November 2011 News

November 16, 2011 – 6:23 pm

Hi Everyone!

More late-2011 updates:

1. David Wightman and I are talking this Friday (November 18th) at Columbia University on a panel entitled “Instrumentalization Of Music” about the crossover between art and music worlds. Other panelists include Zach Layton, Tristan Perich, Howie Chen, Khaela Maricich, and Melissa Dyne (that’s a sick lineup).

632 west 125th street
Prentis Hall
4pm-6pm
First Floor
“open to the public”

1. I am  ALSO talking this Sunday (November 2oth) at Johns Hopkins University. Here is the flyer, click for bigger version with details:

2. Extreme Animals entered a new song into the TranceWAR. It looks like we are not going to win, but you should still go listen to all the tracks, try and find ours (it’s an anonymous competition) and VOTE!!

3. Extreme Animals is donating a ringtone to the Rhizome.org community campaign. Please support Rhizome–u have no idea how much they have supported me!!

4. “Am I Evil” , one of my newer videos (with music by Extreme Animals) is being screened as a part of the Floating World Animation Fest DMTV2 on November 21st.

4.”Am I Evil” is also showing at this screening, curated by Jesse Mclean(scroll down):

http://www.mocp.org/events/2011/11/

5. A 9-year old video of mine “Welcome To My Homeypage” (which is an excerpt of the Paper Rad piece “PJVidz“) will be screened in Chicago on December 14th in conjunction with this exhibit:

http://gallery400.uic.edu/events/semi-permanent-program

6. Extreme Animals has some upcoming December performances I am pretty excited about. They include the after party for the brooklyn comics and graphics festival (flyer below made by CF), and then 4 shows with Yacht including a show in Pittsburgh!! More details on those shows ASAP!!

7. I am making a new collage/video piece for a show in Raleigh in January 2012 at the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh. The show opens January 28th–more info on this as it develops. I will also be giving an animated .gif workshop there! Very excited about both of these opportunities!

8. Here is some documentation of the *weird* performance I did for the Triple Canopy benefit. You should check out the other videos on this page as well, it was an amazing event:

http://vimeo.com/31400677

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in News About Me | Comments (0)

A New Video, YouTube and Copyright

October 4, 2011 – 4:48 pm

An interesting thing occurred the other night as I logged on to the old Paper Rad YouTube account after almost a year of not using it. I was logging on to post this new video I just finished:

Before I could post my video I was confronted with a mandatory “copyrite school” (is it illegal to spell copywrite wrong?) questionnaire and a mandatory viewing of this video, hosted by some cartoon characters called “happy tree friends”:

It seems one of the videos on our account was recently taken down due to copywrite infringement. The video in question was an episode that my former collaborator Ben Jones told me to post of Cartoon Network’s new show “Problem Solverz”. It was the video on our account with by far the most views, as well as the most negative, hateful comments and dislikes of any video we have ever posted.  I thought the video was a really interesting example of how “success” functions on the web and I was sad to see it go, but not that sad because I didn’t really make the video.  Ben did make the video (with a team of Cartoon Network employees) and I posted it because he asked me to and because we as a team previously worked on a similar project (Problem Solvers with an “s”). Nonetheless YouTube took the video down as requested by Cartoon Network and now the Paper Rad YouTube account has 1 of 3 strikes against it. 2 more and all of our videos will be gone. This is probable as now that we are on their radar they will notice that almost ALL of our videos have copywrited material of some form in them (for example the video as well as music I just posted is almost all appropriated in some way). Of course the thing about these content “take-downs” is that you have no clue why any video in particular is being targeted. From the user’s perspective it seems arbitrary when and why content is removed from your account. Ultimately I don’t care about the Paper Rad YouTube account that much, we can always post the videos elsewhere (although I do think it serves some minor historical significance) but I find this story interesting because of the history of Paper Rad’s work and of my current work, and of how it seems to fit in within larger artistic trends. I could go on and on about this but I think I will leave it brief for now:

If you look back at early Paper Rad projects they often included a range of relations to copyrighted material–from blatant “sampling” to subtle pop-cultural references, to  ”all-original” content. There was a continuum in the work that reflected our experience of the world as active consumers and producers–that we are influenced by and can influence the world. It seems to me that when your work reaches a certain level of exposure you have to get trickier and trickier with how you express this continuum, or you might come up against some legal troubles. I admire artists like Girl Talk for having created a functional model within this system. This is a challenge that I fully embrace and hope to one day have to worry about for real.For now though, I hope you enjoy the above videos :)

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in My Blog | Comments (0)

Fall 2011 News

September 27, 2011 – 9:34 pm

Hi Everyone

Just some updates on what I am up to right now (September/October/November 2011):

1. I made a 50-minute “epic” audio mix in collaboration with David from Extreme Animals for Mixpak FM. And it was blogged about by MTV here!

2. Extreme Animals is playing the VIA music and new media festival in Pittsburgh on October 7th. Also, as a part of the festival, 2 works of mine, “Welcome to My Homeypage” and “Don’t Worry Be Happy-stressful mix” (that are a part of the permanent collection at The Carnegie Museum) will be screened as a part of the Warhol Museum/CMOA Film Lounge.

