Photo of the Month - Haze

Photo Blog

This signifies my July 2007, The busiest month ever. Lot of purple haze, due to the amount of work. But also flicking lights with performances. Most importantly there has finally been a light at the end of the long dark tunnel.

On Dalí and Film

Art Review

Oh boy, have I worked on getting my ass to the exhibition Dali and Film at Tate Modern. Since its opening in early June, I have meant to go. But I managed finally, so was it worth the efforts? Dali, the first great self-promoter within the art circles and one of the master visionary. For me his greatest strenght is his belief that creation is just about getting rid of your limits.

I have been a Dali fan this reason, and his paintings reflect the limitless approach really well. However, even thought being aware of his films, such as Un chien andalou (1929) with Luis Buñuel, I never thought films were such an influence for Mr Dali. Also I was not aware of his efforts to break into Hollywood, using his signature surrealistic designs. In this sense the exhibition did a really good job.

Highlight was his only recently accomplished collaboration with Walt Disney, titled Destino (2003). Storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and Dalí for eight months in late 1945 and 1946; however, financial concerns caused Disney to cease production. The Walt Disney Company, then Walt Disney Studios, was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 18 seconds in the hopes of rekindling Disney's interest in the project, but the production was no longer deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.

The importance of this piece for me was is the fact that I'm a huge Disney fan. His animations have been very forward thinking, and especially Fantasia (1940) was one of the first films to involve visualized music.

One must credit Dali with in passion and drive to use film as a medium for his visions. However, Dali's directorial efforts are not very high quality. His storytelling so very surreal that, limit in film technology made it impossible to fully realise the visions. I believe oil painting was the best media for surrealism at his time, though one must wonder what if Dali would have had the CG technology to create 3D animated moving worlds.

Minor Tones

Thoughts

To be honest, I think I'm more after the easy life than the little bohemian artist inside wants to be. I have nothing but good things to say about the people, though their current government is betraying the whole human kind for the sake of profits. That is beside the point however, as I wanted to talk about a situation that evolved last weekend in a lounge bar. A dude, dressed in an expensive suit, asks this from my friend.

"Where are you from?"
"England"
"Nice, very cool. I am from California, Los Angeles."
(I give away short laugh, for the obviously cocky manner he used)
"Why are you smiling like that? You must be jeaulous."
(Silencio)

Right, just why the hell would he think I am jealous for him. California is great in many ways...really it is, and I would move there if the opportunity should provide me the chance. Or to be precise, I do have the chance all the time, though have chosen to take another direction than moving there right now. Actually I think I'm more jealous for the homeless ones living in Barcelona than for him living in LA.

So what I am trying to say is that, stop being so god damn simple minded. Life is not always about sunshine, money and girls (although most of the time it is...). And beside, repetition kills you. The cookie you eat everyday, will soon taste like dust. Sometimes I admire my dad for his favourite hobby:

Sitting beside the lake, alone and just thinking.

Crossover of Senses @ MoS

Performance + Visuals

On Sat we had the launch night of a monthly performance at Ministry of Sound. I seem to tie myself a lot with the famed club, which I don't mind actually. It has been my second home in London and when the club is rocking it is really good. For the Crossover of Senses, we created a platform for an audio-visual experience.

Each staging will see me, VJ Hudson, with a specially selected headline guest. For the July night we had Anna aka VJ Bopa. She is the top female VJ in the world and has nice glamourous graphical style, with a lot of references to the Scandinavian design style. For my own set, I used a lot of themes from the Global Cool performance a week earlier, though mixed it with "Live Your Dream" approach. "Be Cool and Live Your Dream".

My time is becoming increasingly limited, due to a nice new development with MoS. I'm doing more and more on the visual side of the club...I'm writing this from the MoS offices and got to get back to work. Later ya'll.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5135673692034552771&hl=en-GB]

Visuals: VJ Bopa & VJ Hudson
Producers: Teppo Hudson & Evy Magoulas
Director / Editor: Teppo Hudson
Photography: Chester (Cut Creative) + Teppo Hudson
Music: Cedric Gervais feat. Caroline - Spirit In My Life

Global Cool @ Ministry of Sound

Performance

I was commissioned to produce Live Visuals for DJ Pete Tong’s 'Wonderland' night on 07.07.07 in Ministry of Sound. If nothing else, at least the lucky seven was lined up for me. One of the major current debate is global warming and Ministry of Sound is the first dance brand addressing the clubbers, projected through a non-profit Global Cool. Therefore, I collaborated with Pete Tong in order get the punters to take action.

