The Braided Quilt

Storytelling has existed as long as humanity has had language. It’s the world of myth, of history; of the imagination…it explains life. Every culture has its stories, just as every culture has it storytellers.

We all have our stories; we all have preferred ways of telling them. Some may gather around a fireplace, some in a quilting circle. As we communicate an idea, history, facts and share these with those around us these stories evolve, some remain stitched in place others unravel as more is added and exposed.

I have lived and traveled extensively around New Zealand, the South Island being my homeland. As a video artist I take video samples along the way to remind me of the places and experiences I have had. Just like an avid scrapbook keeper I store these signifiers of memory in my laptop and bring out my samples to relive these moments in real-time performance. Incidentally and intuitively these samples are remixed with one another, each time I weave these experiences into a new one, taking my locative memories to create a new experience in a new locations.

For this residency I will gather new imagery that draws for the experience of the Taranaki region and the Scanz residency. Adding new threads to an evolving dynamic new way of storytelling, live video performance. Thus weaving this new experience into my ongoing story.

I am currently exploring real-time video performance in respect to storytelling and suspect that the braided–multi linear model is good description of these potential outcomes. This means that many stories can link and interweave and filter though each other to provide not only triggers for recalling multiple stories, but also create one outcome that can be read as a whole. Like a quilt that has many colours, added by different crafters, that represents a collective gathering of memories for a single purpose.

Project Description:

I am a live video performance artist (VJ) and have over ten years experience working with this medium and within the culture of this practice.

VJ stands for Video Jockey, originally used to describe a MTV host; it is now used to describe a person who mixes real-time-moving images in a live environment. Vjing is commonly described as Djing with visuals though the sources of image making for a VJ are more diverse, a VJ can often be a filmmaker, editor, and a performer using original clips or appropriating from other sources”. pg 11, The VJ book, Paul Spinard, 2005, Feral House, La, ISBN: 1-932595-09-0

In my practice I have sourced only original clips and have collected and manipulated some images to suite various needs, changing the colours and dynamics of the clips to help create a emotive visual backing to various musical elements like , bands, electronic music or DJs.

During the Scanz residency I will come with my camera, and laptop to film and edit new imagery that will add to my braided quilt. It is my hope that through discussions with the other artists at the Scanz event this new information will be informed by their sensitivities and the new material will be rich and provocative.

I will edit these new filmic elements on my laptop to make new VJ samples. It is unknown at this point how many new samples will be able to be produced, though in my passed experience I have been able to complete enough new clips for a 30-minute show.

These clips will be experimented with in real time using dedicated live video performance software and in this process I will be able to select from my previous database clips that may be complementary to this new data.

Drawing again on the environment and the people I meet an abstract story will evolve. I would like to present a live video performance to an audience so that I can get feed back on the process.

This project “The Braided Quilt” will be a practical experiment that will add to my masters’ research. My masters working title is currently “there is no future only now” an exploration into live audiovisual immersive performance.

An example of this working process is a work called “old news”. This was a sculptural video installation produced on location during the 2004 nine dragons heads symposium in South Korea. During the symposium I took a daily journal using my video camera, then edited this with other elements (overlaid text) and presented it in on a 5 inch TV embedded into a stack of old newspapers. This work appealed to the other international participants of the symposium as they could be immediately reminded of the week we had just had and at many times they gathered around the work to recall and comment of the specific moments that had recently passed.

As a touring VJ I am used to working in remote locations and have most of the technical skills and equipment necessary for the “Braided Quilt”

Naomi Lamb is and experienced visual artist currently focusing her practice on live audiovisual performance. Her passion for creating new content has taken her to explore new and exciting locations. A career highlight in 2006 was Wild Creations, an inaugural residency in partnership with Creative New Zealand and the Department of Conservation. She is currently a tutor and Masters Candidate at Victoria University’s School of Design.

http://www.myspace.com/southern_vj

http://www.youtube.com/southernvj