I had the pleasure of giving an exclusive interview to the B.O.B. Interior Design Magazine in South Korea. In this interview I gave my insight into my stage design career and working process. You may click on this link to view the full interview PDF document.
Kim Sowon : Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?
VJ Fader : My Korean name is Choi Moonbong, my artist name is VJ Fader, my friends call me James. My family background is Korean Chinese. Last time when I visited South Korea was in 2011 for an artist residency called Gachang in the country side of Daegu. I have been living and studying in Los Angeles since I was a teenager. About 4 years ago I moved to Berlin where I call home. I studied in Illustration major at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, USA. I was passionate about electronic music and had an interest in music videos and animation. After graduating in 2002 I started VJing at small clubs and parties. I’m also a self taught programmer and software developer working with Max/Msp/Jitter, Processing, TouchDesigner and Unity. In the past 5 years my professional career started involving stage designs.Kim Sowon : What kind type of stages do you mainly work on?
VJ Fader : Most of my stage design work evolves around the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene. Although the term EDM can be very broad covering countless dance music genre and subgenre including House, Techno, Drum and Bass, and even Trap. But for most people EDM refers to the top dance music charts. I recently discovered a dance music genre called Breakcore, a much harder faster version of Drum and Bass, pretty crazy music. One of my long term client has been the Intro Electronic Music Festival based in Beijing, where the mainstage focuses on Techno and Deep House music.Kim Sowon : What attracts you the most to this eld?
VJ Fader : I can honestly say I grew up as a MTV generation. When I was a kid, I was very much into watching music videos. It was a time when people were still buying CDs and record companies would spend millions to produce one music video. For me, with most VJs, we are passionate about music. Some people joke and say ‘VJs are the failed DJs’. Music is personal, everyone listen to different types of music, but when you have thousands of people coming together dancing to the same music, that’s special. Even today most of the times when you go see a big name DJ standing in front of a large screen playing on a stage, that's not very inspiring. I wanted to design my own stages to incorporate video, lighting and effects to create a memorable visual impact through form. When I design a stage, I’m creating a multimedia installation.Read More
