This installation by Saskatoon based VJ Carrie Gates came up on my Facebook homepage today. It defies the passive consumption of imagery, something all to often done by spectators of VJ work and by VJs themselves—especially when they use pop culture and nostalgia for the sake of ease (something we too have been guilty of!).

From the official write up: "This work is an installation where EEG brainwave signals are used as biofeedback controllers for a video mixer built in Max/MSP/Jitter software. The participant is seated on a comfortable seat in an intimate environment, facing a television set. The Gallery Assistant fits the participant with the EEG sensor headband, which then reads their changing brainwaves and sends that data as integers over a wireless Bluetooth connection to the hidden laptop computer, controlling the aspects of the video playback system. When the participant’s brain waves change, the video changes in realtime, creating a biofeedback loop. The trick for participants is to learn how to train their brainwaves to respond to the graphic imagery seen on the screen in order to see all of the videos. One has to control the mind's reaction to the imagery on different levels in order to see it all and control the organic sequence of videos. The videos revolve around themes of consumption, war, greed, glamour, environmental damage, and other perils of contemporary late capitalist culture, investigating relationships of passive consumption in gallery-based new media art and the world at large."

Not only is this impressive technically and conceptually, but I am delighted by the very fact that it is conceptual at all. Maybe I'm paranoid (or ignorant), but I often sense that there is too wide a divide between the work of VJs and the new media artists with whom they share video technology. VJ work doesn't have to be superficial, and new media art can and should be incorporated into nightlife. I'm not saying that the lines are necessarily firmly drawn, only that further integration and goodwill between the two is a great thing.

Photos by Neil Hilbrandt

Tonight we're playing a show with the weird and wonderful Haunted Beard at the TALL HALL Music Waste show! It's free, so for all you nerds who slacked off on getting a pass, this one's for you.

From the official description: glorified party tent built to honor our social/political/cultural crisis by way of sounds waves, oscillations, frequencies, light and shadow.
participants// spectrum interview: addus tolly & scant intone: haunted beard: j. parsons: cooleecoolee: L.V.A. cairns

Tall Hall
Hawks At Union south/west corner
bigbig tent
10pm to midnight.

SUNDAY JUNE 7, 8 PM at VIVO [1965 Main Street]
Performance with Workshop Participants + K & W Tankred | $3-10 sliding scale

Elizabeth Cairns
Alex Young-Hwa Cho
Graham Christofferson
Laura Lee Coles
Spencer Davis
Ricarda McDonald
Alex Muir
Jessica Parsons
Martin Reisle
Emilio Rojas
Anju Singh
Kent & Wenche Tankred, Sweden

Kent & Wenche Tankred were introduced to Vancouver at Signal & Noise 2008 with their remarkable performance Inflection for 9 amplified electric hand mixers and 6 amplified computer fans. They have now been invited back for a 10-day VIVO residency to lead a workshop for local artists.

Stepping back from the “convenience” of digital technology, the Tankreds will conduct an experiential detour into live electro-acoustics using more rudimentary tools. Workshop participants will build sound machines from common houshold appliances, electric motors, electromagnetic relays and consumer electronics. The emphasis will be on sonic exploration, supplemented by visuals. The workshop will culminate in a collective audio/visual performance event.

Liz created a series of stills from some of our past sets...

I admittedly had never heard of Swedish audio-visual artists Kent and Wenche Tankred before beginning the Analogue Detour workshop at VIVO with them. They do improvised sound performances that use found electronics (one thing they have said over and over this week is that they almost never buy anything for their music), makeshift contact mics, old motors, AM radios and sheets of metal, among a mess of other household/garbage items, to produce a symphony of deep dark hums and buzzes. I like it a lot. It relaxes me.

Liz and I are now about halfway through the seven-day workshop. One thing we've learned that is the most relevant to our (and maybe your!) work—along with getting over our we-can't-do-that attitudes and finally delving into some sound experimentation—is the use of audio mixers as the intermediary for a video signal. It's a simple idea, but one that neither of us has come up with before. Genius. There are two ways to go about it. The first is to send a video signal through the mixer to a tv or projector. The image is rendered out of focus, with variable undulations. The second way to is to use audio signals. One of the best things I have seen at this workshop thus far is that way sound 'looks' on a tv. Single notes create bold horizontal lines; with chords these lines split and multiply, and the vibrations get stronger.

The one downside to this is that the video comes out as black and white. Audio signals obviously contain no chrominance, and I'm guessing that audio mixers are therefore not equipped to handle that when running video. If you have an Edirol V-4 or another type of analogue video mixer, you can throw a chroma filter on your signal and play with that.

The workshop is culminating with a performance this Sunday, June 8 at VIVO. If you're interested in seeing what this technique looks like in person, drop by for 8pm.