For years, video artist Bob Jaroc obsessively recorded whatever was playing on television onto VHS. He would start by recording a movie or show he wanted to watch and then just leave the recorder running to pick up whatever played next. The collector of video ephemera also went to yard sales and film fairs, eventually building a collection of film and television footage that grew to be 1160 hours long. Now, Jaroc has digitized 580 hours of that footage (he’s still working on digitizing the rest) and squeezed the compilation into a dizzying five-minute video.

With 12 VHS recordings flashing simultaneously, the hypnotic video is part art, part archivist’s dream.

“The constant in the tapes is me, its as good a self portrait as I'm going to make at the moment,” Jaroc writes. “One of my favourite film soundtracks is from a flick called You Are What You Eat (the film is in there I think). I am definitely what I watched.”

Check it out above.

[h/t: Boing Boing]

Banner Image Credit: Bob Jaroc, Vimeo