Margin Release

17 responses so far ↓

• 1 anna // May 7, 2008 at 2:40 pm

  I really enjoyed Jacob’s talk. He was funny and accessible in discussing his work. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he is in very close proximity to our own experience (young and Oberlin-y).
  I was particularly impressed by how he fielded questions. Although at times it felt like he didn’t take full responsibility of his own work, I thought that he interacted well with the people asking the questions which perpetuated a natural dialogue rather than a cut and dry, definitive diatribe about art.
  I was too made uncomfortable by the first video that he showed. But I thought that of all the works it was the most provocative and poignant. I found it problematic how black bodies were represented and in particular the implicit voyeurism of us watching these black bodies partake in a culture that has long been commodified and appropriated by white supremacist culture. Yet perhaps that older, long tradition of appropriation is only just manifesting itself again within the arena of YouTube. I think Jacob’s response to the question showed that he too was troubled by objectification, but also that he didn’t have any answer or solution to this pervasive and problematic reality.
  It reminded me of Nao Bustamante’s video that mocked artist’s privilege and how within a performance of blood letting, that was all a a farce, she asserted her own opinion with a self-awareness that brought a new level to the piece. I think that Ciocci made his video(es) with the same self-awareness and self-consciousness that is inherent in New Media.

• 2 dory // May 7, 2008 at 3:17 pm

  I particularly enjoyed Jacob’s talk– as a t0tally unashamed consumer of YouTube culture, I think the way Paper Rad is appropriating that medium is super interesting and pretty long overdue. I also think that in a lot of ways, Jacob and the collective’s work is highly political. Their creation of open source characters (like Tux Dog) and the cyclical relationship between media-on-the-fringe and mainstream culture (exemplified pretty explicitly by the reappropriation of a Paper Rad aesthetic by retailer Journeys) reflect a broader trend that’s largely a response to corporate media production. The internet and the speed at which we can share media gives us, I think, a certain sense of entitlement to the pieces of art we find (on the internet and elsewhere). Copyright is becoming obsolete in a lot of ways, despite the constant struggle of the corporate world to maintain ownership over their ideas. It seems to me that, despite Jacob’s passing claim of ambivalence about corporate politics, his work is pretty deeply tied to what happens there.
  All that said, I can’t wait to see what Paper Rad (and everyone else from Oberlin) is showing on Saturday. Video art forever!

• 3 Sara K // May 8, 2008 at 6:38 pm

  The most resonant part of Paper Rad for me is the humor. I love it for a few reasons, the first is that it just makes me hysterical. That kind of dead pan stupid CCC (cool calm collected) way of interacting just really makes me laugh. During today’s class I realized that there is something deep about that kind of humor in relation to New Media. It is representative of the attitude and movement in the New Media scope. It is part of a nonchalant, informal, interactive and funny performance. The humor feels like an act against high strung professional formalness, and instead asserts a laid back, calmed down, we have all the technology, lets just do what we do kind of attitude. Like Jacob said, most of the people he hangs out/works with don’t declare themselves as artists, they are just people doing the thing that they do. The definition of artist comes with a whole slew of connotations that often assume the artist is not a capable and functioning member of society. The informalness and self reflective humor is in resistance to these pre defined roles of the artist or any professional declaration of their independence from the ‘authority.’ It also ties into the idea that everybody, even regular folks are artists too. Just totally the opposite of stuck up fancy smancy museum culture. The humor and attitude represents a democratization of artistic practice and works to deconstruct the artist as genius or the museum as all powerful.

• 4 Lauren // May 9, 2008 at 3:44 pm

  I have mixed feelings about paperrad. I think the videos are cool and conceptually interesting, however i have trouble with the aesthetic. Maybe I am too old but the rapidly flashing bright colors and the pumping loud music makes me think of seizure inducing pokemon cartoons. I have a short attention span and rather than holding my interest, these blips and flashes of information give me a disorienting feeling of sensory overload, i feel like my brain is experiencing a meltdown. I guess my most complete feeling about paperrad is that their work reminds me of folk music. If the point is to recycle these gifs and the language of the internet of the nineties by putting it into a new art context i think then it is similar to the folk revival of the sixties and fold music in general. Folk music is more or less public domain and the same tunes and melodies are used for many different songs and lyrics of specific songs vary greatly. In the sixties many artists, took a renewed interest in folk music and reintegrated it into the musical culture to make it relevant for people who were too young to know much about it. Jim Kweskin comes to mind, a musician who redid folk songs “for the kids” so the traditions would not get lost. The language of music has been around for who knows how long but the language of the internet is relatively new. I think the function that paperrad serves is to recontextualize gifs and the internet of the nineties into a new and palatable format “for the kids” to make them relevant for todays viewer and to ensure that they dont get lost amongst the sleek and smooth webdesign of today.

