab. An arena where
popular imaginary fights technical procedures, following the beat of ritualistic music. A
moment of definite encounter between pop-arte and digital culture.
As MacLuhan8 predicted, the electronic resources added to an already hallucinated look
the potential of amplified and distorted audio, multiplying the effects of simultaneity,
discontinuity, autonomous fragment interactivity, of the tactile connectivity in a world
invaded by crowds, by flows and by merchandise.
And today there is no doubt on how much the Art circuit is interested in neighboring
circuits, specially if there is some creativity and excitement.
According to Christine Mello, an observer that risks to systemize on the unstable, these
practices are about the rupture in the hegemony of the art contemplation gesture, the
inclusion of multiple points of view and the body as a whole, in a displacement shape,
inserted in the context of work meaning. The ideas of dematerialization, immersing
procedures and of the artistic action as object abandonment are radically re- inserted.

Marshall Macluhan mentioned by Nicolau Sevcenko in A Corrida para o Sculo XXI, No Loop Da Montanha Russa,
Companhia das Letras, 2001.

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These systems referenced or not in the past, continue to cause a redefinition in the art
sphere. At the least, they are very disturbing.
In my case, talking about art means to be transformed by what you do. It means to be
affected almost unconditionally by the experience. To act in these live images
manipulation procedures is a way of suffering the process. It returns to the isolated and
cerebral making of video editing the necessary trance into creation in the moment of
action. An extremely exciting challenge (may the mechanism that assure us we are alive
be welcome).
And I think it is increasingly appropriate to not ask necessarily if what is being done is art
of not.

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Gentner, D. & Nielsen, J. 1998. The anti-Mac Interface. Nettime. pp 1-16

Links
Whitney Biennial www.whitneyybiennial.com
Pianographique www.pianographique.com (created originally for CD-Rom in 1983!)
FAQ/feitoamos www.feitoamaos.com.br
I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives www.skop.com/brucelee
Paisagem0 www.sescsp.org.br/sesc/hotsites/paisagem0/linguas.html
Keyworx www.keyworx.org
Electronic Arts Intermix www.eai.org