[youtube]http://youtu.be/prf7dsuKD7k[/youtube]

Decades before music videos pervaded popular culture, the experimental filmmaker pioneered techniques of non-narrative montage and high-speed editing by cutting thousands of images to a pop music soundtrack. Conner's second ever film, COSMIC RAY, is a black-and-white quick edit collage of found footage and film that Conner had shot himself, set to a soundtrack of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say.” It is considered by many to be the first, ever conceptual music video. THREE SCREEN RAY (2006) is a reimagined and expanded version COSMIC RAY (1961), a literal cinematic slot machine where three reels of images meet and diverge and meet again. Influenced as much by his methodologies of assemblage as the kineticism of abstract expressionism, Conner cuts together images of sex, war, dancing, and cinema itself before abrading and abusing the reel. What results is an explosive collage and a reflexive comment on the power of film and media.