• 5 ben // May 11, 2008 at 12:43 pm

  I enjoyed Jacob Ciocci’s humorous examination of web art and culture that began with the now-defunct (or retro?) 1990s web-design aesthetic and quickly delved into the more current issue of You Tube culture.

  In some ways, Ciocci’s process paralleled that of Paul Demarinis, in the sense that he explored and resurrected defunct branches of (web related) technology in order to question our current technological world. Although over-saturated animated GIFs are (mostly) a thing of the past, Jacob’s videos reminded us that today’s newer, sleeker forms of advertisement are equally successful at inducing total sensory overload.

  It was refreshing not only to have a guest who did not take their work too seriously, and who expressed a genuine desire to share something he enjoyed, rather than using their Oberlin visit as a step in their global plan for self-advancement.

  Although some people expressed dismay at the “You Tube appropriation” in one of his videos, I felt that that Jacob was simply asking us to confront this facet of our collective culture.

• 6 arden // May 11, 2008 at 1:03 pm

  I have to say I am really happy that I am writing this after experiencing the Paper Rad show last night. Initially, when I first saw their work all I could imagine was how it would be lost in the world of endless internet web pages and blogs, and perhaps never have a lasting impact on the future. However, by spending hours in Fisher yesterday, I was able to see how the work translated into tangible objects and realized that it was how I view art that is the problem. Such an initial reaction was just a poor reflection on how I typically absorb and think about art, and that I am much more accustomed to viewing work in a location like Fisher, rather than online. With this in mind, I think Paper Rad was one of the first collectives that compelled me to be truly self-conscious about how I perceive work. When regarding my earlier response, I thought it was something that someone of an older generation would feel, rather than someone who has grown up in a world full of new technology. Therefore, I think this genuinely reflects on the formality of how we are habitually taught to view art and enabled me to reconsider the necessity of new media courses.

  Additionally, this is also what Jacob appears to keep in mind when he is creating and presenting his work. While it is masked by the humorous interpretation of pop culture expressionism, his art also touches on the depressing manner in which technology has engulfed our lives. I found this especially true during his talk, because I assumed he was disorganized or uncomfortable, but in hindsight this was part of his projection of how he wants his work to be considered. Of course, someone who does not regard their work as traditional art and deals with technology every day is going to act uncomfortable or self-aware. However, in doing so, his reaction obliged us to interpret his work in a similar manner without even a basic explanation. Furthermore, I think his illustration of technology control was executed best during his performance, especially his piece entitled No Fear. During this performance piece the motions of a projection behind his head aroused physical movement from his hand, demonstrating the greater power of the computer. This was also exhibited later in the performance when he was on the podium with a Mac computer box on his head and once again mimicked the projection behind him. Thus, while his aesthetic is not one that I was immediately drawn toward, it felt irrelevant, because his work proved that it was not created with an arbitrary intention. Instead, it exemplified how new technology and media can have an overwhelming intention of control and manipulation.

• 7 matt // May 12, 2008 at 12:59 pm

  I was talking to Dory about this at the Fisher, but since Lauren brought up the “folk” concept, I want to put it out here.

  I really believe that the work paper rad does is very much in the tradition of pop art, and continuing that idea. For me, at least, much of the iconography of paper rad’s work are things I’m familiar with from living in America in the 90’s and 00’s. The aesthetic is a little overwhelming at first, but I think that’s just a commentary about how over-saturated our media culture is. For me, it succeeds in being a “folk” or “pop” art in ways that more conventional pop art never can, because it is drawing from a culture I identify with. When I look at Paper Rads work, I can immediately pick up on cultural references; I can see where things are being drawn from without feeling that it is coming from a “high” culture perspective. It may seem “out” there, but it is also something close to home, and it is reassuring to celebrate and experience that as art.

