Los Angeles: Live Visual Performance 2010

This month, the iotaCenter, an organization devoted to experimental screen arts, is hosting the Live Visual Performance 2010 (LVP2010) festival, in collaboration with Los Angeles Video Artists (LAVA) and Barcelona-based mad-actions. The festival is described as “a celebration of animators, VJs, and other artists who create and manipulate visuals in front of a live audience,” and it’s got several great-looking performances and workshops that make me wish I lived in Los Angeles.

An older visualist I once spoke with saw no commonality between the abstract “lumia” that he creates (and which the iotaCenter curates) and the work of today’s dance club VJs — in his view, he’s an abstract expressionist in the high art tradition of Jackson Pollock, while VJs are just popular entertainers. In contrast, I’m very happy to see the iotaCenter embrace current live visual performance, appreciate the creativity and depth that its practitioners bring to it, and place it in its fascinating historical context.