VJ not DJ
An introduction and some context
I packed up my life into two bags and Moved to Japan in June of 2003, having graduated from an advanced diploma in Multimedia with the expectation to live there for 6 months to a year and return to Australia to get my life and career started
I ended up living in Japan for 8 years and for the first three taught English in the evenings. This was ideal at the time as I had all day to work on projects and make connections, and could stay out all night without worrying about having to get up early for work the next day. After I quit teaching I started doing web design and motion graphics full time. Part of this work was VJing* which started out as somewhat of a creative endeavour but as time passed made up more and more of my annual earnings.
I was extremely fortunate to VJ as I got to see some stuff that the average joe might not get to see whilst living in Japan. I think that’s kind of saying something as
living in Japan chances are you will see some pretty unusual stuff.
So the purpose of this document is to pay homage to my memories and try to capture them before they disappear completely. It’s also to pay homage to the people I met along the way, those that inspired me, and forced me to better my craft.
Maybe I’ll read it in 20 years and it will bring back some memories.
* Vjing is projecting visuals to music at least that’s my lacking definition of it. Usually it’s some gear geeks with far too many computers on a table behind, or to the side of the dancefloor, projecting wallpaperish animations matched to the music in a very loose fashion. I kind of did this for a while but that became tired so I started working closely with musicians building meticulously synchronised live sets, with another person playing music and me playing visuals. We would practice like a band and talk about