Image: Petri Ruikka

Story: Vesa Rantanen / 10IMP
Prelude:
“Start VJ´ing” has been in my to-do list for way too long without me doing anything about it. Electronic music & club culture is close to my heart and naturally I want to a part of it. I´ve been thinking “VJ´ing would suit me because I´m a visual person and I´ve been so keen into this culture and mentality for quite a few years already."  I´ve just never knewn where to start. And from whom to ask advices how to start. With these and few other excuses I´ve been postponing the start of my VJ career.


3.-5.10.2011 TAMK and manSEDANse organized a VJ (Visual Jockey)-workshop in collaboration.

Workshop was about the basics of VJ culture and VJ´ing. During this three day intensive-course we learned about the history of VJ culture and the very basics of how to compose and project visual material from the scratch to the screen.

Workshop started out with some basic knowledge about VJ culture and it´s history. Quite soon we started hands-on exersices involving basics of Modul8 software.

One of the key elements in the practice of VJing is the realtime mix of content from a "library of media", on storage media such as still image files, live camera input, or from a computer generated visuals. In addition, VJing mostly implies realtime processing of the visual material.

During the workshop we got familiar with composing and "playing" images as well as projecting the visual material into desired surfaces. We learned how the surface itself is not as important as the projection. You can create awesome visualisations with using -for instance- only a shoe as the surface.

Our lecturer, Petri Ruikka, a graduate from Aalto uni. MediaLab, was a big-time VJ in both, commercial spaces and in club scene as well. Petri really motivated us by showing his own work and telling us how he had learned to do it. Check it out here: http://www.woland.fi/

For sure, one of the best and most effective experiences during my studies in tamk.

If you want to see more:

• http://vjforums.com/
• www.vjfinland.fi
• http://createdigitalmotion.com/
• Amon Tobin -Isam- live
• Klaus Obermeir developed one of the first dynamic dance visualizations

Vesa is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students
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manSEDANse electronic culture festival
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