Dancing Images: Text, Technology, and Cultural Participation in the "Communicative Dispositif" of VJing

Abstract

VJing, the practice of mixing video images live during a dance party, is a relatively new cultural form, which shows affinities with other contemporary media forms - film, video, computer games, mediatised theatre and the media arts - but appears to have a distinctive identity. Dancing with images is an experience that has its own peculiar meaning and value; it requires specific knowledge to be understood and the right "mood" to be enjoyed. It is difficult for the outsider to locate this practice in a cultural context (it hovers in the no-man’s land between art and entertainment), and to catch the meaning of moving images that do not clearly represent or narrate something and are perceived in motion. VJing does not fit completely with traditional categorisations in some of the most important fields of cultural analysis. Live visuals appear in very diverse forms that may fulfil different functions. They can be challenging for our structures of perception, trigger deep emotional reactions, or function as a superficial vortex of eye prickles; they can transmit ideological or political messages or just pimp the club with a cool look. Those forms are also differently related with the other elements that play a role in the production and reception of a VJ set: the subcultural context, which clearly influences the choice of the language and content of the visuals and their reception (there are mixing styles, techniques and contents that fit better in certain scenes or clubs than others), and the technological tools. What is the general value of VJing as a cultural practice then? And how does the video performance transmit ideas and emotions, norms and values within its specific subcultural field? Those two questions appeared to be strictly related. In this study, the relationship between the general social and cultural processes that characterise clubbing and VJing and the semiotic processes within a single performance is analysed from a broad philosophical perspective. Drawing on Kattenbelt and Habermas I designed a "triadic approach" to VJing that distinguishes between three different orientations and types of communication both at the general level of the cultural field and at the level of the single performance. There is a subjective perspective where the images function as aesthetic objects, addressing the cognitive and affective perceptions of the clubbers; a normative perspective where the mix is understood in the frame of the norms and values of the cultural context - a means to conform to or to change the visual styles of the scene; an objective perspective that highlights the logical aspects of the VJ set, its adaptation to the party structures and the music, and its argumentative grid when it is used to take part in the cultural discourses of the dance community and to express ideas and opinions. The three orientations are "moving principles" that activate and steer processes and arrangements (dispositifs), between the concrete elements - technologies, texts and participatory behaviours - that constitute the practice of VJing.