Jacob Ciocci

The kids at the slumber party are watching a manic interleaving of images culled from early-2000s anti-drug PSAs, zero-view YouTubes from the platform’s most un-Facebooked corners, found footage of garage emo bands, daytime TV ads from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and abject stock renderings of characters like Shrek and the Joker.

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Close-up photos of used consumer junk and animated doodles slowly pan across the screen as a pitched-down male voice attempts to confront his own mind: is he crazy or has society made him crazy? The only way out seems to be some kind of daily Sisyphean ritual of sorting through his damaged mind, and then trying to go the gym. But, the junk just keeps piling up. Who is to blame for this mess inside your mind? You don't actually have a problem, society is the problem.

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In February 2005, YouTube was launched and forever changed our relationship to moving images, both as viewers and producers. But even well before then, the web had made a large variety of new materials accessible to see and to download, as well as upload. “From the Cloud” is a video program that looks at found footage “films” in the Internet Age. The proliferation of archived photographs, digital images, and videos made available to everyone online as well as an exponential increase in production has changed the way artists interact with pre-existing material. The artists in this program both pull material from the cloud and implicitly comment on the cloud by doing so.

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One part send up of consumer electronics, one part lamentation of the negative impact of the internet, and one part explosive collage of animation, found footage, and critical self-reflection. The hybrid sound of Extreme Animals intermingle with a hyperactive meditation on Apple products, rugged individualism, and the disturbing power of networked digital connectedness.

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Hardcore hip-hop bagpipe jamms and pixelated party wisdom, including the tracks “Get Out of Your Mind”, “Question of the Ages”, “Gone Green”, and “Your Life/Your Language”. Life is a wilderness, don’t do anything illegal, it’s our time down here!

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Paper Rad's ideal Saturday morning cartoon.

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With a title hearkening back to the analog era, The Peace Tape is a frenetic remix of old and new "found" video. Culling his sources from thrift stores (countless straight-to-VHS childrens' programs), the Internet (a single YouTube clip featuring "dog in a dog costume"), and his own designs (flash animation of eyes and mouths, subliminal flickers of text), Ciocci concentrates hours of light entertainment into a dense, four-minute block. Saved from total sensory overload by the musical logic of Extreme Animals' "A Better Way," The Peace Tape is cryptic, hypnotic (and above all), empathetic. "Culture is out of control," Ciocci explains, "but it is ok."

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a mash-up of re-edited YouTube clips and original flash animation, explores the conflation of cartoon violence and real or implied violence in the pop vernacular. Ciocci finds hybrid monsters of caricature/reality in hip-hop fashion (the front-zipping hoodie, embroidered with the gun-toting Elmo, Cap'n Crunch counting money, the crack-dealing Snow Man) and emulative teen culture (iconic viral videos of straight-faced youngsters dancing and lip-syncing to hip-hop). Just as errant Looney Tunes become sinister symbols in the everyday, YouTube flattens identity, and, as Ciocci explains, "makes cartoons out of everybody." Throughout, Ciocci overlays web video images with Flash animation of claws and bleeding bodies, in surreal disruption of the "live" video backdrop. The music is a remix of 2 Step by the band Extreme Animals.

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Single channel video, source material from YouTube.

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A showcase of Paper Rad's individual and group creations in the form of Trash Talking, a show for kids with bizarre characters trying to find their place in the world.

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DVD includes the shortfilm "Dr. Doo in Fucland", a making-of and a live show recording.

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Mario's world is falling apart.

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This delirious montage of appropriated and computer-generated elements merges perennial Paper Rad themes such as Gumby and the 8-bit computer aesthetic with a keen, critical take on contemporary culture. This self-described "mix tape" — a term that refers here both to the group's montage strategy and to popular compilations of bootlegged hit music — takes on the war in Iraq, the art market, and the images of ostentatious wealth and glamor flaunted by pop stars today.

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Take your senses on an unpredictable journey with this blend of raucous music and psychedelic visuals from the artists at Load records. Based in Providence, R.I., the label's acts run the gamut from noise rock to experimental electronica. Bands include Pink and Brown, Neon Hunk, Forcefield, Mystery Brinkman, Gerty Farish, Pixeltan, Thee Hydrogen Terrors, My Favorite Home Page, Lightning Bolt, Extreme Animals, Black Elf Speaks and more.

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From The Year of the Troll Tour

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Chocofus gets a mysterious video tape in the mail from his cool pals and then somethinng awesome suprise!

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Time is running out. Songs are getting shorter and shorter by the minute.If a song is short enough, does it extend the longevity of your life expectancy? What is the purpose of a limited edition CD/DVD with foldout poster and custom stickers, that has been individually hand shrink-wrapped? God only knows, or as Miley Cyrus once said “Only God can judge us.” After 22 years as a band we’re grateful and alarmed to have watched every scene, style, genre, instrument, algorithm, format, context, platform, “life choice,” approach, venue, space, and technology thrive,, then die, then be reborn again, and then die again. What can we say… At the end of the day, it’s all about the music. As Anthony Kedis once rapped “Music, the great communicator.”

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A showcase of Paper Rad's individual and group creations in the form of Trash Talking, a show for kids with bizarre characters trying to find their place in the world.

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From The Year of the Troll Tour

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A Victorian fairy tale told in the patois of an adventure video game, The Happiest Day is a journey back to a time that never was. Meandering through a cut-out computer-animated forest we come upon strangers enacting odd and playful rituals. These live-action sequences are loose reenactments of 1960’s and 1970’s performance artworks restaged in an Arcadian setting. The ecstatic jouissance of the original performances, with their primitivist nudity, shamanistic catharsis and pointed immediacy is re-located to a fabulous storybook world.

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If you blink your eyes rapidly enough the world begins to look like a weird flickering animation. This may cause permanent damage to your ORBICULARIS OCULI (eyelid muscle) or it may beef it up to a super-steroidal level that knocks your glasses off your face all the time. This is probably the best way to prepare your eyebrain for SAVORY SELECTIONS, the most breathtaking assemblage of contemporary "fucked-up style...and beyond" animation since Winsor McKay rode Gertie the Dinosaur into the Tron laser getting bitmapped and reconstituted as a GIF backpatch in a cybersquat in a boarded up GameStop at the mall. If that doesn't sound like fun to you, you should have your ears pierced... with a katana blade, that continues on through your neck, because you've forgotten what 'fun' is.

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