I used to be smart.

Maybe smart is the wrong word for it. Pretentious might be better – which I know is a shock to hear from your friendly neighborhood art reviewer. But it’s true. In my youth I obsessed over philosophy and snubbed most popular music and film franchises (Except for the mediocre, three-part Atlas Shrugged adaptation, which I went out of my way to see in theaters). I wanted so desperately to be seen as highbrow – so what changed?

Mental health probably had a lot to do with it. I either got worse or got better, but either way I changed significantly. I don’t read as much as I used to. I’ve developed a love for the music of Jimmy Buffett that was maybe once ironic but is now entirely genuine. And, in what is perhaps the most jarring development, I’ve now spent hours – seriously, hours – watching compilations of TikTok on Youtube. It was the type of impulse that seemed to defy explanation, a compulsion that was a mixture of nature documentary and thumb-sucking comfort. I’ve been thinking these past few months about what draws me to the platform, and recently I’ve developed a working theory. And, in the name of steadily pushing the limits of what ArtsEarth lets me post without problem, I’m going to talk about it.

So welcome to TikTok, and the rebirth of Vaudeville.

TikTok, for those not plugged into the zeitgeist, is a Chinese video-sharing app that gained massive popularity in the United States after merging with Musical.ly in August of 2018. In the vein of Vine and musical.ly, TikTok specializes in looped, five to sixty-second videos. In only a few short years it’s gathered over 800 million active users, far surpassing the growth of other sites like Instagram and even Facebook. It’s undeniable to see that what started as a musical lip-syncing app quickly blossomed into something incredible.

Compare this to the growth of vaudeville. It’s the late 1880s, and immigrants travelled en mass to the United States with dreams of a better life. What they got, however, were ghettos to live in and a country that refused to give them honest work. So they found their livelihood in vaudeville, performing in every – really, nearly every aspect. There were singers and dancers, sure, but there were also escape artists and impersonators, sketch artists and ventriloquists. Truly if there was something strange or unique about you that’s able to be harnessed, it could be done on the vaudeville stage.

Now this concept could apply to most video platforms, even to the internet as a whole, where you can find fame in everything from selling nudes to running a twitter for your cat. But the landscape of the internet has changed. Take Youtube, for instance, which hasn’t seen an independently produced video top the view charts since “Charlie Bit My Finger” in 2007. As the platform developed, the algorithm started to favor longer videos, causing many creators to spend less time creating content and more time padding to get at least ten minutes and allow for monetization. This is a sharp contrast to vaudeville philosophy, where going over ten minutes could cause a performer to lose their job. And this is taken even further on TikTok, where you have less then a minute to make yourself seen.

And what is there to see? There are carefully choreographed dances to popular songs, like in the work of Charli D’Amelio, the most followed creator on the app. Then there’s Zach King and his magic tricks and digital illusions. But don’t stop there! Scroll a little further and you’ll find original songs, strange animals, pranks and challenges, and rapid-fire comedy routines spanning across all cultures.

While vaudeville became a way for disillusioned minorities to survive in a new world, TikTok has become a place of refuge for the 16-24 year olds that make up just under half of their user base. This is Generation Z, where – like the early immigrants to the United States – we were promised an impossible future and given a world that is rapidly falling apart. In the face of this we’ve developed a rebirth of personal, absurdist humor that centers on finding connection in an increasingly chaotic world.

Does that make it smart? Probably not. Is it some profound work of art? Maybe. Did I use this an excuse to watch more TikToks in the name of research? Reader, you know me all too well.

But the world right now is, for lack of a better word, a complete garbage fire. There are protests and riots, along with the ongoing pandemic, a brewing economic depression along with two inch Murder Hornets. And there’s things you can do. Wash your hands, wear a mask, sign petitions and support black voices. But when you’ve done all that, when the weight of the world pushes towards the breaking point, there’s a near-infinite well of original and innovative content on TikTok. It’s not perfect, but, to quote playwright Edwin Milton Royle, “Vaudeville may be a kind of lunch counter art, but art is so vague and lunch is so real”.

I’ll warn you in advance, this one’s a doozy.

