Michael Bell-Smith, Trapped in the Closet All at Once; Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds

Like other people mentioned, the R. Kelly video was disorienting to watch and listen to, but it was possible to follow a melody for a while before it got lost in the whole thing again. The images mirrored the sound, where sometimes a scene would become clearer, like when he was waving the gun around. The structure of the video is kind of like a tree, where it starts out sounding and looking cohesive, then branches out into the five videos simultaneously, and finally comes back together at the end. The way Bell-Smith mashes it up obscures the individual stories as well as the linear narrative R. Kelly originally intended. We can only focus on a few seconds of a scene at a time. But this could simply be another way of expressing the convoluted, winding story R. Kelly was trying to tell, as his original thing had 22 chapters. Also, by putting them all together like this, Bell-Smith was able to bring out the musical symmetries in each individual video.

For me, Cory Arcangel's project was particularly interesting, because what he did is exactly what I'm studying this semester. I could read through his code and understand what he was doing. I remember playing those old video games, and it was great to learn how the insides work. As a video project, the end result isn't very eye-catching, but the way Arcangel constructed it was very different from traditional methods of making videos. Whether it can be categorized as video art, or even as an outgrowth of video art would be interesting to explore.