WJs (webjockeys) "WJ-s" is a software and a flexible, high speed connexion public device for web performances which allows actors of the Internet, sound and image artists, netartists, bloggers, graphic designers, flashers, programmers, curators, hacktivists, newmedia theorists, pioneers and web mutants...to play live with the full scope of contents available in the wideness of the web.
DJs / VJs / WJs DJs and VJs throughout the world are well represented in clubs, artcenters, artgalleries and constitute a creative, inventive and dynamic expression on the international art scene. The various sounds and visual sources (vinyls, CDs, MP3s, vidéos, mpeg4s, animations...) stored in their machines or their computers are superimposed and modified according to various technical processes, to produce live flows of reinterpreted images and sounds. Following the steps of DJ’s and VJ’s, WJ’ s (webjockeys) directly draw their sources from the Web and mix the network flow in real time.
Taking out the network from the web In less than 20 years the World Wide Web, a space of converging multimedia praxis, has become a vast experimentation and exploration ground with countless artistic ramifications. As it is often related to a solitary adventure led in a very intimate relationship with one’s machine, the virtual experience is seldom extended to another dimension of time-space. Projects involving network actors only take place in closed circles, within the network, and hardly ever outside, within a live performance environment. The idea of the WJ’s project is to disrupt this tendency by offering a strong, captivating, sensual and slightly altered cybernetic surf where the feeling of being immerged in the flow and the extreme pleasure of browsing are shifted to a live performance environment. Individual and collaborative online productions (in different geographical sites) become collective events (to which an audience is invited). In this way, Wjs become flux stalkers and offer things to see, hear, feel, observe and think about, through a progressive and dynamic process. Guided by their critical spirit and their own personal outlook, they reveal the fragrance of the Web, defragment and confront worlds that make the invisible become visible.
The web as a medium WJ-s/essions make it possible to handle online contents (texts, sound, video, animations...) that come directly from the web, this giant hard disk. The widened, shared and liberated opening of context creates a sensitive and lively situation that allows the full potential of scenography, writing, forms, combinations and practices to arise and flourish.L’objectif de ce dispositif est :
The aim of this device is to provide :
Full latitude in the setting of the machines,
Full latitude in putting together and revealing contents and formats,
Full latitude in associating people and confronting different points of view.
The contexts generated in this way develop into mobile spaces of dynamic display and hybridization.
Practices, formats and protocols The themes of the performances revolve around transmission, communication, dialogue, sharing, open and wide distribution, personal experience, experiments, history, processes and issues of the network.
The multiscreens projection system with the wireless laptopring is a reduced model of the internet, a metaphor of its codes and of the way information flows and appears on the network.
The WJ-s productions can take many forms : mixes, demonstrations, project presentations, performances... or all these at the same time. The WJ draws inspiration from processes and original actions that are related specifically to the network’s activity. The performances can also fuse with choreographic or vocal interventions, but also with proteiform practices, unidentified and unexpected oddities of all sorts...
