As part of fabled collective Paper Rad, artist Jacob Ciocci co-produced animations, video collages, and HTML works that have had a profound influence on almost every artist working with technology today—whether they realize it or not. On this week’s episode, Jacob joins from his new home of Chicago to discuss fatherhood; his early days as a student at Oberlin College with Cory Arcangel and Paul B Davis; the genesis of Paper Rad with his sister, artist Jessica Ciocci, and Ben Jones; the aesthetic break between Paper Rad and postinternet art; his beguiling experience encountering Fort Thunder in Providence; the craft beer craze and artifical scarcity; being scared of watching brain-rotting cartoons; his longtime musical collaboration, Extreme Animals, with David Wightman; being so uncool that it becomes cool; a recent teaching gig in animation; and the devastating pain of archiving your work. The outro music is “SURFING/SUFFERING” by Extreme Animals. Additional Extreme Animals tracks play throughout the episode.

If you’re at all interested in reading the 2014 piece I wrote for VICE on Extreme Animals and the release of their DVD, The Urgency, you can read that here. Like I said in the intro, I am not going to say the writing is good. LOL. You should purchase a downloadable copy of The Urgency here. Check out the trailer for The Urgency, and a few recent solo works by Jacob, below the embedded podcast episode.