As I listened to Death Grips' new album, Money Store, I was reminded of Emergency Broadcast Networks' amazing hypermedia collages from the early 90's. I feel that it would be unjust to simply make a reference to EBN in the following review without also giving them a proper spotlight. EBN is in every shape and form what Pirate Programming is all about.
EBN is a "multimedia performance group" (to quote wikipedia). They specialize in video collages that are both musical and poignant. Through repetition, juxatopsition of imagery and sheer volume of clips, EBN's videos satirize the power of media. Clips of a public suicide are intercut with Mariah Carey's famous shriek which takes on a Bomb Squad type effect in EBN's hands. It is criminal that these guys are so often overlooked when discussing media. They are innovators in every sense. More or less, they pioneered the classic "rave" visual or, at the very least, expanded what those visuals could be. Their editing techniques were adopted much later by directors like Darren Arronofsky, David Fincher, Guy Ritchie, among others, in the early 2000's. And now, their kinetic style of editing can be seen everywhere from commercials to video games etc.
The site listed at the top of this post is admittedly unique to navigate, so i will help. After clicking on the link, click on Emergency Broadcast Network to go straight to the videos. Do yourself a favor and watch them all. They aren't available anywhere (to my knowledge) but here (not on Youtube or Hulu). Now keep in mind most of these videos were edited (before editing software) on analog equipment. If you don't realize what that means, it means it is friggin INSANE how good these videos are. It's almost hard to believe.
Besides basically mastering editing on analog quipment members of EBN have gone on to write video editing software (VJ software known as Vujack) and create institutions (Company of Science and Art CoSA and iFILM.com). Anyway, do your homework on these guys. They are mindblowing even by today's standards. Respect the architects.
peace
*here is an example of one of their videos. It isn't on the site but it's not as polished as the ones on the site. Still worth a watch though.
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