Pick a Winner

Mario's world is falling apart.

Paper Rad's ideal Saturday morning cartoon.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

Whispering Pines Zero

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.

Single channel video, source material from YouTube.

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.