Updated 10 months ago
meets VJ Videolicious
2004
by Machinelf
Boris (Harmonic Motion, Boulder, CO) is a Russian from Brooklyn who “escaped” to Colorado. For a fortnight in New York he’ll be throwing down some dancy psychedelic video for your aural pleasures. He’s been VJing in NYC, Denver, Boulder, Cali, with crews, bands and DJ’s: Harmonic Motion, Metameme, Parliament, Blackalicious, Amon Tobin, DJ3, DJ Green, DJ Dmitry (Colorado), Erotica Exotica, and wherever theparty’s hot. Boris produces his own animations and remixes through the evening to the music.
Where are you from? Where are you right now? What’s up lately?
At the moment I’m transitioning from a nice cozy house in Denver, surrounded by artists studios and warehouses, into a veggie oil powered school bus. I plan on touring this summer and don’t wanna be slowed down by rent and bills. Land pirates and festivals are on the horizon. I was originally born in Leningrad, lived in Italy and Austria for a minute, then arrived in Queens when I was 3. Grew up in Queens, moved to Joisey at about 13, and escaped the rat race at 18 to become a rock climbing/snowboarding bum in Colorado. Lately I haven’t seen the mountains as I used to but its nice to connect with nature every couple of weeks.
How are the parties in Colorado? What kind of crazy shit goes on down there?
We do everything from break-ins (which has been a bit out of season the last couple of years), to underground parties in warehouses, to legit venues all over Denver and Boulder, to mountain parties all summer long. Lately I’ve been running with a burning man centric crew, and our next big thing is Apogaea in Dreamtime (pun on our altitude and headspace http://www.apogaea.com ) which is our regional burn happening July 16-19.
Last year our local burn was split between two other huge parties, and it was till great. This year we are combining all three. Last year we had a floating geodesic dome, and a huge tower with a DJ Booth 45 feet up, and this burlesque stage/western camp!! People were going insane! This year promises to be much bigger and have more theme camps. They say that behind California, Colorado is the second most represented state at Burning Man…
soo we’ll se what happens. We are a happy, fun community, and enforce a NO BULLSHIT vibe. We don’t tolerate assholes, and they generally don’t even think of showing up to our parties. We put an “out there” vibe out and they just don’t hang with that. We have also had a nice multi-year run of the Art Bus.
Every First Friday Denver’s art galleries open their doors till 10ish, and serve free wine and food. We dress up as freakish as the theme that night and pile into a huge school bus to create mayhem at the galleries we choose to raid.
Has New York changed since you’ve been back?
NY always changes, and that’s how it stays the same. I’d say its a bit cleaner, safer, and mellower.
What kind of equipment do you use? Where do you get your source material?
LCD Projector, PC Laptop, VJ Mixer (with beat matching controls), DVD/Hard Drive Recorder, MIDI Controller Keyboard, Couple of Camera’s, and my new top secret device a couple of Engineering friends are developing in Colorado: a Video Sequencer.
All my harware/software is MIDI controlled.
Soon I will havea portable MAC and my rig will be complete.
I try to keep it compact so I can take the delicate stuff as carry on and check the tuff gear in when I fly.
I’ve been making video’s for a about 6 years, so I have a bunch of source material there, and some of my friends are animators, they give me clips and love it when I rock their shit.
Sometimes I’m asked to do a custom show, so I pre-produce whatever they need. I prefer dancy, psychedelic stuff, but I play whatever it takes.
Ohhh, I also steal like a mofo if its footage I could never hope to shoot (Ever seen a VJ rent a helicoptor, or grow a plant and point an IMAX camera at it for a month?)
VJ Videolicious was all over the place last weekend, will play at Set and Setting tomorrow, the Frying Pan saturday, at the late night rug and trance in Chelsea and finally at the Freak Patrol/Montreal party in the Jersey City art lofts.