Aim of the visuals was to create a propaganda style moving imagery about the beauty of the planet. I used elements of video, photography, graphics with propaganda addressed using text layers. The content was rather easily created, coordinating photographers in the cities of Barcelona, London and New York. You can find a sample of the contents here.

Major challenge was the time limit. The commission came some 2 weeks before the night and was actually confirmed just 4 days before the stage time. That left me very little time to write narratives. The direction ended up being very improvised, with emphasis on content collection and punch line creation. Live editing was done on the spot.

However, the night was a success. I had fun, enjoyed my contribution for the good cause and visuals worked really well most of the time. Hopefully the Global Cool movement continues. There is only one thing that I am missing. Again, like on those hundreds of music gigs, I can't recall any concious moments of mixing. Am I doomed to lose the most amazing moments of my life?

Global Cool Trailer

Visuals

The video is a trailer sample of the performance "Global Cool". This is a project aimed to address clubbers about the dangers of Global Warming and will be performed in Ministry of Sound on 7/7/7. The performance is produced for DJ Pete Tong.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1931459283938267122&hl=en-GB]

Producer: Teppo Hudson
Director / Editor: Teppo Hudson
Photography: Emmi Kaarna + Chester (Cut Creative) + Sam Javanrouh + Kathleen Connelly + National Geographics
Graphics: Various Sources
Music: Polaroid - So Damn Beautiful (amethyst mix) - from GU 10

Flames of Imagination

Business


Do you know why we are interested about visual representations? My personal interest is in all kind of visualizations, which has developed through abstract visuals of music videos in my childhood. What I took away back then was a whole set of expectations about what an image could look like. That is what I miss in TV, and that's why I do what I do in arts. Basically, it is the idea of cinema that isn't driven by storytelling in the conventional sense.

I don't mind narrative; in fact. I love a good narrative, expecially a Hollywood technical quality. Anything is valid as long as you do it right. If the message that's being delivered makes me think, entertains me, makes me laugh or cry, gives me a place to forget, or whatever - then I'm interested.

With abstract visuals we are seeing things now that were unthinkable five years ago. I think this is because a wide audience is being introduced to audio-synchronised abstraction through their computers' music visuazation apps. To me it's common sense that people enjoy watching abstraction, and seeing an interaction between sound and image that isn't necessarily dictated by telling a story.

As displays become brighter, bigger, and flatter, the image becomes environmental, allowing the video to color a room's ambience rather than just deliver information. Today's media is undergoing a metamorphosis as new displays beg for beautiful picture to fill them. So we're now seeing companies offering footage of tropical fish aquariums and slideshows of impressionist paintings for all these HD screens. This market will demand new and fresher content, and VJs are the natural providers.

In a 2003 speech by William Gibson to Director's Guild of America's Digital Day says that cinema began when prehistoric people sat in circles around fire, looked into the flames, and told stories about what they saw. Resulting in a symbolic narrative triggered by the moving abstact flames:

The story of film begins around a fire, in darkness. Gathered around this fire are primates of a certain species, our ancestors, an animal distinguished by a peculiar ability to recognize patterns.
There is movement in the fire: embers glow and crawl on charcoal. Fire looks like nothing else. It generates light in darkness. It moves. It is alive.

They see the faces of wolves and of their own dead in the flames. They crouch, watching the fire, watching its constant, unpredictable movements, and someone is telling a story. In the watching of the fire and the telling of the tale lie the beginning of what we still call film.

With the advent of the digital, which I would date from, approximately, World War Two, the nature of this project begins to become more apparent, more overt; the texture of these more recent technologies, the grain of them, becomes progressively finer, progressively more divorced from Newtonian mechanics. In terms of scale, they are more akin to the workings of the brain itself.

Photo of the Month - Red Bar

Photo Blog



I'm starting to upload a photo at first day of the month. The photo will be taken by me, and always tries to signify the events, feelings and memories of the latest month. I hope it will grow to be a photojourney, that will tell a lot with a single shot.

Here goes for the first one. Titled Redbar. June was red, with passion in soul for what went on in Barcelona, anxiety towards the bar management and blood poured on VJ event. Still in a bar happened the most beautiful event of the month. It was an underground afterparty in Barcelona...Though that is all I'll tell.

Filing system

Log


I am re-organising the category system of this blog. Adding a spanking new category under the topic, which helps the search of the categories. Meanwhile I am keeping the old labeling, until the search engines have updated the indexes. However, overall I am quite disappointed on the categorising system of any blogs there are. Or maybe it is just me...

Video Samples

Visuals

Here is an experimental sample of a VJing test for my current project using only photographs. In the clip below, the photos are first edited using Final Cut Pro, and finally mixed live with the music using Modul8

This is a complete test, but I am happy to receive feedback.


