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Jay Smith [from Livid] Jay Smith is a video artist and founder of Livid, a company built to bring Jay's unique vision for performance video to the world and to showcase and market his range of unusual video instruments, such as the viditar. The viditar is a hybrid guitar and video triggering device allowing the video artist to get on stage and jam with the rest of the band. Powering this in real-time is Livid Union, a powerful piece of software developed by Jay's company that means you don't have to wait for renders as you would with Adobe After Effects.
See our review of Union coming to these pages shortly, but in the meantime we had a chat with Jay about the technology he uses and performing with his own band, Sinch.
PIXELSURGEON: What's your background? Did you have a creative upbringing?
JAY: Not necessarily a "creative" upbringing in a traditional sense, but I always encouraged to color outside of the lines. Growing up in suburban New England either makes you totally complacent, or inspires you to rebel against the mundane. Sometimes living in oblivion is inspiration enough to just go ahead and chase your seemingly lofty ideas. I was always interested in DIY technologies and performance art, but didn't fully realize even what that was until I went to school at the University of The Arts in Philadelphia.
There I studied fine art and was particularly interested in interactive performance art. I always had a fascination with outsider art and some of the more "mainstream" movements of the 50's and 60's such as Fluxus and Situationalism. Art as an experience seemed much more accessible and fascinating to me than object based modern art which tends to be elitist and so detached from humanity. I experimented a lot with film and interactive technologies by building interactive sensory installations and creating performances. I used alternative interfaces with computers to change the experience based upon user interaction. While I found it interesting, I was missing the performer/performance aspect of it. I also dabbled in various editing softwares and interactive apps like Director which opened my ideas to controlling real time video with physical expression.
I had been toying with the idea of making an improvisational video tool for live performance when a few friends of mine who were in Sinch came to one of my shows and we talked about doing some audio visual collaborations. I was never too impressed by the gallery scene and wanted a way for my work to be viewed by the "general public" without lengthy artist statements and I always loved the Punk aesthetic of on your face expressionism. After a lot of experimentation, practice and performance, I eventually joined Sinch as the Viditar player and we developed our own style of Multimedia Rock.
What was the concept behind the viditar? Was it so you could be part of the performance?
The Viditar basically grew out of the idea that video could be performed or played just as audio is manipulated. I did like a lot of what you could do with programs like After Effects, but had no time for setting key-frames and waiting for test renders, I wanted a way to jam live video with live audio with Jazz improvisation and Punks disregard for the status quo. The Viditar allows me to command attention to the work by using technical skill and expression in with real time multimedia.
Why a guitar, and not, say, a synth or a drum kit?
I think the actual interface of the guitar is perfect for physical expression. Until the Viditar people typically controlled live video with a computer or a MIDI keyboard. Aside from being confusing, playing video behind your computer on a stage in not terribly interesting and bastardizing piano keys to trigger clips doesn't really say revolution. I thought that the guitar interface made much more sense from a physical standpoint and a performance standpoint. I wanted to performing to be just as important as the performance .
You appear to a Mac-based performer, does Apple offer you something that the Windows environment can't?
I think that paying attention to details is an extremely important aspect of anything visual. Aside from being aesthetically appealing Apple has paid attention to a their users and always challenges them to rethink the way things are done. This is not to say Windows machines can't outperform and be better on the wallet, but using Macs I always know what I am going to get and the stability is something that I just cant sacrifice. In all my performances I have never crashed during a show and its nice to not have to worry about the technology and spend more time on the creativity. Union however will be available for XP later this year.
When performing, what's the kit you use on stage to play and project the images?
Well the Viditar basically connects to my laptop which is running a custom software app called Livid Union. Livid Instruments is my hardware/software company. The output from the software then runs to a video switcher that feeds the signal to projectors and TV's on the stage. Performing in rock venues can be difficult to set up video in so the setup changes from night to night, but there is always a projector with at least 2000 Lumens and a few TV sets scattered on stage. If we get lucky, clubs like the House Of Blues has built in screen and projection systems. Most the newer clubs have these built in so it is just a matter of time before I can just use my Laptop as my "amp" and plug into the house systems.
Where do you source the images you use?
The imagery I use has some relation to the songs that we play. Some stuff I shoot on DV and edit into short clips, the animations are usually put together with 3D software and other things are taking from government film archives or pop culture. A lot of the song visuals (and lyrics) are more social commentary then expressive so borrowing from pop culture allows me to make a visual connection and doubles the meaning of the song concept. Everyone in the band contributes to the ideas and Tony (guitar) also does a lot of contribution with the animation. The effects and mixing is all done in real-time, so the output that you see is much different than the original image. Live video feeds can also be manipulated, effected and 3D mapped in real-time using FireWire. That's the great thing about the Union software, you can begin with one simple image or camera feed and improvise on it infinitely and never see the same thing twice.
How and why did you make the leap from performer to technology company owner?
Well after years of development and touring I had a lot of interest from other people interested in doing similar things. I think there is a lot of potential with live video and someone needs to help the direction of the medium or we may suffer from it being set aside or cheapened by lame technology and corporate misshaping. In order to make it a viable medium innovative companies who are willing to take chances are going to have to set the way. With Livid that's what we are all about. We understand that chances have to be taken and that the most important thing is the ability to adapt and predict. We have to take our cues from the community, but also preset these new ideas in a way that helps revolutionize the medium, not just band-aid it.
How did Union evolve?