Seriously, if you’re sensitive to graphic content, as abstract as it may be, I’d suggest skipping this week’s subject and sticking to something more pleasant. There’s got to be some videos out there of unlikely animal friendships, perhaps a three-legged dog making friends with a blind gerbil. Something soothing to the senses and tugging at the pathos. I almost avoided writing about this at all, but if we’re talking about internet oddities it’d be a crime not to mention a certain series that has haunted the web since 2005.

So, friends, let me introduce you to Salad Fingers.

Salad Fingers is a work of flash animation by British animator David Firth. It started on Newgrounds, a website dedicated to animated shorts and games, but as time went on it eventually made its way onto Youtube. As I write this, there are eleven episodes spanning fifteen years, with years between the later episodes. It’s surreal to observe the work as a whole. I grew up watching Salad Fingers, and I know for a fact that I have fragmented sense memories of Firth’s work buried deep in my subconscious. But it had been a while since I really took a deep dive into the series, so with little else to do in quarantine I did what made the most sense to me – …and binged every episode. And boy howdy do I regret it.

But what is Salad Fingers about, you ask? That’s a tricky question. The first episode, a two-minute sort of pilot, introduces us to the titular character. He’s a man with inhumanly long fingers living in an unnamed desolate wasteland, and he likes to use his spidery appendages to touch anything sharp or rusty – especially rusty spoons. That’s as much as we’re given, and the other ten episodes are dedicated to exploring the world around him, but even more so exploring the world inside his head.

Firth has a knack of implementing just enough detail as to create a mood, and he’s chosen to use that skill to create a truly disturbing atmosphere. Even given the limitations of Flash in 2005, when Salad Fingers pierces his finger on an exposed nail, it doesn’t matter that it looks like the drawing of some demented child. I cringed then and I cringe now.

That same episode – Episode 2, called “Friends” – has an ending that has stuck with me for fourteen years. I must’ve been ten at the most when I first saw it, and every so often I’ll suddenly remember that final shot and I’ll feel my stomach drop as if I’m a child again, frightened without being able to explain why. Watching it again over a decade later I found it just as simple and shocking. Because David Firth makes a practice in ending Salad Fingers without an ending. Things just stop without any real thematic closure. We’re given a brief peek into the life of Mr. Fingers, and however long or short it may be, it never ends well.

The most fascinating part of Salad Fingers for me is how it serves as a model for the growth of Firth, both in his storytelling and animation quality. Compare the plot of the first episode to the eleventh. In “Spoons”, the first episode, Salad Fingers looks for a rusty spoon and doesn’t find one. That’s it. Then in the latest episode 11, “Glass Brother”, Salad Fingers covers his finger puppet in flesh to turn him into a “real boy”, and then has to rescue him from the mirror world after he gets taken by his reflection. There’s a definite refinement in plot structure, and with it a huge leap in visual quality. You see it from Episode 8 on, when the flat colors and simple animation suddenly turn much more dynamic, more detailed, with even simple touches like the movement of the pupils adding so much to an already-uneasy mood.

But it’s gross. Salad Fingers is gross and dark, and I’ve definitely let out a mild but sustained scream while watching some of the later episodes, when things turn from short fever dreams to a seemingly endless nightmare. But should you watch it? I wish I could meet myself at age ten and ask that question – should you be watching this?

The answer, at least I’d like to think so, is yes. As terrified as Salad Fingers made me, it presented a sort of imagination that to this day is incomparable to anything I’ve seen. And something shocking strengthens your creative immune system in a way. Without Firth’s work I’m not saying that I’d be completely bereft of artistic merit, but he definitely gave me a few tricks up my sleeve for my own practice. Not to mention, the classic reactions of the friends that I’ve made watch his stuff.

So, if you like horror, watch Salad Fingers. Watch it if you tend towards the dark, or if you like feeling uncomfortable as hard and strange as it may be. If none of that is for you, look up a video by The Dodo on Youtube called “This Pittie Loves Bringing His Stuffed Animals to His Parents”. You can thank me later.

But send this to your horror buff friend. Give ‘em something fun to distract them.

