Audio/Video Collages

Since I’ve been a teenager in the 1980s, when I figured out how to hack my stereo system to turn it into a multi-channel mixer, I’ve intuitively been drawn to multimedia collage work in both my creative and scholarly work. Below are a few examples of my work through the years.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2001)

A sound and video collage drawn from the Mister Rogers television show, along with records he released in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hot Dog (2002)

I appropriated the soundtrack from an anti-LSD filmstrip in its entirety, then illustrated the audio with line drawings that tell the story of a woman who murders a hotdog on Market St.

Regular Guy (2003)

I hired a we-turn-your-lyrics-into-music-demos company to transform into a song an internal monologue that I imagined went through George Bush’s mind on the eve of Gulf War 2.0. The footage is from a European satellite broadcast that showed the president goofing around, praying, and staring blankly into the camera minutes before he announced the start of the war.

California (2005)

I built this collage depicting the Governator blowing away cops (from the Terminator) around a song I made from Joni Mitchell’s “California” and L.L. Cool J’s “Goin’ Back to Cali,” which begins with an excerpt from NWA’s anti-LAPD diatribe “Fuck tha Police.” While Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and the other guys in NWA got a letter from the FBI for fictionally depicting cop killing in song, Arnold was elected the governor of the state of California. I guess it helps to be white.

Peace In The Valley (2005)

I hope no one thinks I worship Satan.