The Panasonic WJ MX-10 is one of the ancestors of a row of very popular video mixers.
Technologically outdated, of no use for nowadays hobby filmers it can be found sometimes with VJs.With classic Design, hard-edged, black, with aggressive cooling rips he looks like a crossing between Darth Vader and a Steinway (and some K.I.T.T.). As if predicted by the design this old, little marriage video mixer turns into a fury of bizarre patterns and forms, flashes and jitters, when you take him out of sync.

Mr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

Fighting, like a wild mustang but once you tame him you get a great real time graphic generator.

The imagery that can be generated this way has a fascinating video aesthetic, very active in between the fields. The performer has control over the signal but everything a man can get out of this machine to declare it as beauty and as image has been placed there. Not by any human will, every Panasonic technician would get a heart attack seeing one of our videos.

This potential beauty that lies like a second nature within the machines
Is what we want to unveil? We are the farmers that cultivate that land.

So what is new about the MXZEHN attitude? What is smart about using this very old, outdated technology in a time, where computers became powerful visual realtime engines, and a huge number of software products enables visual artists to create digital artwork in previously unseen quality?

MXZEHN is not ignoring state of the art technology. We use it for different projects, but when it comes down to the true meaning of live video, when it comes down to the art of playing the image, there is a unity of image, meaning, machine and object that never can be reached by a software solution.

Most software solutions are slow or unintuitive to handle. The MX-10 allows us to focus on the Art, on the live character of our performances. We think that VJing should not be the imitation of cinema with different means. Live video has totally different characteristics. It has to show the previously unseen, it is not telling a story by the representations of human action or interaction with objects. Live video has to be self-reflective.

We don’t use the machine as a tool, a slave to visualize our ideas but as a partner and a friend.
MXZEHN imagery has the beauty of nature photography. The beauty lies within the nature, and it is the artists vision and action that channels this beauty into perceptibility.