PnP Perth - Thursday 19th July Report

Thanks to the handful of people who braved the weather and came down for PnP last week. What is it about Perth people and rain? People seem to see it as an acid-bath or something, to be avoided at all costs. Maybe it's cos it rains so rarely here :P

Anyways, the fact that there were only a few people meant that we got to spend more time with each of them, showing them software in more detail etc.

Thanks especially to Fenris for coming down, especially when he's so busy due to MOVING TO MELBOURNE next week. Very sad news for the Perth AV scene! People can catch that wonderful C64 glitchiness at the last Chrism + Fenris gig before Fenris moves at Minimal Exposure this Saturday at the Velvet Lounge.

I'm really hoping that he can make it back for a performance at Byte Me! Festival - especially the Vintage AV Pre-Party with Severed Heads, Casionova etc. Won't be the same without the C64ness of Chrism + Fenris!

Memories... Here's a video from a previous Chrism + Fenris set at PnP:

Yvette came along to her first PnP with a brand, spanking new MacBook Pro. She'd sensibly downloaded some trials of various Mac-based software, so Jasper could give her a run through of the basics of each (we so need internet access at PnP). I'm not sure what conclusion they came to as she didn't have all the available Mac-VJ programs trials, but I *did* spot her also having aplay with Resolume on one of our Dells. Mwhahaha! PC-envy :P



We also had a chance to show facilities-manager extraordinaire Ainsley from the Bakery how to use Resolume. He took to it very quickly (as we'd expected) although Sam Lambency wasn't about to hand over control of the V4 and give him full access to the projector, so the lads were doing a bit of a lumakey mix between them. One good thing about having no audience was that it didn't matter what got projected, which is great for when you're showing newbs what to do - it's a lot better if you can have their mix up on the projector without them being worried about people watching it. hey, you gotta look at the bright side ;)

Sam aka VJ Lambency used some more of his beautiful melted-film loops he'd made - very reminiscent of Decasia - stunningly pretty, and perfect for ambient electronica. Here's a clip he's done for 6000 Red - ah, another beautiful match made at PnP. We've very proud of PnP graduate VJ Lambency's work, great he's finally putting some of it online.

We didn't have a DJ for the night (Jim went to a Waifs gig) so I did my first laptop-DJ set with my new Indigo I/O DJ PCMCIA Card. I love that little thing - thanks to James from DXU:555 for the recommendation. I'm still looking at software - liking the look of Virtual DJ since it even supports video as well, so could be good for adding AV samples to our Resolume mix. But since my trial of that's run out and I haven't bought it yet, I ended up just using Windows Media Player. Sam reckoned I should have used Winamp, but all I intended doing was leaving on my lovingly-crafted jazz-lounge playlist, I wasn't too fussed... but then...

Some random patrons from upstairs at Luxe came down (somewhat inebriated) and insisted on us playing 'dance music'. I suggested lots of things and the girl wasn't too keen on any of them. Her requests were along the lines of Guns n Roses and Christina Aguilera, and considering that I only have the mp3s of tracks I actually OWN for my own enjoyment, it wasn't easy to do the wedding-DJ thing.


Finally, I let them have a look at my music themselves. While the older guys liked my selection, their young companion wasn't so keen. "Don't you have anything mainstream?" She asked. Since I was more interested in the VJing side of the night and didn't really care what got played, I handed over the laptop and they quickly got bored and left. She made a very pretty DJ though, pity about her taste in music!:


So, that's about it for this month. Thanks very much to Michelle at Luxe Bar for having us. Sad that Nat won't be working there any more, but we'll still get to see her in her new role as bar manager at the Bakery :)

Next PnP is tentatively scheduled for Thursday 23rd August, but check back closer to the day...

PnP Perth - Thursday 19th July

Yep, there's a PnP tonight at Luxe from 8-11pm, free entry. Before 9pm, use side glass door entry.

I know it's hard to get motivated to leave home on a rainy night, but we promise the Red Room at Luxe will be warm and cosy with some relaxing nu-jazz tunes, great cocktails and maybe some new VJs to check out (or else the usual suspects doing our visual thing). All very casual, no fuss... Sit and watch with a nice Negroni, or have a stickybeak and push a few keys on a laptop.

We're aiming for tonight to be very hands-on, so we'd love to see some new people interested in learning the VJ basics, grabbing some free VJ loops to play with at home. Or even just finding out what VJing is in a friendly, low-key friendly forum.

BYO blank CDs and/or portable drive to harvest from our training-collection of loops - it's a lot quicker than downloading off
http://www.archive.org/details/vj_loops

It will also be a great chance to talk about Byte Me! Festival - your ideas, the progress we're making behind the scenes, your offering to help out :P

It's been a whole month since the last PnP, and yet it hasn't been terribly well organised - sorry! We've been so swamped with organising Byte Me, our Live Cinema performance at Rev Film Fest, our overseas tour in September etc. Apparently Melbourne PnP is only being held monthly at this stage too, so I don't feel so bad. Melb's Jean Poole is currently overseas doing a residency with the brilliant Turkish crew: http://www.artificialeyes.tv/ and we're hoping he'll be coming to Byte Me! Fest to share with Perth what he's learned there.

