The Art of the VJ: more than eye candy

KM: How do you define your work?

Krista Lomax: My video work is a little bit darker esthetically and conceptually than most VJs, I think.  It's a little bit Chris Cunningham  and Aphex Twin influenced. It's definitely melancholy and more like back and white photography.  I like to take it deeper, I like to have people be affected by it, rather than it just being eye candy. I want them to take something away from it. I really like putting words into the visuals, not overwhelmingly, but have it in there so that people can actually interact with it. Not controlling their thoughts -- that sounds so horrible -- but interacting more than if I were just having something ambient. It gives me an opportunity to have my thoughts be included in the visuals a bit more directly.

KM: So is it a collaboration with the music in a way? When you say going deeper, is it about you and the music or you and the audience, or  all of those things?

Krista Lomax: I guess that its my interpretation of the music as well as a layer of my own personal self-expression, which I find is becoming more and more possible with this medium, because I'm getting more creative freedom, rather than just being the person who plays the logo loop behind the musician who is on right now.

KM: So it's an art form with a purpose of its own, in the context of performance?

Krista Lomax: In some contexts. Definitely more so in different venues. As the medium evolves we will see this even more.

KM: So are there different kinds of artists that you work with? You work in the club scene, you work with improv artists in a more formal theatre setting, etc?

Krista Lomax: It goes in waves. At one time I'll be doing a lot of improv jazz collaborations with NOW Orchestra or Sound Image Net. I've just finished shows at the Museum of Anthropology and The Cultch with those groups. It's a totally different environment from other events I do, which are sometimes outdoors, say in Whistler -- drum and bass, dubstep – it's two completely different environments and demographics. It's also really interesting how some of the clips work really well in both settings. The juxtaposition of the audience, images and music. And definitely, I do tonnes of different styles and different venues, different clients.

KM: How do people find you – they see your work somewhere and they call you?

Krista Lomax: A lot of times, yes – they call me. I still don't have a website. Once a year I think 'I've got to get a website,' and I have it mostly built, but it's keeping up with the content -- by the time I'm ready to go with it, the content is out of date. But people find me, and it just kind of snowballs.

KM: You've addressed this a little bit already, but can you tell me what kind of imagery you gravitate towards?
Krista Lomax: Definitely faces -- too much! I have to stop using the faces. One in particular I've put in so many things in the past year. I absolutely love it -- it's just this random face that I found once, and I put her in everything. I wonder who she is. But definitely faces and bodies. I like to stay away from anything with a border that shows the actual dimensions of the screen. I feel that's just way too television, so I try to keep things inside the frame, constantly in motion and with lots of subtleties. You get the foundation going, and then bringing in layers, and then keep adding, fading some out as you bring new ones in. But definitely hands, faces, bodies, and words for sure. And blues, blacks, monochrome...with shocks of yellow and lime green!

KM: What kind of creative process do you go through? Let's say you are going to do your work somewhere, like this evening at the Utopia Festival, how do you prepare for that?

Krista Lomax: For Utopia Festival, Blondtron  made a couple of mixes of the performers, the DJ Mix and Artist Mix. Keeping these sounds in mind, I've first been going through my content seeing what already works for the night and then making things that would be fun to pull out. For example, for Square Root of Evil. I've done visuals with her before... I plan to Rick Roll her – do you know what that is?

KM: No, what does that mean?

Krista Lomax: Rickrolling is when you click on a link online and instead of going to the page you expected someone has set you up to be Rick Rolled, and it shoots you to a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." It's hilarious. I do a lot of work for movies and I do a lot of lot of Sci Fi  tv stuff so I made an interface where it looks like it's rebooting with Square Root of Evil html code, things like that, lots of really lo-fi chunky galaga/q-bert visuals that I think go with her style.

KM: That is like a conversation with the artist, in a way, isn't it? So you are working in the music industry and in the film industry. What has your experience been, growing as an artist in these environments, and is there a specific kind of experience that you've had as a woman in those industries?

Krista Lomax: You do have to deal with a lot of a) attitude and b) preconceived notions about what women can do. There are definitely situations where you have to prove yourself or you get talked down to by people who assume you don't know what you are doing, and if you are a girl VJing a lot of people are going to order drinks from you. A lot. (Or you get song requests from people who think you're the DJ. 'Hey man, got any Maiden?' is one thing I've been asked.)
KM: That says something about expectations right there.

Krista Lomax: I DJed a night at the Waldorf. It was really the only time I've ever DJed officially, and at the end of the night I was lingering, packing the gear. The bouncer came up and said 'you shouldn't be here.' and I said, 'what do you mean?' and he said 'well are you with one of the DJs?' I said 'I am the DJ.' It was a really awkward moment.

KM: The Utopia Festival is designed as an intervention, a way of “bridging the digital divide” and of involving more women into digital culture. Can you speak to that idea -- why is that important and what is gained?  You mention these challenges, but as women coming together what do we achieve?

Krista Lomax: Well my initial thought was that we don't need the training wheels of a women-only festival and it excludes a lot of really great male artists. There are two ways of looking at it and I can see the pros and cons of both sides. Coming here today did make me realize that what women have to offer can really be enhanced by collaborating and networking together outside of the usually male dominated spaces.  It's really cool to see the impact of that over even the course of one day. This was really only organized in the past month and it will be interesting to see what can happen with a whole year until the next one.