Story by Lacey Jarrell
Photos by Will Kanellos
Illustration by Charlotte Cheng
Born out of a powerful convergence of social consciousness and a widespread availability of mind-altering drugs, “psychedelia” burst out of the 1960s like the beads of a shattered kaleidoscope. It was a movement characterized by tie-dye and fringed vests worn by hippies who danced to the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead at places like Woodstock and Ken Kesey’s notorious Acid Tests in San Francisco. The substances that defined the culture—mescaline, peyote, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and, most infamously, lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD—were embraced by youths who found themselves seeking heightened states of consciousness while “tuning in and dropping out” across the nation. The psychedelic art of the culture, comprised of free-flowing forms, vibrant colors, and hyper-detailed mosaics, helped shape and will forever identify the time’s vibrant counterculture.
Fast-forward 50 years: The bell-bottoms and love beads of yesteryear have been replaced by skinny jeans and ear buds. Gone are the days of velvet trousers and flower power, and as all such things must evolve, a new generation of artists has emerged, producing intense imagery similar to that of the 1960s, though not quite for the same reasons.
This modern genre, known as “dense” videography, has been dubbed psychedelic because of its use of deep color layering, flashing lights, and stratified visual media. But rather than trying to convey the “far out” experience of hallucinogenic drugs, contemporary artists create these multi-dimensional videos using digitalized shapes and media-sourced imagery that embodies the present technological age. Inspired by an unprecedented flow of non-stop information, these artists aim to offer an engaging alternative to the monotonous narrative of mainstream media.
“Part of the intent [of the videos] is to purposely put more in there than you can get out of it in a passive way. We’re already bombarded with so much information, and everything is created to be so passive. It was kind of a reaction to our current environment,” says Portland-based multimedia artist Eric Mast, who is professionally known by the name E*Rock.
“Palace of Light (Revisited),” a collaboration between Mast, who recorded the video’s soundtrack under his record label Audio Dregs, and New York-based multimedia artist Yoshi Sodeoka, begins as an assault of layered colors and flashing light that smears across a computer screen to a staggered electronic drum beat. The intermittent bass takes a back seat to tunnel-like effects that originate from a distant vanishing point in the center of the screen. A confetti of white lights erupts as the seconds tick by; muted red faces begin to wash in and out of view as laser patterns play against a starry backdrop. The visual layers get deeper and deeper, and as random imagery flashes on-and-off screen, complex scenes emerge with information so densely put together that the video requires repeated viewing to process everything.
“My stuff is for your senses. If you see one of my videos and you get stressed out, that’s one thing. But, if you see a video and it makes you excited, that’s good too,” explains Sodeoka, who has been creating videos for over 15 years.
Other artists, like Christian Oldham, known professionally as Megazord, are taking the dense video art form to another level entirely. “Psychedelic is often associated with the artwork of the 1960s and 1970s, which was often inspired by LSD acid trips,” Oldham says. “I’ve never done drugs. I don’t know if my videos look like an acid trip. I’m trying to express something more along the lines of a [technological] lifestyle.”
In early 2011 Oldham debuted his real-time Internet-based performance piece “Burning Down Your Facebook” to a crowd of about 40 in the basement of Portland concert hall, the Artistry. Dressed in head-to-toe black, a style he best describes as cyberpunk, Oldham sat with his back to the audience. IDM (intelligent dance music) saturated the lower-level floor as he used the large wall screen as a canvas upon which to deliver a rapid-fire assault of technological overload.
“I was showing Mark Rothko paintings next to photographs of war crimes with iChat right under that, and then a YouTube video of a Hummer going off-road all at once,” Oldham says. “Within the one screen there would be about six different things going on.”
He explains that despite the overwhelming effect of the initial layers, which overlapped each other in quick succession, the levels actually went much deeper. By opening and closing programs, Oldham had real-time video chats with audience members while looping videos flashed in and out of view at high speeds throughout the performance.
Adam Forkner, who was in the audience live video chatting with Oldham, says that the show stirred mixed feelings in the audience, as some members were uncomfortable with the intensity of the show’s intimacy. Such reactions, Forkner says, reflect how he believes people privately engage on the Internet by scavenging around and overwhelming themselves with random information—a time-wasting behavior they may not want to discuss publicly. “It was a good mirror cast to what goes unsaid about how people spend their time on the Internet,” he adds.
Even while each artist manipulates electronic media to express his or her own stylistic nuances, there is no denying that the psychedelic genre utilizes the ubiquitous nature of modern technology not only as a delivery method, but as a source of inspiration. An array of influences from characters inspired by the original Nintendo Entertainment System to clips of kabuki dancers in Japanese make-up advertisements can all be found streaming through dense media layers. Music of all kinds—electronic, punk, and even metal—also plays a powerful role since many artists often design their videos to complement music they have already created.
“It just makes sense to do everything at once. If I made a painting, I wouldn’t let other people touch it,” says Sodeoka, who creates dense videos as a compliment to his self-produced albums.
Regardless of its source, every layer created by a dense video artist is designed to stimulate the audience, although the narrative may not always be instantly understandable. But, like bringing any new art form to fruition, it’s all about pushing boundaries. In the 1990s when Mast began experimenting with videos, files had to be the smallest size possible in order to maximize the amount of content jam-packed into one video. The limited technology and dial-up Internet of the time restricted the density of layers and would often cause Mast’s computer system to crash.
“Part of the exercise was based on how much you could make with how little you had,” Mast recalls. Now, he says, technology is so advanced that it is harder to push those limits, but it also means that the possibilities are infinite.
*The original caption, which appears in the winter 2012 print edition of Ethos Magazine, reads: “Portland-based artist Christian Oldham appears amid projects from a video he created to mirror the song ‘Preyouandi’ by musician Oneohtrix Point Never.” Mr. Oldham actually appears in two different videos in the featured photos. The correction is published above. We regret the error.
