''Paper Rad'' was an

art collective An artist collective or art group or artist group 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 t ...

from approx. 2000 until 2008, based on the East Coast in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

and

Providence, Rhode Island Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...

in the United States. Known for creating comics,

zine A zine ( ; short for ''magazine'' or ''fanzine'') is, as noted on Merriam-Webster’s official website, a magazine that is a “noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject ...

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. V ...

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 or web art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance o ...

MIDI file Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

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, Jessica Ciocci, 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 (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, and the only publicly funded independent art sch ...

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). Paper Rad exhibited works at several major galleries including PaceWildenstein,

The New Museum of Contemporary Art The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...

, and

Deitch Projects Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)''Los Angeles Times''. born July 9, 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects (1996–2010) and curating groundbreaking exhi ...

. 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 117,000 work ...

. 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 spoken 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 ability to win ...

''). Paper Rad's video works are distributed by

Electronic Arts Intermix Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit organization, 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 colle ...

Style

Paper Rad calls its style "Dogman 99", a play on the Danish filmmaking movement

Dogme 95 Dogme 95 (; Danish for "Dogma 95") was a Danish avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" (). These were rules to create films based on the t ...

. 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 one of two kinds of photoluminescence, the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, many substances will glow (fluoresce) with color ...

palettes juxtaposed with

primary colors Primary colors are 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 broad range of colors in, e.g., electronic displays, color printin ...

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 , "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 assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

, punk art, 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 th ...

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. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

Mario Mario (; ) is a Character (arts), character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise, a recurring character in the ''Donkey Kong'' franchise, and the mascot of the Ja ...

. The piece consisted of a hacked

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

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

in New York in 2005.

Wyld File

Wyld File consisted of the duo Ben Jones and Jacob Ciocci, 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 stylistic ch ...

music videos for artists like

Islands This is a list of the lists of islands in the world grouped by country, by continent, by body of water, and by other classifications. For rank-order lists, see the #Other lists of islands, other lists of islands below. Lists of islands by count ...

The Gossip Gossip (or the Gossip) is an American indie rock band from Searcy, Arkansas, formed in 1999. For most of their career, the band has consisted of singer Beth Ditto, multi-instrumentalist Nathan "Brace Paine" Howdeshell, and drummer Hannah Blil ...

(" Standing in the Way of Control"), and

Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known mononymously as Beck, 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 mus ...

("Gameboy Homeboy").

References

{{Fort Thunder American digital artists American artist groups and collectives Pennsylvania culture