Paper Rad
Encyclopedia
Paper Rad is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
/Providence, Rhode Island
art collective that makes comics
, zine
s, video art
, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and are in a variety of bands. The three primary members are Jacob Ciocci
, Jessica Ciocci, and Ben Jones.
Although they continue to publish their own zines, music, and online content, Paper Rad have shown at several major galleries including PaceWildenstein
, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Deitch Projects
. They also published a book, Paper Rad, BJ and da Dogs http://quimbys.com/product_info.php/products_id/15516 in late-2005 as well a DVD on Load Records
in 2006 (Trash Talking).
to create a distinctive aesthetic.
website states the rules of Wyld File and Paper Rad’s made-up style, "Dogman 99" (a play on words on the Danish filmmaking movement Dogme 95
): "THE RULES OF DOGMAN 99: no Wacom tablet, no scanning, pure RGB colors only, only fake tweening, and as many alpha tricks as possible." This self-imposed policy is indicative of Paper Rads’ methods overall, which seems to rely heavily on archaic methods (RGB colors), denies certain techniques (tweening
) and equipment (scanning, Wacom tablets
), and an over reliance on outdated, perhaps cheesy techniques and styles (alpha tricks). By extension, many other rules of production could be deducted from their work as a whole: MIDI audio, bad recording of original sound effects and voices, pixelazation, and an apparent lack of attention to detail.
, Garfield
, Troll doll
s, Bart Simpson
, and Alf
. This reclamation of forgotten characters and their proliferation ad nauseam can be compared to Pop Art
.
Though Paper Rad demonstrates a similar aesthetic vocabulary as a lot of Pop Art, the actual content differs greatly, evoking nostalgia in the forgotten rather than reverence of the ubiquitous. The key difference is that most Pop Art, by its definition, is inherently based in the historical and cultural context in which it was made. Instead, by hearkening back to the more obscure pieces of our cultural heritage, Paper Rad creates a dynamic based on a meditative state of cultural past and vague recollection instead of on common experience.
. Combined with an internet-informed proliferation of popular imagery, the punk aspects of Paper Rad are hard to deny, though this aesthetic seems to have in turn be re-appropriated into a pseudo-nerdy, digital form.
format, by its very nature, implies a collection of disparate images, symbols of culture which the artist is always assumed to have chosen and arranged. To this end, their work lends itself to questions concerning its creation – the method behind the madness. These questions are particularly appropriate to the collage format and creative processes behind Paper Rad. By making art in such a rough and haphazard manner Paper Rad seems to draw attention to the constructedness of the spectacle and their hand in it, establishing Paper Rad with more established forms of visual collage.
Paper Rad will often recycle or appropriate obscure pieces of culture, those that have been lost in the folds of time and popular culture. Old cartoons, bad commercials, bad products, programming relegated to late-night television, forgotten celebrities all find a place in Paper Rad’s pseudo-nostalgia. Most of Paper Rad’s art follows a similar pattern, marked by an overzealous accumulation of the detritus of modern life. As such, the crux of any successful collage is the found items and images which comprise it, and what those items in turn are meant to represent individually and within the collage itself. These items serve as representation, as a symbol of something larger than themselves – in other words, to deconstruct their meaning is to deconstruct them as symbols, to focus on their semiotic nature.
to make Super Mario Movie, a 15-minute video piece about the life and times of Nintendo’s Mario. The piece consisted of a hacked Nintendo Entertainment System
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 result is a crude sort of bootlegged, digital-collage/narrative. The movie debuted at Deitch Projects
in New York in 2005.
, The Gossip
("Standing in the Way of Control"), and Beck
("Gameboy Homeboy").
, noise
, techno
, and rock
. Some of these bands are: Extreme Animals, Dr. Doo, Doo Man Group, ROTFLOL, Paz, Star Kings, Pajama Boys, Natural Reflex, Gay Nerds, Pracky Pranky, DJ Jazzy Jexx, and Running Free.
These various side projects have released several records and CD-Rs on a number of independent labels including Breaking World Records, Scratch N Sniff Entertainment, FrequNC Records, Autumn Records, Vicious Pop, and most recently on the RatFace DreamAngel Label.
on a pilot for Adult Swim
titled Neon Knome. It was passed by the network and went on to become rebranded as a Cartoon Network show called The Problem Solverz
.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
/Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
art collective that makes comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
, zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
s, video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and are in a variety of bands. The three primary members are Jacob Ciocci
Jacob Ciocci
Jacob Ciocci is an American visual artist, performance artist and musician. Along with sister Jessica Ciocci and friend Ben Jones, he is one of the three remaining founding members of Paper Rad, an artist collective based in both Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Providence, Rhode Island...
