Part 3 in a series.

Our first couple of installments in the series where characterized by rage, I suppose. So today let’s step away from the anger and look at videos of a more artistic bent.

First up, the video I’ve always sort of regarded as the best ever: “Dirt,” by Death in Vegas. Avant gardiste to its core, and very much in step with the non-linear mode of the era, this short, directed by Andrea Giacobbe, assaulted us with image and discontinuity.

I had heard about “Dirt,” but had never been able to catch it (and this was pre-YouTube, of course, so some effort was required – either you were watching when it came on or you set the VCR and fast forwarded through 90 minutes of tape, kind of like a hunter opening a trap and hoping there’s something inside). It was a Sunday night, around 11, and I had been working all day at my computer. I shut everything down and prepared to go to bed. Something stopped me as I hit the lights, though. Hmmm, I thought. I flipped on MTV and there it was, just beginning. If I believed in fate, I’d be a little weirded out. But I don’t, so I’m grateful for the coincidence.

Our second offering today is artistically the antithesis of “Dirt” in a lot of ways. Whereas “Dirt” was imagistic and non-linear to the nth degree, Blues Traveler’s “Runaround” (directed by Ken Fox) was built around a more conventional narrative mode of storytelling and an incredibly clever riff on The Wizard of Oz. If you want to know what the band thought of the music industry, pay attention, and if I’m Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, I’m probably not flattered by the portrayal of the lead singer in the lip-synching band in front of the curtain.

Finally, Orbital’s “The Box,” which I have been known to use in classes when discussing cyberculture. The video, directed by Luke Losey and starring Tilda Swinton, “won a silver sphere for the best short film at the San Francisco Film Festival and got nominated for the best video award at the 1997 Brit Awards. It also closed the Edinburgh Film Festival and opened the London Film Festival.” Swinton, portraying an anachronistic ingenue, stop-motions through an accelerating city landscape trying to fathom the pace and decay of contemporary urban life, and I think most viewers come away empathizing with her bewilderment.