You've heard of DJs, now meet
VJ, or video jockey, newest creative force in music videos, metropolitan night clubs and pop music festivals. In '70s, VJs ran film clips and projector slides, but today's VJ is a live performer who triggers video files in laptop computers using newly-created software to spontaneously create imagery that appears to be in three dimensions. There are cosmic blue 3D stars that explode, neon-bright planets that implode, and pulsating patterns that can hypnotize you, and that's just in first minute of new VJ Sound Brew video for "Squealorama," a track from my SONIC TONIC album.
"Welcome to world's newest art form," says John Brewington, who performs as VJ Sound Brew. "We have live integration of computer created designs and audio from a song. It means spontaneous creativity," he continued. "One of newest examples is in music video for 'Squealorama'."
Performed live, video for 'Squealorama' is a high-tech blend of 3D laser and computer imagery that takes viewers on a visual journey to outer and inner space.
Using a software program, Zuma, from a company called 3DMaxMedia, Brewington creates 3D objects live as song is played. "Today's VJ can express himself like a painter and a sculptor, with added excitement of real-time interaction. And when I perform this in a club, I can take in crowd reaction and make an entirely new video to 'Squealorama' or any other song." This flexibility means every performance by VJ Sound Brew is unique.
Other artists are turning to VJs to augment their live or recorded performances, including pop group *NSYNC, progressive rockers Yes, and trance artist John Laraio, known as Mobius 8.
The real-time graphics capability of Zuma enables Mobius 8 to render audio as visual motion, utilizing 3D imagery, video and lasers.
Up to now, VJs have stayed with very mainstream choices of music. "The 'Squealorama' song is controversial," states Brian Forest, Vice President of G-Man Music & Radical Radio, "because of its 15 pauses during last two minutes, during which dancers freeze in position up against their partners. Now, song is finding an even bigger audience on Internet because of eye-popping visuals in VJ Sound Brew music video," Forest added.
"Music is actually made visual by VJ Sound Brew," Forest says, "with magical shimmering patterns, hip hypnotic formations, stalactites and stalagmites that shoot out at you, quasars, comets, black holes, and a constantly moving matrix of incandescent anti-matter."