, Jessica Ciocci, and Ben Jones.
Although they continue to publish their own zines, music, and online content, Paper Rad have shown at several major galleries including PaceWildenstein
PaceWildenstein
The Pace Gallery is a contemporary and modern art gallery founded by Arne Glimcher in Boston 1960 as The Pace Gallery. The gallery moved to Manhattan in 1963 and from 1993 to 2010 operated jointly with Wildenstein & Co. as PaceWildenstein. There are three locations in Manhattan and one in...
, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.-History:Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few...
. They also published a book, Paper Rad, BJ and da Dogs http://quimbys.com/product_info.php/products_id/15516 in late-2005 as well a DVD on Load Records
Load Records
Load Records is an American noise/experimental 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 Pit...
in 2006 (Trash Talking).
Style
Paper Rad’s lo-fi style is unmistakable, and can be considered within a number of art movements and styles. Most observable is the use of bright colors that engulf their work. Fluorescent palettes are juxtaposed with basic primary colorsPrimary Colors
Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics is a roman à clef, a work of fiction that purports to describe real life characters and events — namely, Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1992...
to create a distinctive aesthetic.
Do It Yourself
An excerpt from the Wyld FileWyld File
Wyld File is a commercial music video production company formed in 2005 by the Paper Rad collective and Eric Mast . The company has produced music videos for the band The Gossip , Beck and Islands...
website states the rules of Wyld File and Paper Rad’s made-up style, "Dogman 99" (a play on words on the Danish filmmaking movement Dogme 95
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...
): "THE RULES OF DOGMAN 99: no Wacom tablet, no scanning, pure RGB colors only, only fake tweening, and as many alpha tricks as possible." This self-imposed policy is indicative of Paper Rads’ methods overall, which seems to rely heavily on archaic methods (RGB colors), denies certain techniques (tweening
Tweening
Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion...
) and equipment (scanning, Wacom tablets
Wacom
in Krefeld, Germany. Wacom is a Japanese portmanteau: Wa for "harmony" or "circle", and Komu for "computer". Wacom tablets are notable for their use of a patented cordless, battery-free, and pressure-sensitive stylus or digital pen...
), and an over reliance on outdated, perhaps cheesy techniques and styles (alpha tricks). By extension, many other rules of production could be deducted from their work as a whole: MIDI audio, bad recording of original sound effects and voices, pixelazation, and an apparent lack of attention to detail.
Pop Art
Many characters from pop culture, presumably those near and dear to Paper Rad’s collective heart, have recurring roles in Paper Rad pieces, including GumbyGumby
Gumby is a green clay humanoid character created and modeled by Art Clokey, who also created Davey and Goliath. Gumby has been the subject of a 233-episode series of American television as well as a feature-length film and other media...
, Garfield
Garfield
Garfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield ; his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and Arbuckle's dog, Odie...
, Troll doll
Troll doll
Troll dolls, originally known as Leprechauns and also known as Dam dolls, Gonks, Wishniks, Treasure Trolls, and Norfins, became one of America's biggest toy fads from the autumn of 1963 through 1965...
s, Bart Simpson
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, and Alf
ALF (TV series)
ALF is an American science fiction sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990, created by Paul Fusco. The title character was Gordon Shumway, a friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF , who crash lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family.The series starred Max...
. This reclamation of forgotten characters and their proliferation ad nauseam can be compared to Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
.
Though Paper Rad demonstrates a similar aesthetic vocabulary as a lot of Pop Art, the actual content differs greatly, evoking nostalgia in the forgotten rather than reverence of the ubiquitous. The key difference is that most Pop Art, by its definition, is inherently based in the historical and cultural context in which it was made. Instead, by hearkening back to the more obscure pieces of our cultural heritage, Paper Rad creates a dynamic based on a meditative state of cultural past and vague recollection instead of on common experience.
Punk
Paper Rad’s messy, amateur, anti-aesthetic DIY approach, combined with the repeated appropriation of cultural symbols and images, harkens in a large degree to punk artPunk visual art
Punk visual art is artwork which often graces punk rock album covers, flyers for punk shows, and punk zines. It is characterised by deliberate violation, such as the use of letters cut out from newspapers and magazines, a device previously associated with kidnap and ransom notes, so the sender's...
. Combined with an internet-informed proliferation of popular imagery, the punk aspects of Paper Rad are hard to deny, though this aesthetic seems to have in turn be re-appropriated into a pseudo-nerdy, digital form.