Let’s face it: we could all use something nice. Quarantine’s been extended, people are continuing to lose their livelihoods, and it really does seem as if some otherworldly force has grabbed the planet and forced it into a sudden and ugly halt. So for this issue of Down the Rabbit Hole, I’d like to offer something you can lose yourself in in a different way. A rabbit, so to speak, a soft and pleasant creature you can take some time out of your day and watch nibble on leaves.

Today, I’d like you to meet Joe Pera, and his show, Joe Pera Talks With You.

Joe Pera is an actor/comedian, and profound enigma. The frequently asked questions that come up when you Google him only prove the latter, from one person asking “Does Joe Pera have special needs?” (No, he doesn’t), to another wanting to know “What is the point of Joe Pera Talks With You?” (A question that, according to the Internet, has no real answer). He is a man in the vein of Bob Ross or Mister Rogers, a thoroughly inoffensive figure who dedicates his show to talking about dancing, breakfast options, and the different kinds of rocks in his hometown. There is a plot, in a sense, but in every episode it seems inconsequential to the true goal of the episode – to talk about the very simple subject in the episode’s title, be it cold weather sports or creating a bean arch. And there’s something beautiful about that, especially in days like these.

What have you been doing lately? Since I work in a kind of unconventional food startup, I’m lucky enough to still have a job, but my days off have consisted of much of the same. I nap a lot and go on walks around my neighborhood. I watch arthouse movies. Every so often, I’ll check the news and immediately regret it. There’s so much going on that’s rapidly beyond my control, it’s become very important to focus on the things that are right in front of me. I heard somewhere that there’s only three days of the week now – yesterday, today and tomorrow – and the best I can do is look for the little joys that’ll keep me going through that cycle.

So there’s an immense comfort, and almost a source of inspiration that comes from Pera’s work. Take the episode Joe Pera Reads You The Church Announcements, probably my personal favorite of the series. The framing device is what the title states, with the semi-fictionalized Joe Pera reading the weekly announcements for St. Benedict’s Parish. Volunteers are needed, a toy drive is approaching – but there’s something more important than that. You see, Joe Pera only just now discovered The Who, more specifically their song “Baba O’Riley”. He immediately falls in love with the track after hearing it on the radio, and proceeds to call every station he could find to request it. We see him jump around the house to the music playing on repeat, dancing and generally rocking out.

He tells this church all of this until the pastor finally ushers him out. But he doesn’t mind, because he has a newly-installed CD player in his car and can listen to “Baba O’Riley” as he drives off into the snowy day. And that’s it. That’s the episode.

There’s something powerful about a form of storytelling that focuses on the small stuff. Because we’ve all been in Pera’s place, haven’t we? I myself have recently unearthed a strange and entirely unironic love for the music of Jimmy Buffett, and let me tell you, nothing spices up a quarantine more than a nice bath with those friendly islands jams playing in the background. But enthusiasm is a tricky thing, and it easily becomes passé, especially when it’s something that’s already gone through the ebb and flow of popularity. Try getting really into Tech Decks, for instance. Remember Tech Decks? The little skateboards that you pilot with your fingers? Really make that a substantial part of your life and try and share it with anyone else, and watch the reactions range from polite indifference to confusion or blatant mockery.

But Joe Pera doesn’t care about that. He cares about his dog and going on long drives to enjoy the scenery in fall. He cares about the different types of Christmas trees and their individual merits, and his favorite part about breakfast is dipping his toast in his egg yolk, which is so absolutely relatable that it I feel in in my very soul.

So, this is what/how I’m trying to realign myself. Because life has taken its scope and has somehow both minimized it and stretched it past the breaking point. I’m choosing to keep the latter in my periphery and focus on the former, the little stuff that’s far more manageable for someone with a realistic amount of power – which, right now, doesn’t amount to much.

It’s not all bad, though. I have a cat that lets me pet her tummy, and I’m close to my family. Maybe I’ll start an herb garden, but I might also spend a little extra time in bed. It’s all about taking care of yourself and living your best life, as unconventional or menial as it may seem.

Maybe we’ll learn in this time that nothing in this life is truly menial. And If we can’t learn it ourselves, perhaps Joe Pera can teach us.

Take care of yourself, friends.

Scary times we’re living in.

In Santa Clara County we’ve been put under a Shelter-in-Place, a semi-lockdown to hopefully slow the spread of COVID-19. Events across the city have been postponed or cancelled, people have lost their jobs, and with the weather outside, the storm that’s approaching feels both literal and metaphorical.

