Musical Brush

“For most gigs the VJ and DJ stand at the same console or next to each other. The DJ plays music and I generate visuals that match the beats,” says Dhanya Pilo,27,a visual jockey who has just returned from Chennai where she performed for designers Chaitanya Rau and Tina Vincent’s edgy fashion label,UNIQ. The Mumbai-based Pilo,who goes by the performer name Decoy,is looking to make her entry in the Delhi scene with her computer generated art,but currently the pickings are slim. “A visual jockey is almost hidden—that’s probably why my pseudo-name is Decoy,” says Pilo,a trained visual artist.

Currently BLOT (Basic Love of Things),is dominating the Delhi art scene and its gig at Religare Arts.i in Connaught Place last Saturday had an audience that ranged from 11-year-old kids to demure forty-some-things. It was the opening night of Gitanjali Dang’s curatorial venture,Ballard Estate,and they performed a live jugalbandi between visualiser Avinash Kumar,a former designer from NIFT and Gaurav Malaker,a disc jockey.

“We normally perform in clubs,where drinking and dancing is the norm. Bringing our performance to an art gallery has definitely introduced us to a new audience and we are ready to take it further,” says Kumar,who paired with Malaker in 2007,after the two realised they shared a common love for music.

“People are still getting used to the idea that there is actually a need to pair visuals to music,” says George Mathen the drummer of Lounge Piranha,who had hooked up with Archana Prasad,an itinerant VJ who moves between Delhi and Mumbai. The visuals can be both random or specifically related to the audio track. While Mathen designed the bands album art and is out with his own graphic novel Moonward,Prasad is the hand behind the animated visuals.

“Slowly and steadily there is a rise in interest to the visual experience that a VJ can generate. Lights,LEDS,fireworks,” says Pilo. Though she gets a lot of enquiries most visual jockeys are constrained by budget restraints. “We can be paid anything from Rs 50,000 to Rs 4 lakhs,depending on the kind of gig we are doing,but it is an expensive art to cultivate— currently we are trying to get our own studio set up and that costs a lot,” says BLOT-er Malaker.

Pilo adds,“Due to heavy entertainment tax or early deadlines,a lot of festivals are not being held in Mumbai or Delhi.” Perhaps that explains why class acts like BLOT get more playtime in Berlin.

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