Flaming farts, missteps of the house cat and "My Space - The Movie" were only the beginning. You Tube, My Video, Clipfish and the likes teem with millions and millions of clips by now. Video content on the internet is becoming an autonomous media genre in its own right, testing the boundaries of new aesthetics in the process. Professional made-for-online productions increasingly determine the way we "watch online". The Cologne Conference presents innovative, daring and more often than not abysmally funny moving images from the new world of the net, including e.g.:
In funny short episodes, "It's Jerrytime" goes through all those traumatic childhood memories and everyday occurrences that everyone is bound to be familiar with, or at least likes to be told at a cocktail party. The mixture of animation and photo collage, whose overall composition would have made it a worthy Monty Python piece, is the work of award-winning television designer Orrin Zucker. His brother Jerry's contributions are the stories and the signature piano music which oscillates between coffee house and musical lesons. Winner of a 2007 Emmy.
"Salad Fingers", on the other hand, gets to the meat, and often in the most literal sense of the expression. The main character of the animation series, Mr Salad Fingers, loves rusty things and, on a whim, enjoys rubbing nettles on his nipples. The physical sensation junkie is caught between fear, ecstatic joy and delusional rapture - and renders his feelings in opulent English. The dismal atmosphere in David Firth's work is a product of its grotesque humor and ongoing testing of the boundaries of good taste.