A Tom Tom Chaser

Ken Jacobs

2002, 11 min, b&w, silent

A Tom Tom Chaser is Jacobs' 2002 poetic riff on the transformation of his classic film Tom Tom the Piper's Son from chemical to electronic form during the telecine process.

Celebrations for Breaking Routine

Kristin Lucas

2003, 24:51 min, color, sound

An alternative to corporate music videos that mass-market young female musicians, Celebrations for Breaking Routine documents girl bands in Liverpool and Basel recording original songs commissioned by Lucas. This video is part of a larger project in which Lucas traveled to cities internationally recognized for their music scenes and invited young girl-led bands to write songs about the future. These community-based collaborations resulted in alternative visions of female empowerment and identity in a media-driven culture.

I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much

Pipilotti Rist

1986, 7:47 min, color, sound

Rist's classic video takes on rock music with its own tools, pushing pop's repetitive strategies and representations of women to absurd lengths. Footage of the artist chanting the title (a line adapted from The Beatles' song Happiness is a Warm Gun) is replayed at high and low speeds, with obscuring video effects, blurring into an almost painterly procession of images. Through obsessive mimesis and manipulation, Rist renders her voice into a parody of female hysteria and her body into a grotesquely dancing doll.

Oh

Stan VanDerBeek

1968, 9:17 min, color, sound

Assassination, falling down, animated drawings from the landscape of memory, mankind falling down, faces within faces, a haunting view of man drawn in brilliant animation graphics. Commissioned by Media Center at University of St. Thomas. Production: Henry Morgenthau; Scenography: Dick Bartlett; Production Associate: Nancy Osgood; Production Assistant: Rae Flaschner; Sound: Tim Hill; Animation: Derek Lamb; Photos: Richard Rogers; Music: Paul Conny

Poemfield No. 2

Stan VanDerBeek

1966, 5:40 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Symmetricks

Stan VanDerBeek

1972, 6:12 min, b&w, sound

Realized with Wade Shaw, Electronic-optical computer finger paintings. Laws of reflective mirror images, an interplay between drawing by hand and computer. Art from the future, electronic calligraphy. Developed as an experiment at MIT while at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, this film explores the rapid tracking of drawn line images compounded by the symmetry of multiple images; one result of the experiment is the phenomenon of color that comes from the black and white images, a blend of music and images that mystifies and delights the eye.

Synesthesia: Dan Graham

Tony Oursler

1997-2001, 36:47 min, color, sound

A legendary figure in contemporary art, Dan Graham has helped to redefine the role of the artist today. From his early magazine pieces, photography, films and video works, to his critical writings and architecture projects, Graham has pushed the boundaries of what culture is and how it functions. He is also an enthusiastic fan and observer of rock culture and its rituals, and has worked with many of the important figures in the New York music scene.

Synesthesia: Genesis P-Orridge

Tony Oursler

1997-2001, 90:29 min, color, sound

Genesis P-Orridge, performance artist and vocalist for the iconoclastic English industrial band Throbbing Gristle in the late 1970s, pioneered industrial music. P-Orridge, who went on to form the experimental band Psychic TV, continues to work in music, art, and performance in New York, and is undertaking a long-term "Pandrogeny" project involving a radical identity transformation.

Synesthesia: Kim Gordon

Tony Oursler

1997-2001, 20:15 min, color, sound

Kim Gordon is bass player and vocalist for the experimental rock group Sonic Youth, a visual artist, and the founder of the clothing line X-girl. She has also played in the bands The Supreme Indifference, Free Kitten, and The Lucky Sperms. Her feminist lyrics, which address issues such as rape, eating disorders, and gender stereotypes, and her support of women musicians, have influenced a new generation of artists and musicians.

The Making of Super Mario Clouds

Cory Arcangel 

2004, 76:00 min, color, silent

In the first part of this work, Arcangel silently documents the real-time construction of his video game cartridge piece, Super Mario Clouds, in which he hacked a "Mario Brothers" cartridge, erasing everything but the clouds. While The Making of Super Mario Clouds poses as an instructional video, willfully amateur camerawork and the omission of any soundtrack indicate the artist's intentions: to give viewers, in his words, "a feel for the process, in its gloriously boring true detail." The second part is a 9-minute video re-scan of the clouds.

Tux Dog

Paper Rad

2003, Web Project

Paper Rad synthesizes popular material from television, video games, and advertising, reprogramming these references with an exuberantly neo-primitivist digital aesthetic. Tux Dog, which began as a cartoon character drawn by a Paper Rad member as a child, is an open source Web project hosted by EAI. Vector files, images, storyboards and other media relating to Tux Dog are available for anyone to download. Paper Rad members are Benjamin Jones, Jacob Ciocci, and Jessica Ciocci.