VJ Highlight : Jo Griffin

Jo Griffin and ArKaos: (extract from the interview)
"ArKaos has become my only piece of VJ software as it suits my purposes of VJ performances with a keyboard. I have enjoyed the journey with ArKaos has it has gotten better and better and increasingly stable; Recently in Australia there was a product released for lighting designers called catalyst great product very expensive but you can pretty much do the same with arkaos and more."

"I love the real-time tactile nature of performing with ArKaos, of real time integration of using swf programmable files. Its suits my purposes for vjing and creating content."

Self-presentation:
I started out as a textile designer, moved to sculpture and photography, but got stuck in the digital world of vjing, motion graphics, websites and filmmaking. I constantly wish for more time to create fine art photography.

In the beginning, (around 1995) I was fortunate to be hanging around a group of older artists & clubbers Tim and Mic Gruchy who produced and designed the visuals for the rat parties.... it was quite an education. I have always been an artist who dabbles in different mediums, so vjing was just another form of artistic expression - large moving canvases that happened to be in parties.

As I have been vjing for seven years, there are some events and musicians I have grown and worked with over this period. In particular these are the bexta live show over five years, Ben Suthers, in the boiler room @ the big day out, John Ferris @ Plastic, the fuzzy crew and recently Jane Slingo for the breaks on ngage tour.

For me, scenes come and go, it is more about collaborating with producers, promoters, musicians who are interested in creating something different for their audiences, not just putting a logo up on a screen and I guess over time you tend to work better with the people who believe in your work.

If you look at live musical performance and theatre today, film, visuals, images are being used in interesting ways to enhance the experience of storytelling.

For example, Asian Dub foundation djing to La Haine at the Sydney Festival, Steve Reich incorporated video art into his performances at the Perth festival. Phillip Glass and his relationship with Koyaanisqatsi ...so here if you will we trickle down to the chemical brothers, Groove Amarda, beXta, coldcut, hexstatic,

There can be a powerful and harmonious relationship with music and images.

Are we getting to a point where the music is enhanced by the images....does it make the stimulus of the live performance more enriching,
There are so many factors at play in getting the vibe right, vision mixing is about travelling with a certain idea during the trax, being able to change the atmosphere as the trax moves on and working the lighting and laser operators so the environment is entertaining for the clubber.

But in general the audience rarely remembers the visuals, they only remember the over stimulus of the night.... especially if the images are abstract its difficult to describe what you are looking at when your sideways ...

So in summary vision mixing provides one level of entertainment/stimulus /experience to the musical performance that quickly fades away. Vision mixing is a temporary artwork...

This is kind of depressing but a reality so maybe its time for a vj label to produce DVDs which can be purchased and played at home....

Jo Griffin's VJ Art:
All images are ©Jo Griffin