I've participated in the forum myself ( mostly to read other people's comments...) and was fortunate to perform with other VJs at this year's event.

First of all, the event was one BIG party that lasted throughout the whole weekend! Many VJs and artists from all over the world (including UK, Holland, Germany, France, Australia, U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Spain, among others) attended.

Brighton:

First I would like to talk about Brighton. The town is located about an hour away by train from central London - btw, this was my first time in the UK and soon found out that you always have to specify whether you're coming from "Central London" or just from "London". According to Londoners since the city is pretty big saying just "London" is too vague.. - so, in this case, Brighton is about an hour away from Central London and 40 minutes away from London.

Brighton is definately a great place to party. And of course it's also a great weekend getaway for families and senior couples, but unfortunately I didn't have the chance to see this "side" of the town...

Right across the beach and deep into the center of the town, Brighton is filled up with clubs! FatBoy Slim also has two beach houses here (Why two? I don't really know...)

I have seen, also, posters of a lot of U.S. artists' on the street, so I suppose that many non-UK artists go there to perform.

People in Brighton, by the way, take partying very seriously; Getting drunk and clubbing till 6am in the morning, then getting up for breakfast at 9 am and planning for the next party all over again!

MassJam:

"MassJam" was the main event at this year's AVIT and it was held on the second day at Brighton Centre.

The Brighton Centre is a convention/cultural venue for the city and I think they normally use it for lectures and trade shows. This year, however, the center was converted into a huge rave party for the AVIT event.

Two custom made, 3 meters by 2 meters speakers were brought in by Innerfield, these are the largest, loudest speakers I have ever seen! The DJ stage, then, was set up between the two speakers and in the center of the venue an approx. 5 x 5 meter VJ stage with metal pipes was built.

There were 4 VJ slots on the stage and each one came with one flat screen preview monitor and a video mixer "V-4", additionally, 20 projectors were installed onto the stage.

Over twenty VJs, from all over the world, were to participate in MassJam so the event was divided into 5 time slots of one hour each. The event started at 9 p.m. and VJ Anyone who was managing the MassJam event booked me in the time slot between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m.

As other VJs performed, we were all asked to wait in the backstage room until the time of our own performance, so while waiting, I chated with some great VJs like Robotfunk from Amsterdam, Glamoove from Japan, VJ Sapo from London, Blunt Faktory ("Blunt" is actully their real last name) from Canada and many others. Most of us had never met before but we kind of knew each other through Vjforums.com or each other's web sites.

That's the funny thing about web based communications, you often end up getting to know someone before you really, "physically' get to know the person..., like for instance, since I am from New York almost everyone I spoke to at the event asked me if I knew Holly from Eye Wash . Holly is a very active participant at Vjforums.com and EVERYONE who goes to the site "knows" her, but not in real life anyway...

Anyhow, I was a little concerned before my performance because I had never used PAL format before. I think having to choose between PAL and NTSC (and "SECAM", and so on) is so annoying! Why can't we all by now use one single, simple format like music CDs. There is also another format called "SECAM" in France. Anyway my laptop safely switched to PAL mode and read the connection to the projectors. There were over 20 projectors filling up the entire walls in the huge space and 5 projectors for each VJ. I wish I could have taken better photos but it was pretty overwhelming atmosphere. AVIT made a section for people to upload the images from the event and you can check it out for more images.

Club nights:

Also some VJs performed at several clubs in Brighton during the weekend. I joined the Laptop Jams @ Hanbury Ballroom. The bar looked like a movie theater where it had a huge screen in front and everyone sits facing it.

I went to Zap for on Saturday night. Micha Klein from Amsterdam and Vj Anyone from London were playing here. Unlike MassJam event it was more like "real" thing that the crowd was regular club goers and they just came to party. Both of their shows were very impressive. Their works are very much based on contents and their visuals were very well synced with music. I really enjoyed Micha Klein's show a lot. While many Vjs have tendency to be a bit too arty his work is fun and dance music like.

Conferences and workshop:

There were also many conferences and workshops were held during the event. I went to the workshop of a popular VJ sofware "Resolume". I really wanted to go to the one for "Motion Dive" since I use the software for my show but I overslept and missed it...

I also went to a couple of Conferences. I went to "Roots of VJing" and "Future of Vjing". Everyone including the audience was very passionate about the topics and the discussions were very heated. I've met AddictiveTV crew and Francois from Cinefeel was also there with them. Since I've known her for a while through email it was very nice to finally meet her in person.

After all I had such a great time. I felt that rave culture in the UK is much stronger than the one in the U.S. and because of that VJ culture is more accepted. I would like thank again to all the AVIT organizers for putting this event, hope to see you next year!!

There was a long table placed under the main screen and that's where all the Vjs and Djs set the gears to perform. Each Vj and Dj are paired up and perform together. I was scheduled to Vj with Secret Agent Gel. I had actually known his work before through Lara, a good friend of mine from Record Camp, and I was always curious to see his show.

Secret Agent Gel showed up with a white jump suit with a pair of ski goggles, kind of reminded me of Tom Green in cool way. As he showed up on the stage everyone started coming down to the floor. While he played and mixed his tracks with his laptop he also dubbed his voice live through microphone, the audience was going nuts!

Most Djs choose a certain fashion style as Dj and they work on their stage images. So when they appear on the stage it's visually very exciting and people know exactly who they are going to see. I feel that the Vj shows in general would be more fun to people if each Vj can show more defined identity on the stage and bring this kind of atmosphere. Vjing is still such a new form of art that I think it has a lot of potentiality to evolve from where it is now.

To catch the latest trend of Vjing check out the Vj discussion forum at vjforums.com.

The rules were kind of complicated, basically two Vjs had to go up against each other. Each Vj got 5 minutes to play and each battle was made up with three different types of music: Techno, House and Drum&Bass.

At the end of the battle the audience decided by cheering for their favorite VJ, much like in an Apollo Theater style.

Vj shows normally switch from one Vj to the next without the audience really knowing who is playing what. Since this time the show had a "battle" format though, Erik from Forward Motion commented on the microphone as each VJ played so that the audience got to be more involved in the event and knew who was playing.

Many New York based Vjs such Giles and CJAXX from Subtonic, Vj Miixxy, Josh Goldburg and others also showed up to check out the battle.

I wanted to take more pictures but I still have this old, HUGE Olympus digital camera that I get lazy to bring in with me to the shows. The photos shown here were actually taken with my video camera... Instead you can check out the Vj Miixxy's photo page for more snaps from the event.