My art examines the accelerated life in a culture of technological elitism. I want to unveil the absurdity of the real. The medium of video raises many challenging issues for me as an artist. The prevalent postmodern paradigm, especially in the case of the mass media, creates a situation which is inherently self-loathing. The mass media creates a consumer double-consciousness in which humor is mistaken as self-conscious disgust. The new medium is not paint, or form, or even film. The new medium is irony. Any attempt at heart felt communication in the mass media seems out of place in this age. We are cut off from one another by the technology that we voluntarily build into our lives. Information about reality comes to us through a passive medium. Our understanding of the world depends on a format in which we are constantly presented with new information, but are helpless to do anything with it. We must keep watching in order to find out what happens next. We are entertained by watching other people act out ritualistic pop identities on “real tv” while simultaneously trying to emulate them in our “real lives.’ Who is watching whom? Our technological advancement has become so complete that we don’t actually need to do anything. How could anyone predict the ramifications of this social experiment? The news is a perfect example of how much our concept of amusement has blurred with our concept of fear and shock. It is impossible to tell what is or is not satire. Being post modernists, all of us are trapped in the language of reflexive doubt. And veiled sarcasm. We are in on the joke. Instead of experiencing each moment as it is, we live out our lives watching from the perspective of the inner cynic who lives ten minutes in the future. The words “post” and “modern” literally translate to “after” and “now.” Thus we are in constant critique of each moment as we live it, in all types of spaces we inhabit; both virtual and actual. This social anomaly is thoroughly supported by the media despite its troubling implications. My art uses technology against itself. The best way to make a solid critique of the mass media is to juxtapose imagery and sound straight from the source full force. By using non-propriety video in a juxtaposed and segmented regard, I hope to compress the postmodern media experience into short blasts of information and uncover some recurring themes. Hopefully my audience will continue to see the absurd realism in the visual landscape for themselves and be able to name it with certain self-confidence, rather than to react to it as a helpless, passive consumer.