VJ Yourself was established by
Andor Merks in 2009, East London. Merks started his research on interactive video and open-art in 2003. The same year he became a Video Jockey, utilizing his software experiments in the underground club scene.
Till 2009 his softwares were made for 'insiders': video artists & VJs. By establishing VJ Yourself, he put his audience in the focus. They are invited to participate in the creative process. Passive viewers become active collaborators, whose actions and inspiration play a vital role in the real-time 'actualization' of the art-work. The centuries old barrier between artist, art-work and audience is joyfully blurring away.
We pursue his vision parallel in theory and in practice:
Creative Apps
Our 'touch friendly' interactive concepts are also released for phones & tablets. Download, experiment and share your creations with us!
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Events / Exhibitions
We love bringing our participatory visuals to unique events. Seeing people interacting with our art is a true inspiration for us and many times leads to meaningful conversations and lasting connections.
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Collaboration
Basically our concepts are all about collaboration. Just by downloading our apps and feeding your inspirations in you are already part of the game. For visual-artists, musicians and other VJs there are more elaborate levels of involvement:
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Basic Research
This is a transdisciplinary field. We integrate ideas from psychology, art philosophy, computing theory and gamification... Follow our research and dive into the books and videos that inspired us.
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Our History
2009 - 2012 2D version
Experimental development and participatory performances in London clubs, bars and galleries.
2013 - 2014 3D version
We switched to GPU rendered 3D graphics: using the Away3D engine (Adobe Air). The visuals became generative and music-reactive. The compositions were defined by our custom declarative language.
We participated on several art exhibitions and we organized open
Open Calls to feature other artist's works inside our video installation.
- 100 Years Gallery ( Hoxton )
- Digital Shoreditch ( Shoreditch Town Hall )
- Hack The Barbican ( Barbican Center )
- Cult Mountain ( Brick Lane )
- Ziferblat London ( Shoreditch )
2015. App & Team
Our focus shifting from clubbing and exhibitions to mobile apps and home-entertainment. Building a core team and a looser collaborator network became important.
2016. Unity + VR
The 5. version of the platform: Unity + C# + VR. Full rethink of our declarative language and generative geometries.