“Music + Image” celebrates the fuzzy line between culture and commerce in the golden age of the 1980s, when innovators in video art crossed over to produce music videos and other commercial work. Long before American Apparel made big sweaters, big glasses and big hair ironic and sizzling hot again, video was the media of the moment. Cheap, reusable, portable video made amateur experimental films so easy; never mind that the color was never right and things rarely got into focus. Thanks to the Long Beach Museum of Art, several of these time capsule–worthy treasures are on display tonight — with their big graphics, fruity colors, jumpy edits, severe dissolves and jittery effects in full-blown glory. Post-modern feminists Max Almy, creator of 1981's “Deadline,” and Dara Birnbaum, with her deconstructions of Lynda Carter–era Wonder Woman videos, are featured. So are Talking Heads' “Once in a Lifetime” (co-directed by Toni Basil), Laurie Anderson's “O Superman” and Henry Selick's and the Residents' “Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions,” which ushered in a much-copied, warped animation style that's still used in ads and videos. In-person guests tonight include Almy, Basil and Carole Ann Klonarides, co-founder of the groundbreaking media collective MICA-TV. REDCAT, 631 W. Second St., dwntwn.; Tues., Feb. 7, 8:30 p.m.; $10, $8 students. (213) 237-2800, redcat.org.

Tue., Feb. 7, 8:30 p.m., 2012

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