Jon Clark
Spectrum Hunter
Single-channel video with audio
27 min edition / 2012

Curated by Jesse Hulcher

Jon Clark's Spectrum Hunter explores the canon of nonsensical logic as presented
to youths through video games, comic books, cartoons and other assorted low-budget media.
Narrative and episodic mediums such as these often take a casual attitude toward their
depiction of physicality and emotion. Roll-playing video games and Japanese cartoons
especially, often throw common sense out the window in favor of the supernatural. The rate
at which this media can be churned out leads to watered-down storytelling, relying on
custom-manufactured tropes, eye-candy and surprise twists to keep kids interested. Spectrum
Hunter explores the world of mass-marketed B-quality entertainment and its deep wealth of
mediated and ambiguously related themes and tropes, a world that has built a filmic language
of its own. Spectrum Hunter supplements the exploration of these narrative themes with a
visual exploration of low-budget or no-budget graphic design, character design and set
design. Jon takes pleasure in replicating the careless graphic work of artists who designed
packaging for dirt-cheap products and media, for which the artwork and actual content was
almost implicitly unimportant: the goal being to create another product, a serial continuation
of a thing which was ambiguous and derivitive in the first place. He is inspired to pay homage
to what could be termed a nominal aesthetic. Spectrum Hunter elevates the half-assed design,
dialogue and visual language of no-budget commercial media and storytelling to an art-form,
simultaneously becoming a part of and further confusing the incestuous family of garbage-quality
entertainment for preteens. Final Fantasy meets Mortal Kombat in live-action form, with dialogue
straight out of an exceptionally dramatic episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! It is a perverse exercise to
lovingly and accurately represent and amalgamate an entire world of heartless media, and one
which Clark has performed with some amount of discipline. - Jesse Hulcher

Jon Clark is an artist and writer currently residing in Los Angeles. His work often deals with
childhood, memory, and popular culture. He has published many comics and zines and also directed
many short films, cartoons, and music videos. His recent work includes a 30 minute film called
Spectrum Hunter and a full color book of haunted media called The Night School Collection.

You can view more of his work at:

http://hughknow.tumblr.com/
www.JonClarkVideo.com

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