''Paper Rad'' was an
art collective
An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims. The aims of an artist collective can include almost anything that is relevant to the needs ...
from approx. 2000 until 2008, based on the East Coast in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
and
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
.
Known for creating comics,
zine
A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...
s,
video art
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...
,
net art
upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden
Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phys ...
,
MIDI file
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...
s, paintings, installations, and music with a distinct "lo-fi" aesthetic often associated with
underground culture
Underground culture, or simply underground, is a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different from the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by others. The word "underground" is used ...
or 1990s "retro tech", juxtaposed images and featuring bright colors.
History
The three primary members were
Jacob Ciocci Jacob Ciocci (born 1977) is an American visual artist, performance artist, musician, and professor. Along with sister Jessica Ciocci and friend Ben Jones, he was one of the three founding members of Paper Rad, an artist collective active from 2000 ...
,
Jessica Ciocci
Jessica Ciocci (born 1976) is an American artist working in a range of mediums including animation and video, Twitter, crafting, digital online projects, comics, mixtapes, performance, painting, drawing and sculpture.
Ciocci was a founding member ...
,
and
Ben Jones, but additionally included many others such as Paul Bright, David Wightman, Sonja Radovancevic, Extreme Animals, and others.
Prior to Paper Rad, Ben Jones and
Christopher Forgues
Christopher "Chris" Forgues, (also known professionally as C.F. and Kites), is an artist and musician, best known for his graphic novel serial ''Powr Mastrs''. He is based in Providence, Rhode Island.
About
He holds a B.F.A. from the Massach ...
(C.F.) were students at
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...
and created a zine project called "Paper Radio".
Jacob and his sister Jessica became active in Paper Rad after moving to Boston and hanging out with Joe Grillo, Ben Jones, and Christopher Forgues.
All of them were interested in zine making, experimental art and music, and computers, which opened up the possibility of multimedia work.
The first Paper Rad animation video was made in Boston on VHS tape.
The early collaborators for Paper Rad included Andrew Warren, Joe Grillo, Laura Grant, and Billy Grant (and later the Grant siblings with Joe Grillo formed the art collective,
Dearraindrop
Dearraindrop is an artist collective based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Dearraindrop incorporates diverse disciplines that work together to create multifaceted sculptures and installations. Part of the collective's operating philosophy is modeled ...
).
Paper Rad exhibited works at several major galleries including
PaceWildenstein,
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
History
The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Scho ...
, and
Deitch Projects
Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director''Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects ( ...
. Paper Rad's work (featuring Ben Jones) is included in the permanent museum collection at
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...
.
The collective published a book in late-2005, ''Paper Rad, BJ and da Dogs'' and a DVD in 2006 on
Load Records
Load Records was an American experimental music-oriented independent record label based out of Providence, Rhode Island. "Load Records might possibly be in possession of the world's most challenging record roster," writes Mark Hensch of Thrash Pi ...
(''
Trash Talking
Trash talk is a form of insult usually found in sports events, although it is not exclusive to sports or similarly characterized events. It is often used to intimidate the opposition and/or make them less confident in their abilities as to win e ...
''). Paper Rad's video works are distributed by
Electronic Arts Intermix
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that is a resource for video and media art. An advocate of media art and artists since 1971, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a collection of over 3,500 new ...
.
Style
Paper Rad calls its style "Dogman 99", a play on the Danish filmmaking movement
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" ( da, kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films ba ...
.
According to one of its project websites, the rules of Dogman 99 are: "No Wacom tablet, no scanning, pure RGB colors only, only fake tweening, and as many alpha tricks as possible".
Paper Rad's visual projects often employ bright
fluorescent
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore a lower photon energy, tha ...
palettes juxtaposed with
primary colors
A set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of a bro ...
to create a distinctive "lo fi" look. It adopts a variety of techniques and elements to achieve this look, including
pop art,
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
,
punk art
Punk visual art is artwork associated with the punk subculture and the No wave movement. It is prevalent in punk rock album covers, Flyer (pamphlet), flyers for punk concerts and punk zines, but has also been prolific in other mediums, such as ...
, as well as imagery from popular culture. The multimedia projects incorporate
MIDI audio, poor recordings of original sound effects and voices, pixelization, and other crude audio and visual components. Paper Rad recycled or appropriated obscure sounds and images from a variety of sources, including old cartoons, commercials, and late-night television.
In the early 2000s Paper Rad's website featured early
GIF art as well as a maze of linked images in the "Dogman 99" style.
Collaborations & other works
Super Mario Bros. Movie
Paper Rad collaborated with multi-media artist
Cory Arcangel
Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is an American post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is best known.
Arcangel often uses the ...
to make ''Super Mario Bros. Movie'', a 15-minute video piece about the life and times of
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
's
Mario
is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creat ...
.
The piece consisted of a hacked
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
video-game cartridge where the backgrounds and scenarios were altered and rearranged into a narrative story about the game world becoming corrupted and Mario's existential crises about being a video game character.
The movie debuted at
Deitch Projects
Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director''Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects ( ...
in New York in 2005.
Wyld File
Wyld File consisted of the duo
Ben Jones and
Jacob Ciocci Jacob Ciocci (born 1977) is an American visual artist, performance artist, musician, and professor. Along with sister Jessica Ciocci and friend Ben Jones, he was one of the three founding members of Paper Rad, an artist collective active from 2000 ...
, in collaboration with Eric Mast (better known as E*ROCK). Wyld File is a commercial entity that makes
lo-fi
Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...
music videos for artists like
Islands
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
,
The Gossip
Gossip (or The Gossip) was an American indie rock band formed in Searcy, Arkansas, originally active from 1999 until 2016. For most of their career, the band consisted of singer Beth Ditto, multi-instrumentalist Brace Paine, and drummer Hannah ...
("
Standing in the Way of Control
''Standing in the Way of Control'' is the third studio album by American indie rock band Gossip, which was released on January 24, 2006. The album was produced by Guy Picciotto and Ryan Hadlock It reached number 1 on the UK indie chart and also ...
"), and
Beck
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi music, lo-fi style, and became ...
("Gameboy Homeboy").
References
{{Fort Thunder
American digital artists
American artist groups and collectives
Pennsylvania culture