Marijuana Weed: Back in Cali & still smokin’

“I like to think of [my art] as the thin line between sublime banality and grotesque consumerism,” video maker and musician Rand Sevilla once explained.

Sevilla’s probably better known to Angelenos as DJ Marijuana Weed. He recently relocated to SoCal from Chicago, and is DJ’ing the Smell next week.

In the meantime, he has unveiled his newest video—a visualization of Back to the Future the Ride’s “CGI Fridays” that’s like a virtual reality funhouse, circa 1994. Or 21994. It’s hard to tell sometimes, and that’s exactly why Sevilla’s graphics are so provocative.

“I try to tap into hidden contradiction,” Sevilla says of his layered, Photoshop 1.0-looking morphs and soft, skewed grotesqueries. “I like bad decisions because that’s where new ideas come from. If I see something that makes me cringe or gasp I try and extract that essence but stylize it as well.”

Everyone who has ever used a computer gets this: it’s the process and the spectacle of the Digital Age eating itself alive.

RGB cannibalism? You can call it what you will. Rand Sevilla’s just going with the flow: “I have to compete with so much inane media that I just gave in and decided to try and out-stupify communication channels with stolen software and self-deprecation.”