Hacker Cinema
Off the Air
2011 · TV series · 11 min episodes · 15 seasons
Created by Dave Hughes
Science FictionFantasyAnimation
A collection of psychedelic and visually complex animation, art, and culture.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
4 comments on Hacker News
> Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature
Exactly how I feel about AI art today, and doesn't make me super hopeful for the future. Hopefully there been cases where that hasn't been true?
But then I remember seeing datamoshing as weird the first times I saw it used as a transition in the "Off the Air" TV series/anthology, nowadays I think it makes me fuzzy and almost nostalgic instead?
The quintessential example of glitch art, imo, is Adult Swim's Off the Air, which compiles various short animations and music cut together with various datamoshed transitions. While the glitch stuff isn't always the central focus it definitely goes a long way towards setting the trippy vibe they're going for.
There are too many excellent episodes to list but Animals is a great one to get a feel: https://youtu.be/59QBOO6m210
And the Dan Deacon USA special episode might be peak Off The Air:
https://youtu.be/9X4fYP9bqqw
Oh man, I absolutely love his stuff. Every once in a while that Fever the Ghost song gets stuck in my head, even a decade after that video debuted. He's definitely got a very psychedelic and surreal style that is 100% Felix Colgrave. And I think that he certainly deserves the title of weird as much as anyone.
Especially his earlier stuff very much has that old school net sensibility about it. (Although he's talented and polished enough that it's not _quite_ the same amateur vibe of those early Newground days).
Another source of phenomenally cool and interesting "content" is the Adult Swim Off the Air series, which also has a very psychedelic vibe to it. The series collects a wide variety of really awesome animations (and also lots of silly stuff).
Probably my favorite thing to ever come from the Off The Air oeuvre is the animated music video for Dan Deacon's song When I Was Done Dying[1]. They also did a 20 minute special episode featuring Dan Deacon's music which is extremely cool[2]. I was exposed to so much cool stuff via Off The Air, the first episode is still one of my favorite ten minutes of weirdness[3]. There are so many other great episodes, too, if you like this kind of thing.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59QBOO6m210
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X4fYP9bqqw
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59QBOO6m210
Here's an episode of Off The Air on the theme of dance, broadcast 2011 but the series is ongoing with new episodes this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBY1Wwt4IuA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_Air_(TV_series)