Respect

[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5194150936703771809&hl=en-GB]

Credits
Directed / Edited: Teppo Hudson
Photography: Carlos Noboro
Music: Paul Oakenfold - Ready, Steady, Go

Live Lounge Video

Visuals

A clip from Live Lounge in Ministry of Sound, May 2007.

Live Lounge[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2813042889533041236]

On Emerging VJ Markets

Business + Visuals + Academic


VJing is fast emerging to be one of the most innovative creative movement of the 21st century's first decade. Consequently market forces will became interested about the art form, and this post intends to discuss this emerging relationship a bit.

Back in the days, I have witnessed real business ideas been stolen by better positioned and more resourceful people, or taken them and then presenting them as their own. And that happens a lot. Often the success (in which ever way you define it) does come with a good self-promotion and networking. I think this is one of the things that is holding culture back. Looking from my point of view, you can be the greatest visual storyteller in the world, but professionally, you're no competition for somebody who above else "wants to direct". So better give some attention on that entrepreneurial will to push through the wall.

Well...nice. But what if I argue that coming up with your own ideas is a more fun way to go through life, than huge amounts of money earned?

It gets back to the idea that there's no limit to what you can accomplish as long as you don't mind who gets the credit. It's legal to steal ideas in this society, but it is not legal to steal money. This means that where art and finance mix, there isn't a level playing field, and the person who controls the money can steal the ideas. It's basically rule by force - not physical force, but economic brutishness, with Adam Smith's Invisible Hand of the marketplace acting as a fist. As a result, a lot of nice people in their ivory towers of industry are somewhat sad figures because they're isolated from the things that they love, from the very things that would inspire them. Sad even more because they are forced to be up in their towers by the Invisible Hand's imposed pressure.

VJs have a huge advantage in this area, as they are by necessity always in the "cultural mix" and are interacting with audiences, getting direct feedback. Creative communities allocate resources by merit rather than force. So it's not the kid with the rich parents who can get to mix the visuals on "Crossover of Senses", it's the kid who can mix visuals best.

This is very similar to open-source softwares taking over within IT world. This kinda relationship with the markets is relevant to VJing because historically, every time the medium takes creative leaps forward, the scene has enjoyed a collaborative atmosphere. Whereas when the VJ scene has been tighter and more competitive, the creativity stalls and even loses ground. This is evidence if you study the development of VJing, or actually development of other movements. The competition forces the innovators to secure their loose ends to stay competitive, though keeping the innovation robust would be the exact antidote for the competition.

This is well signified with music videos, which ultimately are recorded VJ performances without the improvations aspect. The videos were very innovative at late 70s and early 80s. Music channels' rule over the preferred form forced the music video directors to stick in the format of portraying the artists. Consequently videos became mere marketing tools, and lost their music visualisation aspect. I personally realised this in the "Broken Promised Land" project, where our client was very concerned on how the public would react on the content. Our directing had a lot VJ ideas in it, and consequently created the main problems of the project.

So being in this situation of seeing my area of business rocketing to the mainstream, I wish I can keep my integrity. I really want to keep my faiths, but we will see how strong my will is. It isn't an easy road to combine innovation and revenue. My personal definition of success is accomplishing what you've set out to do with your priorities still intact. To quote Citizen Kane, making a lot of money is easy to do if that's all you want to accomplish in life.

The thoughts on this post were influenced by:

Spinrad. Paul (2005) The VJ Book, Feral House: Los Angeles

Faulkner, Michael (2006) VJ: Audio-Visual Art + VJ Culture, Laurence King: London

For the Love of Dance

Philosophy


Another week over, and I'm recovering from long weekend giving away parties in a top superclub, Ministry of Sound. My relationship with the club is a rather relentless love/hate. So often there are colleagues, one off tenders, punters and other people in the top of the clubbing industry coming to me telling how lucky I am to work at the MoS. Or, the one preferred by me, girls coming to me to tell how hot I am managing the Lounge of the club....well, that is a very nice bonus.

Last Saturday night was a good example of this. We had Erick Morillo playing and the house was packed with 2000 people. First of all, I met couple of odd acquintants at my bar. I met them in a professional manner, changing the "oh so predictable" small talks of "how is it going?". Followed by the offering of some drinks. Made them their same old brandy and cokes. Finally, only reason they are familiar with me and even say 'hello' is those drinks. They don't believe this dude has no potential because he is working in a club.

