Giant Eyeballs

So, in class we have been watching a lot of music videos that The Residents made. Most of the music videos that we have watched have been very abstract. We learned that we never see the musician's faces because they are always wearing giant eyeballs over their heads. We also learned that The Residents made the first "real" music video in 1971.

What I find the most interesting about this band is that all of their music videos are a form of performance art. Since we have been learning so much recently in class about performance art, seeing videos from this band gave me a clearer view of what performance art actually is. It also helped me form ideas for my own performance art piece.

Last Monday we watched the video for "This is a man's world" which was a piece of video art created by The Residents that was the first to show some hardcore computer animation. It was interesting to see what the first forms of computer animation looked like. To me, it simply looked like squiggly lines coming out of a man's face. Other animation that was used in this video was comprised of repeating shapes in various colors. It was really cool to watch along with the music, and it was a trippy experience. This abstract computer animation combined with the fact that the band was a bunch of giant eyeballs made me feel as though they probably did a good amount of drugs, and power to them.