Scratch

You can find some inspriable examples in Scratch Project / Music and Dance folder. and there are many sound samples to use for remixing in Scratch also.

and i suggest you to take a look at Creative Commons Mixter project. (aka ccmixter)

http://ccmixter.org

there are bunch of nice remix musics created by people around the world. you can use it freely under creativie commons license.

Let's play DJing !

i made a simple example for it too.

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/DJ_crossfader.sb

the machine that i brought is V-8 and it can take 8 inputs in the same time. so i think 8 persons can be VJs with their Scratch enabled laptops.

(there is also V-4 that can take 4 inputs, and it's cheaper if you'd like to have or try one)

i suggest you to make simple but vivid interactive image or animation with scratch that you can control in diverse way.

since DJ is dealing with Music and Sound. you can be in the groove with those music by manipulating images to interact with beats (kicks) and melodies etc in the sound.

there are several example that i made for doing this.

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/Simple.sb (Hit space bar when you listen beats!)

if you get the enough motivation you can break the barrier for learning math stuff.

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/Pattern_Random.sb

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/Pattern_SinCos.sb

sometimes depicting texts (typo graphics) works great to make cool ambient. may be lyrics for a song is good too in same manner.

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/Typo_MoveScale.sb

Photos works great too.

Consider to implement Ken Burns Effect in Scratch.

* PhotoStory 3 is great free tool for doing this if you use windows os. we(i an teachers in my kindergarten) use this a lot in varius activities

you can use the fantastic Scratch Board to do cool VJing if you have one.

http://epicure.graffity.net/things/projects/Scratch/Workshop/Character_ScratchBoard.sb

try to think about changes (sometimes big, sometimes subtle), think about the slope of the changes in motion with sound.

* you can also be another VJ (Video Journalist) if scratch support embedding video someday. :-)

Director

Actually the director is the real VJ in this performance. may be a meta VJ.

Video Mixer V-8 can remix with those 8 inputs of video. so director are the one who supposed to control it.

and he(or she) should keep the theme of the performance in mind. he(or she) is ther person who is in charge of composing the performance.

he(or she) should look over each videos from each laptops. and have to decide when to show which image on.

i'd like to suggest take this roll in turns.

Audience

Audience is also great role in this performance.

in my experience, having audience is a great motivation for performers.

and audience can enjoy the live performance, and give their feedback(or critics) to performers.

and if you want you can join the performance with your creations. just bring it to the director.

Theme

theme of the performance will be scratch itself, values of scratch. it's about what we are trying to do. what we are enjoying about.

Provocatives

what i do suggest is making some solid narrative or context in using scratch.

Jerome Bruner said something like this, (it's translation of translation, so it might be differenr in real, but what i believe is something like this)

'School is not the place only teaching occurs, it have to be an environment that try to develop narrative context. education(learning) is somewhat complex process that members of the envirionment interact with each other in social, cultural ways.

so scrath can be a great catalyst for trying this kind of concepts. and an immersive context is the most important thing to achieve. when it is possible, learning process just follows.

when i start my experimental class for elementray school students, boys used to be easily accustomed with Scratch and be self motivated(making games). girls usually get interested in the first place also but they easily lost their curiosity about Scratch in few days. when i apply this performance methodolgy, and let them know there will be audience for the performance, the concern of girls about the scratch class dramatically went high. and they start to ask how can they achieve what they want to make even though it needs math or physics. a context for collaboration, social acitivities (especially in real world) has great potential in learnng and living, altogether life long learning.

i believe scratch is one big trigger for many other things. it can be a handy brigde for others. we should try to develop various usage of scratch. merge with other methodology, genres etc.

then we will find other experties(artists, scienctist etc) are around us and are prepared to communicate with us in town.

let them know this and join this. how fun to live this creative life!