• 8 noah // May 13, 2008 at 2:25 pm

  I thought Jacob Ciocci’s talk was really enjoyable, and I wasn’t at all offended by some of the material he presented that some other people in the class were uncomfortable with (not knocking you guys). I think I probably wasn’t uncomfortable with something ostensibly quite offensive as a result of simple media desensitization. In retrospect, one of the principal objectives of the video may indeed have been to reveal this exact desensitization.

  I have some misgivings about the ubiquitous aesthetic in Paper Rad’s work. While I think it is completely legitimate to work in a deliberately retro aesthetic, I can’t help but see such a lo-fi approach as crude on some level. I always get hung up on aesthetic choices that create an environment in which objectively simplistic craftsmanship becomes an aesthetic ideal, because it seems like it can very easily serve as little more than an elaborate justification for laziness as a craftsman. I don’t know if Paper Rad did this, but I certainly would have liked to see ANYTHING that differed in any way from such an overt aesthetic.

• 9 sarah // May 14, 2008 at 6:09 pm

  There were two thinks I enjoyed about Jacob’s work. The first was the idea of going back. This is an idea I have been working on in my own work as well. I like how he used old technology and styles and mixed them with new technology, not only perserving them but showing that you can integrate the old with the new. I think this is important to remeber in our culture that is obsessed with updating, modernizing and getting the newest version of everything–be it final cut or sneakers. Often times with techonology the old and new versions do not work together and Jacob’s work seemed to fight against that–it is important to keep reusing and remebering old ideas and integrating them with new ones.

  The other aspect I enjoyed was just how fun it was. The colors, music, images were all just fun. At the show in fisher the room was full of people dancing and everyone was able to identify to some aspect of the performance be it a song, a clip art object or a video clip. I also loved how Jacob was having a lot of fun too. He was dancing in a crazy glowing outfit, shaking his hair. Also when there were some technological problems he just shrugged them off and played some music with an itunes visualizer and kept dancing.
  The have no fear video was my favorite. I do not know if this was a responce to the oberlin campagne but I think it was perfect for Oberlin and specificly for myself. I often feel like I can’t do or say what I want verbaly and have to express in other ways because I am afraid to and I think maybe his art is his outlet like it is for many others.
  Its a common joke (and truth) that a great many of oberlin students did not have the easiest time fitting in before they came to oberlin, and hanging out in A level as he shamelessly reminises about dosen’t seem like “the coolest” thing either. I love how he was able turn the idea of a “computer geek” into the utterly coolest thing. Jacob really motivated me and inspired me.

• 10 sarah // May 14, 2008 at 6:18 pm

  The last thing his work made me think about was the idea of generational art and definitions of beauty. Would our parents enjoy this over load of colors and sounds? or would they think it was ugly and chaotic? Why are we more accepting of new and differnt art forms then people were through our history? and are we really? what will people 10 years from now think of paper rad–outdated, not get the references? or will they not know about it at all, I wonder at the life span of this type of art that can not be touched, held and stolen. How can or can you put a monitary value on his art and is that a good thing? can someone comision some work for them like a screen saver? Is this considered high art or will it ever be if it is not now or does high art still have to invlove some sort of high expsnce, a physical product and the ability to be bought?
  OED def high art: Of exalted quality, character, or style; of lofty, elevated, or superior kind; high-class.

  is his art comparable to monet or is it not or maybe is it not suppose to be compared?

