Interview: Deborah Johnson on Sufjan, Singer Songwriters, and Content
In January I had a chance to catch up with Deborah Johnson, who was touring Australia at the time with Sufjan Stevens. The morning after their show in Brisbane, Australia we recorded an hour-long discussion of the show, and seeming to cover the whole gamut of visual creativity and performance. I’ve finally managed to transcribe this epic from audio to text.
Deborah: I would really like to see our show from the audience’ perspective.
Jaymis: I would have loved to have shot some video. There are some really beautiful moments. Did you notice that there was quite a bit of the crowd cheering visuals?
Jaymis: No?
Jaymis: I noticed that there was a couple times when you did something, nothing else was happening, and people around me were “yeaah!”, and not just the people I’ve conditioned to do that, either.
Deborah: ~laughs~
Jaymis: You’ve obviously got a good aesthetic happening. I’ve seen on your website as well you have that kind of drawn aesthetic. Do you do the illustration yourself?
Deborah: On the website?
Jaymis: In the set, you have images that come up: Stars, growing vine objects…
Deborah: Those are all based on drawings, they’re all drawing programs that are written in Director. I work with a programmer, and we’ll be like “this is what I want to have happen”, and he writes an algorithm to make that happen.
Jaymis: That was my next question: How do you do your particle effects with the stars which are drawn on, stay and then fall. So that’s Director?
Deborah: Yep.
Jaymis: Peter would be very excited that someone’s still using Director… So that’s then rendered out to video clips?
Deborah: I mean, the dream is to be able to make them instruments that I can play live, but…
Jaymis: Director’s getting a bit old for that kind of thing. You might have to go with Processing or Quartz Composer or one of those fun things.
Deborah: I really would like to learn Processing. Recently I feel like I’ve become more of a curator, art director.
Jaymis: As video gets bigger that’s what you have to become; you can’t do it all anymore.
Deborah: For this, I knew what I wanted to happen, but I knew that I would need some help. So I started working with a programmer named Siebren Versteeg, who’s an awesome artist in New York. It was great because in Sufjan’s music there’s just so many layers of stuff that happens. My skills were limited to be able to create something that’s just totally generative and so massive, there’s no way that I could author that stuff. So how do you just get a source concept and send it out over an animation.
One thing that I worry about is that it becomes too… Say with Processing or that kind of work, people associate it with screensavers?
Jaymis: Very true. Well I guess that growing vines is one of those things which is quite ubiquitous with that sort of thing. Obviously you’ve got a particularly cool little spin on it and it works really well in the context of what’s happening on stage, but “something growing” is a very standard…
Majesty Snowbird, Live Visual from CandyStations on Vimeo.
Deborah: Exactly.
Jaymis: I think the other thing is that if you become too focussed on one particular tool, then that influences your output as well.
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2008-Mar-21@19:21
