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PARUL IO / DJ BLNDR

Toronto-based producer Parul Io recently spent some time at Derivative HQ preparing her special brand of visuals. Io blends the life of a DJ and VJ and plays a major part in the electronic and experimental music events in the city.

She spins jungle, breakcore, minimal techno, and speedcore while complementing her performance with videos she's prepared earlier with Derivative's experimental video mixer, Mixxa. She is pictured below getting ready for another show. Parul arrived with a vhs deck and an armful of vhs tapes featuring a rare collection of source material that included bollywood phantasmagoria, early early animation classics, '70's schlock horror and a handful of other prize items found in the dollar bins of video stores across the country.

Parul's technique is to import VHS source material into Mixxa where she can layer footage into lush, intricate and fast moving compositions. She then alters frame rates, creates patterns, and applies effects as she mixes the video in realtime. The computer stores the material as quicktime movies, but Parul chooses to play them back in sequence onto VHS tapes. Why VHS? With a couple of copies Parul can avoid any unforeseen technical difficulties that can occur when VJing live. And there's something about the quality of those old VHS tapes that brings out the true grit in her hypnotic and shocking video mix.

Here's a sample of Parul's visual work using Mixxa:

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