• 11 Gavin // May 14, 2008 at 10:05 pm

  I really enjoyed Jacob Ciocci’s talk on Tuesday if only for the humor and self-deprecation that reminds me of fellow Oberlin students.. Anyway, the work seemed to resonate with much of the audience. Perhaps because we grew up viewing the inter(net)face that he found interesting and compelling to be somewhat dated. Nonetheless, there were certainly the traces of these components, for us despite the fact that much of the content/format we use today is markedly different. We have reference to a spectrum of this social-technological construction that permeates increasingly into our lives. The result for me was certainly a sense of nostalgia, but manifested in a divergent-historical-bizaro present (what the hell). Musch as DeMarinis investigated antiquated technology that never caught on/was never realized, Ciocci brings past cultural reference and re-integrates them into current forms (gif/youtube overlay). This resulted in a playful/psychedelic confrontation/blend of these outmoded forms (gifs & 90’s webpages) taken to their limit case, rather than removed and replaced by youtube etc. (which they were also in dialogue with. (This paragraph is disgusting, but I suppose it is on a blog about new media art, so what is language/grammar/content anyway). This was a lot of fun. But perhaps the whole artist performance/dance party/crystals/psychedelia/8-bit/is it pastiche or irony/ artist as celebrity, “it’s not selling out it’s buying in” thing was not my favorite. Enjoyable nonetheless.

• 12 Louie // May 15, 2008 at 2:57 pm

  Jacob’s comments about the the ideas that went into the making of the paper rad website were the most ressonent for me. Jacob said explicitly that the formation and design of the site did not arise out of a specific set of convictions that pertained to or came out of a particular set of aesthetic sensibilities, but that it was just sort of the culmination and or gathering of different ideas/images and or visual obsessions that had been building up for him and his collective for years. I think that Jacob’s distinction between obsessions as ideas that can be separated from aesthetics is both really interesting and highly problematic for me.
  For one, I think that making that kind of statement is a kind of denial, not necessarily a bad one, but a denial nonetheless. This might be a little presumptuous to say, but his saying that makes me think of new media’s general attitude towards the visual, and the general divorce that both Jacob and other lecturers have espoused between the visual object, or medium and the message. The general vibe that I have gotten throughout these lectures (with maybe the exception of Paul Demarinis) is that the mediums that these artists utilize are merely vehicles for some kind of message, and the styles of mediation that these artists have used are definitely sarcastically downplayed and or underproduced in order to espouse a particular idea to the viewer.
  I think in some ways, Jacob’s style, which very much fits in with this idea, is working for me, but I think that making the kinds of statements that he makes, in terms of separation medium from message, or claiming a certain kind of apathy for the visual representation for the message, is definitely a denial of purpose.
  I was reminded of this issue because of something that Arden mentioned. My own predispositions and ideas about viewership are completely opened up, reconfigured/destroyed/reformed when looking at net art. The kinds of physical capacities and new forms of viewership that are required for looking at net art is new and challenging to me. I enjoy this duality between visuality and non visuality that Jacob and others are riffing off.

• 13 Hannah Vaughan // May 16, 2008 at 5:46 pm

  I would say Paper Rad very much represents the art of our generation, and I am not quite sure how I feel about it. I was generally impressed and fascinated By Jaccob Ciocci and his presentaion. I loved the concept of the building up and acceleration of the building up of virtual waste and trash. How even in virtual relhms are materialism and waste is present, but somehow in a non-destructive format.
  I think I am made un-easy in my identification of Paper Rad as the new art that will probably come to identify our generation, specifically because of the lack of creation of anything really. Call me old fashion, but I still like the non-virtual world quite a lot. Although they do produce videos, and books, most of what Paper Rad actually produces is more internet code. Their work is really cool, don’t get me wrong. I think they are thinking about our unique position as the internet generation, and doing critical and awesome work. But will our generation only be known for virtual work? Does the burgeoning cyber world, mean the end of craft? Has craftsmanship become the priveldge of the elite, while the internet is the world of the everyman/woman? I am afraid it might be.

• 14 MAX // May 17, 2008 at 8:05 am

  Paper Rad was Awesome…it was Awesome Blosom.

