The latest in an ongoing series of themed collections of creative projects assembled by Prosthetic Knowledge. This edition brings together music videos by artists for whom the internet is a primary medium.

Rosa Menkman, ‪03: Karate aka ☵ ☲ // 010 101 // kǎn lí‬. GIF extract from music video for Little Scale. 

The terms "net art" and "music video" are, while useful, close to becoming retronyms. With electronic technology becoming more easily available and ubiquitous, we are in a time where "new media" is not necessarily "new". As McLuhan famously punned his own phrase, "The Medium Is The Massage:" "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive...that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered." This applies to the internet, which is becoming more and more familiar and available, making the boundaries and definition of Net Art less and less clear. 

Music videos (or at least, how music is promoted and delivered) are also changing—we are seeing more and more examples which are not necessarily traditional viewing experiences. For example: Machine Stop by Duologue, which uses WebGL to display Kinect-gathered performances which the participant can edit; Skrillex Quest, an online interactive game; works by Aaron Koblin. Maybe the word "video" is returning to one of its possible etymological origins, in which it was linked to the word "idea," and away from its more familiar definition...

Despite these shifts, though, both are still enjoyable cultural forms with plenty of creative possibilities still to be explored. In this short playlist, I bring together several works by unique creatives most often associated with Net Art applying their talents to the music video. Enjoy.

Rosa Menkman, ‪03: Karate aka ☵ ☲ // 010 101 // kǎn lí‬

Rosa Menkman is very much a familiar name within the circles of Glitch Art, a key voice and contemporary practitioner (plus a regretful omission from my last post). Here, Menkman has produced a music video for Chiptune act Little Scale, starting with a video recorded scene of nature degrading into monochrome patterns:

Lorna Mills, Money 2

Lorna Mills is a Canadian media artist who has been working with the GIF format since 2005. Having an extensive archive of online animations, Mills produces animated collages combining the humorous, the weird, and the downright WTF...her work could be described by redefining the acronym of her media of choice: Gratuitous Internet Filth.

Money 2 is a collaboration with Yoshi Sodeoka who created the music. It's part of an online collaborative project called "Plink Flojd," an artist collective posing as a band. Its members were originally inspired by the music of a certain well-known band, but now take " ... homage to the next level and make a new art form ..."

More about Plink Flojd at their Vimeo.

V5MT, S H /\ /\/\ /\ I X

 

Sara Ludy, House On Fire

Sara Ludy is a multimedia artist working with both real and virtual environments, particularly living spaces. A favorite of Rhizome, you can read her profile here.

She has produced a piece for Plink Flojd (see above), but her latest video is for the band "Outfit":

Raquel Meyers, Dansa In

Raquel Meyers is a Spanish artist familiar in the field of audiovisual art, with a preference for older lo-fi technology. She has produced many videos related to Chiptune music, but her current medium of choice appears to be animated PETSCII, the Commodore text protocol. She has produced many visuals with her longtime collaborator GOTO80 (who produces the music), and a recent example is this pirate themed work entitled Dansa in, which in itself is a C64 executable program. The code that generates this demo, written by Johan Kotlinski, occupies only 44 kilobytes, and for "full pleasure" the makers recommend watching on a C64 and a CRT screen. THe software is available here, and a video preview below: