Project: Sous Sol Live Visuals
Role: Resident VJ, motion graphics
"VJing is a broad designation for realtime visual performance. Characteristics of VJing are the creation or manipulation of imagery in realtime through technological mediation and for an audience, in synchronization to music." Wikipedia
I’d known the promoters for a few years when they asked me, and fellow collaborator, John, to provide the visual element on their new monthly event: Sous Sol Projet. This was a genre specific club night with DJ’s playing post-dubstep/future garage. This type of music lent itself well to a reimagining of 90s alternative dance culture, which was the starting place for our design decisions.
One of the concepts for the event was to always use basement venues, sous sol being the French translation of basement. This meant tighter more crowded spaces where multiple projection screens wouldn't be suitable for the live visuals. For a few years I'd been building a collection of vintage broadcast monitors from eBay which were perfect for getting in the nuts and crannies of these venues.
Along with one of the promotors, Josh, we collaborated on series of new visuals for each event. Josh had a strong vision, and we used his artwork as a basis to create the motion magic. After a year of events, we built a large library of original visuals for these events.
Each event would involve 6-8 hours of back-to-back VJing. We’d layer up our new loops with the existing ones and get them playing in sync with the beat. As well as the animated loops, we used a video mixer to blend live footage from cameras and feedback loops. One of my favourite moments was in a club called Dielectric, where I placed a small CCTV camera on the dance floor, once people realised they could see their trainers on the screens a full on footstep battle ensued. It was those kind of moments, the interactivity and spontaneity, that made me fond of the work I was doing.
I’d always get good feedback from the crowd and word of mouth led to more gigs with other promoters up and down the UK.
