vj broadcasts
okay, this should have been a posting about the fantastic audiovisual madness at radiosoulwax (rdsw).. what they achieved gets more obvious when comparing their broadcast to other music television broadcasts. See, collecting webstream sites is like counting youtube videos. You will always find some more. But since MTV is not showing any music videos (Justin Bieber – and internet offers so much more), visual society is always on search for a recommendable music video program, for cool VJ clip collection sites or visual arts related TV shows. How great would it be to watch a good VJ broadcast program in your favorite bar or in the subway while riding to work. Well, these are the intermediate findings:
Web only:
– In germany we have tape.tv for streaming pop videos like Rihanna, quite commercial with advertisement popups every minute.
[-no VJ content, -much advertisement]
– vj.tv started in 2001 as an independent TV series showcasing audiovisual artists, visual producers, visual artists, VJ/DJ teams and VJs from around the world. Each episode featured a guest artist with interview and visuals, plus short works by additional artists. VJTV aired in six cities across North America from 2001 – 2003, as well as online from 2003-2005. 2007 vj.tv was reborn as a blog, collecting vj showreels and offering a playlist streaming function within the so called ‚leanback player‘. Here you can find preselected but more or less random vimeo VJ clips, so in fact this site is a blog showcasing some vimeo groups and playlists. Nice idea as you can also recommend your own clips to the site, but in a way it could be better as it lacks genres (starts making categories like „projection mapping“ or „VJ showcase“), only uses vimeo playlists (playlists are also available on youtube and dailymotion) and I could not find the old VJTV shows.
[+not only VJ content, +no advertisement, -very random]
– www.vjtelevision.com is a program by flxer.net community which is really good. VJ television is said to be the first 24-hour live video broadcast channel presenting various styles out of flxer.net community. But in fact its not always live, there are four 6-hour broadcasting shifts, ranging from documentary and videos to (live) performances and vj sets. If you dont want to zap TV you can also watch videos from a distinctive channel + the daily channel with new videos. This is currently the only really working „VJ television“ known to visual society.
[+VJ content only, +no advertisement, +very inspiring!]
– what really also convinced me from their style (and because the audio is no noise) is the audiovisual 24/7 webradio station by 2manyDJs at radiosoulwax.com (rdsw). Crazy intro trailer! It’s actually not a vj stream, but the videos have been made up using vjesque techniques and ideas like animating record sleeves (btw. great idea!). Most music is mixsets by 2manydjs and some of their DJ friends – so you gotta love french house – but there are also some special hours like „Dave“ (David Bowie) broadcasting special musicvideo mashups by rdsw. Also watch out for the MEHARI hour, a nice music mix with visuals made with the legendary Fairlight CVI mixer, „a rare and incredible video effects machine which turns everything into either video art, or an 80’s music video, depends how you look at it.“
[+VJ content only, +no advertisement, +music]
– Also there are lots of irregularly broadcasting vj webstreams that you can find (for example) at ustream.com, which I like a lot (watch out for „Pass the chocolate-dipped pretzels“).
[uhm ja]
– A new star in the world of VJ television broadcasts will be www.vjstv.com. It will start broadcasting in about 14 days, a decent christmas gift. Unfortunately the makers did not want to tell me what it is about, so stay tuned and check it out yourself in a few days!
[+VJ content only]
web and TV broadcast stations:
– international Mtv.com just sucks, there is not even a playlist streaming possibility (only one video per click), many videos can’t be watched in other countries.
[-No VJ content, -no playlists, -much advertisement]
– Phase 3 video.kunst.zeit is a late night television show in german public tv station BRalpha that gets broadcasted every friday to saturday night at 0:30 (GMT -1). Shown are videos and clips from international and european audiovisual scene spanning visual arts, design, viusik and experimental film.
– night music:
Phase 3 follows the tradition of german night music tv shows („Nachtmusikprogramm“) like ‚Space Night‘ (on BRalpha) showing NASA and ESA animations with techno music, ‚Rave Around The World‘ (~1995 – 2000; ‚rave & cruise‘, ‚airrave‘ and many others of that kind) broadcasting techno music with dancing people on private TV station Vox. Also worth seeing was the TV show ‚@rt of animation‘ (~2007) on ZDF.
[+not only VJ content, +no advertisement in public tv, -no 24h stream]
If you know or find some more cool VJ broadcasts, drop me a mail info@visual-society.com. I will try to update this post as soon as I can ;o)
Yochanan Rauert aka Yochee is working as a VJ in Münster, Germany since 2002 and is the editor and founder of www.visual-society.com