Few hours later a colleague of mine, lets call her "Julia", seemed to have her eye on me. Well, she is amazingly beautiful girl and very sexy in her moves. But when she opens her mouth, its like needles stinging inside, due to the most uninteresting topics. So she asks me out to a very posh bar on Wednesday, offering a guestlist entrance. Me, being so nice as always, accepts the offer. 5min later I'm thinking, what the fuck I'm going to in these posh parties, where the only thing the person next to you cares is his next line of coke. Yeah, sure I could have an awesome night out with her that would end up with good sex. Do I want that? Yes surely, but I still feel like a whore, because I recently saw the real beauty with a soulmate in Barcelona. Its not your body, its you mind that makes it beautiful.

Well, I am the last one to judge, after having done my share of one nights and sucking for a drink. It's quite inevitable. I do enjoy a good night out and the clubbing world. In most cases, Ministry of Sound does have the inner beauty in creation. 7am, the meat market has closed, the ones left are the ones with their sunglasses on. And they are there for the love of dance. That is why we DJs and VJs want to throw our sets. For that love.

I am often asked why I don't get a normal job. Why I am still working in the club. I do it because I see the opportunity arising from it and, beside, what it the glamour of an cubical 9-5? For me, there is no weekday, no early mornings. Just the beautiful freedom to push the boundaries of live visuals. And what a better place than Ministry of Sound. Sounds very cliche, but it's maybe more important now than ever: Do it for your heart, not for the needs of others.

Ne1co Label Launch

Art Review


Saturday 9th was a label launch on an interesting scale. Ne1co is maybe one of the first labels concentrating on releasing only visual content, or at least emphasising the visual side of the music. It was a nice little event, though made me realise that VJing is still a very very marginal artform. Mostly participants are working on the field themselves, which makes these events kinda just about showing off yourself.

However, VJ Anyone, VJ Bopa, VJ movement and Vello Virkhaus & Sandra Collins gave away cool sets. Emphasise was mainly on graphical side. In my opinion the VJs should experiment in a more film style storytelling, like Matthew Barney did. This was a good end for a week compeletely visual storytelling, exprienced in Barcelona and London.

On Art in Barcelona

Art Review


Obviously the time in Barcelona was not just about soaking the sun, enjoying the beautifully shaking Latina hips of the most beautiful girls, or getting inspired by the awesome architecture of the city. While filminf the city's street scene, I reserved time to tour as many galleries as possible. There is a amazing and thriving art scene in Barcelona. However, the market is not as developed as in London. Downside is that sometimes the presenting was rather unprofessional.

I might be spoiled by the amount and quality of event and exhibitions in the UK capital. I am also trained art producer & curator, so I do look the production in a very critical eye. However, we have to remember that usually more important is drive to make it happen. The problem though is that often the lack of quality in production will hinder the viewing comfort, consequently not giving the desired immersive experience.

Highlight of the week spent in Barcelona was definetely Loop '07 - a videoart festival. The festival spanned over some 30 venues , staginf various installations, performances and screenings. I was able to see "Videos Con Tuco" screening of recent Argentinian videoart in Centre D'art Santa Monica, Various street installations in lifestyle shop windows, "Thin Blue Lines" by American artist Jill Magid, some graduate videos from Scandinavian Art schools and most notable notorious screenings of Matthew Barney's "The Cremaster Cycle 1-5". Barney's screenings took place in the night time under the spanish moon, with a chilling wind cooling us down. We sat on a hard surface of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona's courtyard. The 5 films, screened over 3 nights, had not a single line of dialect, while the images of the film told the story in symbolic methods. Must say, not your Hollywood films, but still enjoyable.

Another notable gallery in the the city centre was operated by The Gracia Arts Project. Nice little galleria with excellent information and access to the art. Thanks to Christina for the chat, hope to see you again.

Main dissapointed was MACBA , the contemporary arts museum of Barcelona. Again, I am spoiled by Tate Modern in London, and have recently visited MoMa in New York and Museum fur Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt . These epitomes of exhibiting modern art do shadow the MACBA by far. I was left very cold by the exhibition on mix between visual art and theatre, and even more by the museum itself. They did not offer much info or sense adventure to sink into the world of the exhibition. Though they did have a nice balcony bar bathing in the afternoon sun. So, I went for a Mojito.

So this production aspect, in Loop and in Macba, is something that is extremely important for the development of art scene in Barcelona. Especially to expand their audience, as the average person will not return to poorly staged events. Sure, obviously London productions have more financial power behind them, but I have to mention that I have been involved in projects that had very highquality production with basicly no money behind, subsequently enhancing the sometimes lacking content. So please Barcelona producers, next time make sure the quality of curating goes hand in hand with the awesome art you have.