I can’t bring you an exhibit to go to, as we’re not really supposed to be going anywhere (non-essential) right now, but I still want to share with you some art. So I’m taking this unusual time to showcase creators that you can find online at no cost. Sure, you can spend your time obsessively following the news and washing your hands (which you should definitely keep doing), but why not spend some time falling down a spiral staircase of Internet neo-surrealism?

And I can’t think of anything better and more confusing then the works of Alan Resnick and AB Video Solutions, a creative collective based out of Baltimore, Maryland.

I first encountered Alan Resnick through his series alantutorial, a Youtube channel that, as of this writing, operated from 2011-2014. It was a parody the tutorial trend that was dominating most online content at the time, but produced clumsy shorts with the exaggerated “Alan” persona on such subjects as How to Pick Up a Blue Chair Off the Ground and How to Take a Bunch of Pills. I loved the satire from the first video I saw, and even more than that I loved the narrative that was formed as the series continued.

Because this was no longer a basic premise. After some time “Alan” was thrown from his one ramshackle room into the world, into chaos, and into ever-grotesque danger. That’s what Resnick, and his colleagues at AB Video are so good at, taking a relatively simple idea and stretching and warping it until it’s horrifying and nearly indecipherable. And there’s an immense level of detail put into his work, especially in his short films created for Adult Swim. He adapts well to the standards of successful modern content, which requires a level of immersion beyond what previous iterations could ever hope for.

Take This House Has People In It, a piece that originally aired on Adult Swim during their 4am Infomercial block. It starts as a basic story as seen through surveillance cameras in a seemingly normal family home. There’s a grandmother watching TV, a little boy waiting for his birthday party to start, and two parents bickering over the body of their angsty teen daughter lying on the floor, apparently in the middle of some kind of tantrum. But something is off. There’s a figure skulking around outside, and their daughter is slowly sinking into the ground. On its own it’s a solid short film that leaves you with a lot of questions, but while it might only make things more perturbing there is more to the story – all it takes is a little bit of digging online.

For instance – that TV show we hear snippets of throughout the film? That’s season five, episode nine of The Sculptor’s Clayground, a Bob Ross-style art show hosted by Alan Resnick. There’s also a website for AB Surveillance Solutions, the fictional company that provides surveillance for the family in the short. If you pull it up you might notice that there’s a location in the upper right corner where you can enter a username and password. There are layers here, and a tremendous amount of work putting into creating a world you can dive into. 

It seems to me that that’s massively important in times like these. We’re stuck in our houses in a time of great tension all across the globe, so it makes sense that there’d be a desire for distraction. What can we do? I know I personally could drink to excess, or take advantage of the many dispensaries still open in my area (“It’s medicine,” an earnest budtender insisted to my mom). What I’d rather do, though, is lose time in a well-constructed world. And movies provide that, sure, but what Resnick does is called an Alternate Reality Game for a reason. 

All of his shorts are on YouTube or Adult Swim – his newest work, May I Please Enter?, is probably my favorite. But if you have a few hours to kill, watch This House Has People In It, and then go to the website for AB Video Solutions. The username is 00437, and the password is bedsheets.

See where you can go from there.

Article by Jon Bauer | SAT, AUG 3, 2019, 10PM

Venue: Pier 70, San Francisco, California

Featuring: 2019 Gray Area Festival – Pierce Warnecke Live – ISM Hexadome

Endless Growth (Data Decay v3) is an audiovisual performance by Pierce Warnecke using data to illustrate dynamic ecosystems. Generated from data on population growth, pollution emissions, resource extraction, and global GDPs, this work questions how unbounded growth of humanity is incompatible with our finite planet—it may ultimately result in saturation and irreversible damage. Data Decay is an ongoing series of abstract sonification and visualization works, generated from datasets to convey interconnecting relationships through an audiovisual language.

Article by Jon Bauer | SAT, JUL 13, 2019, 8:00PM – 2:00AM

Venue: The Midway, San Francisco, California

Featuring: IllUM Art.Tech.Music (GAIKA vs. Madam X, The Flashbulb + More)