3. Extreme Animals is playing a show at the Museum of Moving Image with Anamanaguchi, Lovid, and others on October 8th. I made a “video flyer” for the event, which is here:

4. After that Extreme Animals is going on a small east coast tour ending in Boston at the Home Grown III Festival. That schedule is here. Don’t forget to click “attending” and “like” on EVERY facebook invite EVER (JK).

5. My video “Questions of the Ages” will be a part of the “Definitive Gaze” exhibition at Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, along with videos by Alex Bag, and others. October 13-31.

6. I will be performing with Shana Moulton, Ben Coonley and others on October 28th as a part of an event called “The Future Has 2 Faces”, a fundraiser for Triple Canopy.

7. I will be speaking/lecturing at Johns Hopkins University on November 20th. More info on time/place soon :)

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in News About Me | Comments (0)

Summer 2011 updates

August 9, 2011 – 4:16 pm

Hello Everyone!!

Here are some things I have been doing recently:

1. An interview with Ian Glover for Rhizome.org

2. “Am I Evil?” A new video/collage piece I finished for the Pittsburgh Biennial, at the PCA in Pittsburgh–on view until October 2011!

3. A lecture/performance with Ryder Ripps about “what it means 2 B Extreme”, at Columbia University, as a part of this series.

4. “Persistence of Visions of Faces of Death” at PNCA in Portland, and a write-up here.

5. Coming soon: an Extreme Animals Mix for Mixpak FM (really excited about this one).

6. Also Extreme Animals has been really busy. We have been making lots of new videos, we went on tour 3 times (David made some amazing blog posts about it, starting here), we have been working on remixes, and have some new shirts for sale ONLINE.

7. I am showing one of my videos Friday August 19th at Soloway in Brooklyn, organized by JD Walsh

8. My video “Dark Green” is showing in the exhibition “Motion/Pictures” in Sidney, Australia.

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in News About Me | Comments (0)

4Chan and Paper Rad, 2011

April 5, 2011 – 4:20 am

Ben Jones is working on a new show for Cartoon Network and it’s first episode aired last night. I did a little searching and found a 4Chan thread discussing the first episode, which then seemed to develop into a discussion about Paper Rad, the art collective I devoted 6 years of my life to. It was my first time ever reading a 4Chan thread, and I must say it was an intense experience in which I learned a lot about how certain works of art (particularly mine) function on the internet. For those interested in debates between underground versus popular aesthetics, in creating works of art that can speak to multiple audiences at once, or in what gives art work validity, below are some interesting perspectives, spoken in the internet’s native language: “TROLL”.  I copied and pasted 2 troll quotes here, the conversation is now “lost forever” in 4Chan heaven. . . .

“Why base a whole show around an extreme art style that looks horrible and no one mainstream even knows is popular? I never even fucking heard of paper rad before and I know a ton of hipsters.”

“Art is something you need to step into the right mindset to appreciate. That’s why people go to galleries or museums or indie cinemas to see it. When you’re eating dinner in your pajamas after a long day at work and watching kids shows, you’re not exactly in the most mentally receptive state for art. You just want fucking entertainment. People don’t watch CN looking for art. They just see it and think it looks ugly and change the channel.
Paper rad belongs in galleries, and that’s fine, let it go be art there. If you decide to bring it to a wider audience who doesn’t understand it you have to be open to the criticisms that come with that. Art isn’t infallible just because it’s art.”

oh, and:

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Stress Boxes in Spain

February 21, 2011 – 10:24 pm

One of my older videos “How To Escape From the Stress Boxes” is screening at the Punto De Vista International Documentary Film Festival, as a part of a night of film and video curated by Ben Russel.
Info is here:

http://www.puntodevistafestival.com/en/ficha_pelicula.asp?IdPeli=202

Pamplona Spain, 22-27 of February, 2011

“There are two ways of approaching the work of a filmmaker: watching their films or watching the films that have led them to create such images –a sort of yellow-tiled path. Ben Russell, winner of the Punto de Vista Grand Award for Best Film 2010 for the amazing Let Each One Go Where He May and member of the Punto de Vista 2011 jury, retraces the steps along the yellow-tiled path that have led to his latest work by picking a series of short films whose echoes we can hear in his films. Faced with the dilemma of whether to explore Russell’s images or let him guide us down the road that brought him to them, we have chosen to go off the beaten path. A steeper, radical path taking us to the roots of Russell’s films: animals, distant countries, and an experimental anthropology that inform a way of filmmaking that is a passage to spiritual trance.”

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in News About Me | Comments (0)

Product Brainstorming

February 21, 2011 – 10:16 pm

Wow

I was just surfing my sister Jessica Ciocci’s ever evolving website and came across a link to this publication we did together, almost 10 years ago!

http://www.paperrad.org/pb/pb.html

It’s really good–maybe the best thing I have ever made?? Everything about it I like, which is a very very rare feeling. I remember really enjoying making it, sharing it as a zine and then again on the internet, and even now it still seems important to share it again!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this blast from the past that still lives in the present.

Here is an example page:

By Jacob Ciocci | Posted in My Blog | Comments (0)