Mooshe Nickerson: conceptual projects, occasional writing: Pet Pop Pair, 2009

Pet Pop Pair, 2009

NetArt

'Pet Pop Pair' began as seven day show named 'Curating an Art Show' (2008) presented in the ephemeral (and much forgotten) format of MySpace bulletin. To refresh your memory-- MySpace bulletins were internet posts locked to friends list and displayed only ten days.

I streamed ten online pet videos to ten melodramatic songs by band Magnetic Fields. Funny pet videos projected and extracted deep sentimentality from the music of Stephen Merrit in a critical take on the very overwhelming crisis of intentional irony among art circles.

Revisiting the process a year later once the YoutubeDoubler mashup tool surface the statement shifted. The video streaming the songs was now visible simultaneously with the pet video (as before it was just audio). Heavy symbolism, allegory, metaphor and hyperbole of The Official Musiv Video marked itself unfitting next to the cute animals. Viewer attention is split. The conflict brought too much focus on the primary media of the Official Music Video-- the pop music.

Dually the subtext drawn by the lyrics juxtaposed with pet videos became more visceral and appropirate than the intentional subtext given by the Official Music Video directors.

The remaining explorations have been linked below. Keeping with the original spirit of 'Curating an Art Show' I will not attempt to fix or recreate broken links as videos are removed and source material has copyright claims against it. Deletion and change are inevitable parts of online culture, and soon, like all good things, the only thing that will remain are the screencaps.