Recently, the Dubspot DJ Academy in New York resumed its course on video-DJing, more commonly known as VJing or DVJing. For the uninitiated, DVJing is the practice of mixing visual edits to accompany a performance by a DJ, band, or dance troupe. However, the roots of this multimedia movement are deeply tangled within a longer story of technology and music that spans over 40 years. After this Dubspot announcement sparked our interest, we did a little digging into the history of DVJing, and starting today we’ll be running a short, 3-part series on the history of the DVJ. In today’s post, we’ll present brief history of live video performance from the 1960s up to the turn of the century.
To fully understand the origins of DVJing, it’s important to look back to the 1960s when recording and playback technology first allowed artists to work with real time video animation and art. One of the earliest events on record to prominently feature a mix of music and video was held by Andy Warhol. In 1966, Warhol held his “Andy Warhol Up-Tight” party at the Film-Makers Cinematheque on West 41st street in New York City. It featured a combination of Warhol’s films, music by the Velvet Underground and Nico, performance dance by Gerard Malanga and Eddie Sedgwick, and lights by Danny Williams. Another early account of video performance comes from the chronicles of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who reportedly experimented with visual stimuli during their experiments with LSD. Across the pond, UK bands like Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine began to play shows with psychedelic projections (known as “liquid light shows”) at swinging underground hotspots such as the UFO Club in London.
As the ’60s came to a close, the world’s rock royalty (most notably Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and the Allman Brothers Band) began to use light shows and visual projections in an effort to enhance the concert experience. Already famed for a laissez-faire attitude toward drug use, the Fillmore East in Manhattan became an important venue in the evolution of real time visuals created as part of live music performances. Presenting the audience with a pulsating projection of multicolored liquid blotting, the gear for generating these psychedelic displays usually involved the use of several operators working (at times) more than 70 overhead projectors equipped with modified liquid slides and color wheels. They kept the show in constant flux, generating images to match the music and mood of the night. Noted visual artists of this era included Glen McKay, Mike Leonard, Brotherhood of Light, Mark Boyle, and the Joshua Light Show (which was the “house lightshow” for the duration of the Fillmore East’s three-year existence). Of these artists, McKay and Leonard were the most renown, known for their work with Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd respectively.
At the same time, emerging avant-garde video artists such as Nam June Paik and Steve Rutt began to employ experimental computer video technology into their work. The two video artists would then share this equipment with other artists struggling to gain exposure, thusly creating a small community of practiced visual creators. When the Kitchen opened in NYC in 1971, video artists had a place that was open-minded and welcoming to their work. Throughout the 1970s, visual displays saw increased use in conjunction with both large-scale rock concerts and as a staple of the emerging disco beast. Apart from several famed venues like Studio 54, these visual creations ended up in the back seat; concertgoers were subjected to longer and more elaborate displays of the music’s excesses (think Pink Floyd’s The Wall), while disco dancers were primarily concerned with movement over movie. During this same era, avant-garde video artists continued to toil in relative obscurity, debuting their work in underground clubs such as the aforementioned Kitchen or legendary NYC venue Hurrah.
In fact, it was Hurrah that provided the world with the first written use of the word “video jockey.” After working a stint as the club’s resident VJ (or DVJ) Merrill Aldighieri and a friend coined the word “video jockey” as a job qualifier for her paycheck. This seemingly off-hand definition would change the VJ world forever, as a burgeoning MTV soon adopted the term for their on-air personalities. Giving credit where it was due, the station’s founders attribute their use of the word VJ to Aldighieri, claiming that they decided to use the term only after they met her at Hurrah. For what it’s worth, MTV forever changed the common understanding of the term VJ, turning it into the defining title for on-air music journalists and play list program hosts. VJs became, for all intensive purposes, the exclusive property of home television, acting as televised radio jockeys. DVJs and other video performance artists would have to wait for their renaissance until the end of the 1990s, a wave of new technology, new clubs, and innovative DJs and artists would bring back the energy and imagination of live visual performance mixing.
Be sure to check back for the next installment in our history of DVJing, where we’ll cover the advances in video technology that laid the foundation for today’s high-end gear.
