Kenny J Smith

A response to the article VJing and Live A/V Practices
http://vjtheory.net/web_texts/text_bucksbarg.htm

The combination of audio and visual performance reminds me of early cinema, where a pre-made film would be accompanied by a live pianist or other audio performance. The modern day night club experience has become an audio performance accompanied by video.

To quote an extract of the article “What this early work helps us understand about new audio-visual practices is that when put together, the visuals and the sounds are extensions or amplifications of each other, like instruments in an orchestra or dancers on a stage.”

This statement is interesting because the way that audio and visual components compliment each other. To say that they amplify each other i not necessarily true because the context of one is changed when the other is added. A great example of this is the dark side of the rainbow, when Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon is played with the film The Wizard of Oz. Although the film and album are completely unrelated, there are occasions where they seem to correspond with each other. In part this is caused by the mind’s desire to look for the connection between audio and visual.

Electronic mediation of human action has been established for several decades now. The traditional means for communicating with one another, observing natural phenomena, making economic transactions - even dating - are now commonly negotiated with electronic devices. As designers, we can address  such phenomena in a utilitarian manner: by creating new designs that  succeed as functional solutions. Another approach is to investigate these systems for a deeper meaning: designs working as experiments for understanding phenomena. How are complex electronic systems different than biological systems? What manner of attenuation or transduction must occur for fundamentally different systems to communicate? Why do humans imbue objects and interactions with feelings/projects that are simply not there? These questions represent the latter approach for how designers may work with electronics to understand the world we live in in a broader sense, which in turn, will inform how we create more design solutions in the more specific sense.