  Jacob’s talk was effing sweet, i was happy to have a chance to hear an artist talk who was close to us in age, and highly relatable for a variety of reasons. Was it the way he talked? His self-deprecation? Or maybe his artwork? Whatever it was, it spoke to me in the sense that i was totally energized and inspired by what he had to say. here are a few of the more interesting things Jacob brought to the table:
  1) art as a process. This is something that really stuck with me. He described he and himself and his friends as people whose lives and their art-work were fully interrelated. THey might not even think of themselves as artists, they just do what they do. In a way, i see a trend with many new media artists of them simply doing what they do, and then somewhere along the way, somebody calls their activity art…. These are simply thoughts to be thought thoughtfully about.
  2) cultural appropriation. Seems like a lot of new media deals with cultural appropriation, or rather some sort of conversation between culture and the artwork. Somebody else touched upon this in their recent post on new media, the new media is a conversation, many to many.
  3) The idea of aesthetics. Jacob stressed that he hadn’t intended express some sort of aesthetic vision. For him, form followed the content. While its a romantic idea, almost sort of freeing, (and also very much related to other artists we’ve heard speak, i.e. with paul demarinis) Im not sure i completely buy it. Jacob’s aeathtetic, regardless of its content, is so dominating, so pervasive, that i kind of think aesthetics are instead a major force behind Paper Rad’s work. And this is okay, but maybe they need to take responsibility for this fact….i don’t know. Does anyone have to take responsibility for anything nowadays? What does that even mean?What am i talking about?

• 15 john // May 18, 2008 at 7:56 am

  PR’s Zany style is very new and at the same time very common. This is part of why they are called DIY. I like his approach to art, in that he sees his whole life as art. What I like about this approach is not the idea itself, but how it affects his artwork, as he does not seem to aspire for some inspiring aesthetic or idea through his work, but allows him instead to explore and fuck around, which is Awesome. It also re-contextualizes everything on You Tube. He helps us see every other clip on You Tube also as art, because if life is not seperate from art, and so many people are exposing their lives through the MeTube, everyone truly is finally being able to be a recognized, published artist. Hooray!

• 16 logan // May 19, 2008 at 8:49 pm

  I first knew of Paper Rad when i was in high school as the guys who made ‘that crazy’ Lightning Bolt music video, ‘13 monsters’. At first I was mostly familiar with the name ‘Paper Rad’ having more connotations in the world of teenage, indie, cool kid mythos than any sort of academic one. Sometime in the past year (maybe it was seeing them at the MoMA last summer), this idea has become augmented or maybe supplanted by notions of institutional success. To be able to work with Jacob Ciocci on a project for a class as both a visiting professor from Carnegie Mellon and as an alumni of my school was indeed a strange concept for me to fathom, (yet felt entirely natural for the most part).
  I think Paper Rad’s ability to function with ease in these two often overlapping worlds says something about both their intentions both as artists and as marketers of themselves. I believed it when Jacob said that him and his collective didn’t think of what they were making as ‘art’, but more just doing what they were doing–this is pretty evident in the amount of honest laughs being passed around the audience during his talk and performance. However at the same time they all have MFAs and ties to institutions, so if this is not a factor in their artistic motivations it is at least in deciding what to do with their art after it is all ‘lived out’ and produced. (Fun fact: the ‘Alfe’ episode on the Paper Rad dvd, ‘Taking Out the Trash was submitted to Cartoon Network as a pilot for Adult Swim).
  I am not trying to say that this two-tiered functionality is dishonest or bad (I think it’s a pretty natural progression actually), but just that his visit made me more aware of it and also just how smart these guys really are.

• 17 cubby // May 21, 2008 at 12:35 pm

  I appreciated that Jacob presented himself as an appropriator (booty video) and an appropriatee, (journey’s bag) as an artist whose work is fully immersed in the public domain.

  In class we talked about how every ten years or so there is a bringing back of the previous decade’s trends, tastes and aesthetics. While ten years have past since the origin of the Paper Rad aesthetic, the collective drew on the aesthetic of that time before it came of retro-cool age—sentimental value for the artists of the late ‘90s homepages and gifs had more to do with their adoption of that style. I found this late ‘90s sampling touching from the perspective of Paper Rad, who have found memories and affection for that era’s internet. Hmm what I am trying to ask is whether younger fans, too young to know the late ‘90s original material, can appreciate PR’s work without their appreciation involving a sense of nostalgia or irony.
  Nostalgia is a kind of cultural appropriation (a temporal one). And since PR’s work (see: Booty video) commented on appropriation as far as we could tell, this question adds an interesting layer. Are we, as viewers, as much appropriators of PR’s work as Journey’s? In theory it’s not so fun for me as a viewer of art to imagine myself as an appropriator, but then this work is challenging the perceived, conventional dangers/what bad we all have come to assume in the US will come of appropriation.
  Finally, I don’t think it should be ignored that cool kids can work as an institution in and of itself—albeit a public one.

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