Collage
The collageCollage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
format, by its very nature, implies a collection of disparate images, symbols of culture which the artist is always assumed to have chosen and arranged. To this end, their work lends itself to questions concerning its creation – the method behind the madness. These questions are particularly appropriate to the collage format and creative processes behind Paper Rad. By making art in such a rough and haphazard manner Paper Rad seems to draw attention to the constructedness of the spectacle and their hand in it, establishing Paper Rad with more established forms of visual collage.
Paper Rad will often recycle or appropriate obscure pieces of culture, those that have been lost in the folds of time and popular culture. Old cartoons, bad commercials, bad products, programming relegated to late-night television, forgotten celebrities all find a place in Paper Rad’s pseudo-nostalgia. Most of Paper Rad’s art follows a similar pattern, marked by an overzealous accumulation of the detritus of modern life. As such, the crux of any successful collage is the found items and images which comprise it, and what those items in turn are meant to represent individually and within the collage itself. These items serve as representation, as a symbol of something larger than themselves – in other words, to deconstruct their meaning is to deconstruct them as symbols, to focus on their semiotic nature.
Super Mario Movie
Paper Rad collaborated with multi-media artist Cory ArcangelCory Arcangel
Cory Arcangel is a Brooklyn, New York artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance,, and video game modifications, for which he is perhaps best known...
to make Super Mario Movie, a 15-minute video piece about the life and times of Nintendo’s Mario. The piece consisted of a hacked Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
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 result is a crude sort of bootlegged, digital-collage/narrative. The movie debuted at Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.-History:Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few...
in New York in 2005.
Wyld File
Wyld File consisted of Ben Jones and Jacob Ciocci and collaborator Eric Mast (better known as E*ROCK).http://www.e--rock.com/ Wyld File is a commercial entity that makes extravagantly lo-fi music videos for artists like IslandsIslands (band)
Islands is a Canadian indie rock band formed in 2005 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and currently based in Brooklyn, New York.-Return to the Sea:In mid-2005 Islands recorded a debut album titled Return to the Sea, which was released in April 2006...
, The Gossip
The Gossip
Gossip is a three-piece American indie rock band formed in 1999. The band consists of singer Beth Ditto, guitarist Brace Paine and drummer Hannah Blilie. After releasing several recordings, the band broke through with their 2006 studio album, Standing in the Way of Control . A follow-up, Music for...
("Standing in the Way of Control"), and Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
("Gameboy Homeboy").
Music
Another element of Paper Rad is music. The collective has splintered into several bands in the genres of electronic musicElectronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, noise
Noise rock
Noise rock describes a style of post-punk rock music that became prominent in the 1980s. Noise rock makes use of the traditional instrumentation and iconography of rock, but incorporates atonality and especially dissonance, and also frequently discards usual songwriting conventions.-Style:Noise...
, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
, and rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
. Some of these bands are: Extreme Animals, Dr. Doo, Doo Man Group, ROTFLOL, Paz, Star Kings, Pajama Boys, Natural Reflex, Gay Nerds, Pracky Pranky, DJ Jazzy Jexx, and Running Free.
These various side projects have released several records and CD-Rs on a number of independent labels including Breaking World Records, Scratch N Sniff Entertainment, FrequNC Records, Autumn Records, Vicious Pop, and most recently on the RatFace DreamAngel Label.
Television
Ben Jones also collaborated with PFFRPFFR
PFFR Forever Ltd., PFFFR or traditionally known as PFFR is a Brooklyn based production company/art collective/electro-rock band consisting of Alyson Levy, Vernon Chatman, Jim Tozzi, and John Lee...
on a pilot for Adult Swim
Adult Swim
Adult Swim is an adult-oriented Cable network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States, and broadcasts in countries such as Australia and New Zealand...
titled Neon Knome. It was passed by the network and went on to become rebranded as a Cartoon Network show called The Problem Solverz
The Problem Solverz
The Problem Solverz is an American animated television series produced by Made 100% in Burbank and Mirari Films and created by Ben Jones, a member of the art collective Paper Rad, for Cartoon Network...
.
External links
- Paper Rad website
- Paper Rad blog
- Paper Rod
- Foxy Production gallery
- Wyld File website
- Doctor Ninja's crictal analysis of Paper Rad's DVD Trash Talking
- Retard Riot Reviews Paper Rad's "Uniform" 7" record
- Retard Riot Reviews Cartoon Workshop / Pig Tales by Paper Rad
- "Insane Niche Comics Parodies For Awesome Nerds"
- Artkrush.com review of Paper Rad's DVD Trash Talking
- Ben Jones Fan Club!
- Paper Rad at Black Floor on Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- Paper Rad - wiz wiz cipher Show curated by Noah Lyon
- Ratface the Dreamangel Catalog