After designing the Viditar I wanted to make an instrument that would be able to be used onstage, in the studio at your desk and anyway that the artist sees fit. While the Viditar is great in a Rock setting, it might be misplaced in a VJ/DJ team or in a video editing studio, so we developed the Tactic. The Tactic is a hand made wooden instrument that is designed to be placed on a keyboard stand for performance or can sit on a desk or table in a studio or DJ booth. In development of the software for the Tactic we had a lot of inquiries from people using MIDI devices for other things like installations or just real-time multimedia creation. So we modified our software a bit and made a version called Union. Union allows you to use any MIDI device or just the computer keyboard for real-time creation. A lot of VJ's have devices that they already use or musicians have MIDI instruments that they want to expand into AV instruments. Union can also be synchronized with other audio software.
It really is about experimentation and allowing the artists to not think about the technology and let the creativity become more important. Before Union you really had to be a pretty seasoned tech geek or programmer in order to do live video. The limited software that is out there is generally too difficult to use or way to simple. Union gives you the flexibility to do a lot for the advanced users and simple things for people just starting out. We are hoping the doors will be opened for people that have always thought about doing these kinds of things with real-time multimedia. While I think ultimately we need to make the shift to video specific instruments like the Tactic and the Viditar, Union is a way to get things moving in the right direction. It is based upon years of experience and collaboration between myself and Livid's now director of software development Peter Nyboer.
Are you able to save live performances with Union to appreciate later or do they disappear into the ether like the rest of the live performance?
Yes, while I feel that the "liveness" of the performance is the most interesting part, a performance can be saved as a QuickTime file and used for other things. There are 2 ways to do this. You can either simply record your output (which we "sinch" did with our Tabula Rasa video) or you can record in Union itself. The recording can be particularly useful in video editing and even visual effects designs. While framerate may drop in performance depending on the number of effects, CPU speed and RAM, the recordings render in full 30fps and it is a very nice way to eliminate rendering times and you can get some pretty interesting results. We actually have some users of union who are straight up video editors and they use it for recording only. What used to take them days of keyframing in After Effects and test rendering, can now be done in real-time and you can feel the effects while they are being created. It is great for listening to music or a track and matching the effects up in real-time using physical expression. Somme people are also using it to do print, creating compositions and taking the still frames of the recording. Union is almost like a palette for visual experimentation.
Were you pleased that Primus video artist The Filthy Ape decided to give Union a whirl?
Yes, The Ape came to us looking for exactly what I was looking for when I started all of this, an easy way to express with Live video. He has been a tester of the software since it was in Beta so it was good to have someone else with practical experience give input. He is also doing some interesting work with Union and Tactic and I also think it is a perfect match with Primus. They have always been an innovative band on the forefront of mainstream experimentation so it just works. The Ape is also doing a lot of interesting things with manipulating the live video feeds and mixing it in with the visuals.
Is there anything intrinsic in Union that encourages people to move away from the mandlebrot set graphics so hated by the Ape?
I think that the effects and the versatility that Union offers does in fact make it much easier to take a live feed or anything really and make it much more interesting than just a visual pattern. Each effect has up to 6 parameters, so the number of visual variations is infinite. We also have a lot to offer in the Modules. You can use a audio file or line input to detect beats and match the signals to the editing, you can make high quality titles, you can map effects to lfo's, key live feeds, and much more than I can even describe here. This versatility and the great frame rate that Union gives opens up the world of possibilities.
A lot of people are starting to do more narrative "real life" real-time editing and it is pushing the boundaries between video mixing, filmmaking and performance art. When I got into this I wanted to make real-time video performances and say something with my images. I still think there is a place for pattern based work, but the gates are being thrown open with new tools like Union and Tactic.
Are there any video artists out there who are really floating your boat?
Bill Viola is still doing some interesting and important work. I think that his esthetics as well as previous artists like Nam June Paik will start to resurface in more of the mainstream. I think that before a lot of people had a hard time accessing that kind of work, but with the inundation of video in music and culture the arts are bound to catch up. Culture jammers like EBN (emergency broadcast network) are reappearing, and the tools are getting easy enough for anyone with an idea can be a video artist, not just a bunch of AV geeks. The only thing really missing is the creative movements and punk attitudes, people need to take some chances. There are some people making some waves out their like the TV SHERIFF, it is just up to the creative collective to step forward and make it a reality.
What are the dos and don'ts of live video work? What advice would you have for someone just starting out?
The biggest one is not to let technology get in the way of creation. The reason I started Livid was to allow people who didn't know anything about live video to be able to create. Once less time is spent on learning the tech and trying to make software that does something, the medium will explode. When I started live video I never heard of a VJ and didn't even want to be a VJ, I wanted to be an artist that uses video manipulation as his voice. I also wanted to be able to do interactive installations and recorded work, so I started my own company.
I just hope that new users won't settle for bastardized audio interfaces MIDI controllers as their tools. In order to be recognized as a unique voice, unique tools are needed. Thatıs what started the Viditar concept and will continue to drive my company, revolution not adaptation.
So don't let technology drive your aesthetic and do color outside the lines.
What are your plans for the future?
We have more hardware instruments in development at the moment including some hybrid A/V analog/digital instruments as well as other software products for live video and audio. We will continue to experiment with live audio and video hardware to change the way people perceive live digital instrumentation.
We (Sinch) have also recently finished up our new record and DVD. There are some interesting interactive video things on the DVD-ROM and we are currently looking for a new label to put it out.
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