I have to admit that at the moment, it's hard to compete with Rev. There's some great stuff on there: http://revelationfilmfest.org

Tonight's a great program of Short Films, although it may be sold out. Also recommended is Strange Culture on Saturday, when one of our Byte Me! Guest Speakers, Dr Amanda Third from Murdoch, will be talking after the doco screening. There's some really useful events as part of the associated conference too - and we have a spare ticket up for grabs for the "Business Models for Digital Distribution" seminar on Sunday, so let us know if you'd like to join us for that. It may sound a bit dull, but finding out new ways for creatives to make a living in this new 'long tail' economy sounds exciting to me...

Anyway, we'd love to see you tonight to talk VJ'ing, show and tell the latest VJ news (pity there's no web access!) and talk about the Byte Me! Festival.

Plug n Play ad

Welcome newbies...

As one of our main points of running PnP is to get some new VJ talent happening here in Perth, you might find these resources useful to get you started:

Download VJzoo Beginners Manual as pdf (9 meg)

- something to get you started with PC-based VJing

VJ Loops at archive.org

- free loops to play with

VJCentral.com
- Hundreds of hardware and software reviews and a warm, helpful community supportive of all levels of VJ from newbies to expert level. Their vjforums.com is especially helpful.

ProjectorCentral.com
- find out about any digital projector on the market, compare specs etc.

SoftwareVJ - compare all the major VJ softwares available. Awesome resource - so simple, and yet so useful.

More info about VJ hardware and software can be found at our site VJzoo.com - and come along to a PnP to ask questions.

Plug n Play - Perth's AV underground

Thanks for the recent article at Create Digital Motion - nice to see someone's paying attention :)

Plug n Play is Perth's first regular audio-visual jam night at WA's premier cocktail bar, Luxe Bar at 446 Beaufort St, Mt Lawley. See events for when the next session is scheduled - depending on our availability and that of the venue. Once a month on a Thursday, 8-11pm is what we aim for.

Inspired by the vibe of Melbourne's very cool weekly Plug n Play at Fitzroy's Kent St Cafe, Kat & Jasper have established a similar regular get-together where VJs, potential VJs and AV artists can get together and visually jam.

You can bring your own lappie to VJ, or just your showreel on DVD, portable Hard Drive, mini DV, thumbdrive or whatever you've got. If you use some weird codec, bring it along - and we're mostly PC so make sure your video files are PC compatible. And bring all your cables, adapters etc. Email us with any tech questions, eg if you want us to pre-test a clip to see if we have compatible codecs.

At 10pm, there may be Special Guests - an AV act, or a DJ or electronic musician doing a set accompanied by experienced VJ's. Check the events page to see who's booked.

So far, we've had some great Special Guest musicians and DJs:

• Six Thousand Red
• Turbine37
• Cordata and Kitpop
• DJ Grug
• DXU:555 (AV)
• Chrism and Fenris
• DJ Jim from Loungerama
• Audio Cephlon
• Eyelid Picture Show

As well as hosts Jasper and Kat from VJzoo, various other Perth VJs are also involved, so it's a great opportunity to Masterclass even if you've already had some experience with VJing.

Guest VJs have included:

• VJ Trixee
• VJ ChikiTronix
• VJ Lambency
• Martin and Brendan from PixelJuice
• Alan Dougans from DXU:555
• Liam from Hinder Resist
• Roly Skender (well, he keeps saying he will play...so far the slacker just hangs out....)

As we're providing our equipment, we have the right to decide who gets to play. We're fairly protective of our rig, so please treat it with respect. No drinks in vicinity of the video desk. Well, unless you bought them for us ;)

Entry is free (we hope to keep it that way).

Space is limited, so we don't promote PnP very widely as a free gig for general punters - we really want an audience of people who are sincerely interested in visuals and AV. When we have popular Guest Acts, it can get a bit crowded so it's a good idea to arrive early.

If you're a musician who'd be interested in performing at Plug n Play Perth, drop us a line. It's unpaid, cramped and the audience is pretty small, but you might enjoy seeing what the VJ's come up with, or perhaps you'd like to do an AV set of your own? Yay!

The first Plug n Play Perth was held at Bluprint Nightclub on 3rd September 2005, but the venue just wasn't suitable. We commenced holding Plug n Play at the very luxurious Luxe Bar in August 2006.

It's at a licenced venue, over 18's only sorry. If you're under 18 and are interested in learning to VJ, drop us an email and perhaps we can organise something with PropelArts.