mommy whats brainrot

MAY 12 – MAY 16

Reception: May 15th from 5-7pm

stArt.rv

Artist Statement:

In their most basic sense, videos refer to ordered sets of images, displayed one after the other in rapid succession to create an illusion of movement. Very early film was in the form of animation, hand-created images “moving” for the viewer. By the late 1880s, motion cameras gained traction as tools to capture the physical world and replicate an environment that viewers were already familiar with. 

By the early 2010s, the internet had begun a transition into a new type of film: short form video. Platforms Vine and Snapchat were the first to be designed for this genre; Print magazine compared Vine’s six-second video limit to gifs and “video selfies” as well as Muybridge’s zoopraxiscopes, early film animation.

By the time the internet mourned “the death of Vine” in 2017 (shut down for a lack of monetization) its revival was on the way: Musical.ly and TikTok merged in 2018. Earlier adopters of these platforms, as well as any previously mentioned, will recall an aversion in popular culture to all. Snapchat was for pervy tweens, Vine for clout-chasers; Musical.ly was a source of cringe content and TikTok was a source of dancing blonde young women. But this revamped form of video caught on; from 2020 to 2022, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter all adopted similar “copycat” subplatforms or features.

Studies have shown links between short form content and anxiety, declining attention spans in elementary schoolers, college students, and older adults. Is this just the new substitute for older forms of passive media consumption—television, talk radio, and the like—or is it more synthetic, designed specifically to keep us engaged at a whim for longer? Is it more sinister?

Whatever the case, short form content certainly seems more disparate and frenetic than any other form before; jump cuts, voiceovers, quick moving captions, and image-in-image displays are all staples of the genre. The most egregious version of this content, unaffectionately referred to as “brainrot,” is (typically) humorous, memey video content which relies upon its own self-indulgence for “the bit.” 

mommy whats brainrot seeks to divorce these videos from their typical medium, asking viewers to consider them (both individually and as a system) at face value.

because…

Democratic?