The links below will take you to motion picture work I've had a hand in.
Abductions with the Alter Boy (Vimeo On Demand) | Cyberscope Wizards Playlist | Post-production Instruction with Professor Bo | Robots and Reptiles Theater Playlist | YouTube | Vimeo | Leonardo da Video Playlist | Student Work Playlist | Email me | Home
7/17/2023
My video The Machines Possessed Me (v1.5) won Best U.S. Experimental Short in the July 2023 Austin International Art Festival. YAY!
7/4/2023
My videos Abductions with the Alter Boy: Robot Taboo Module 3, Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) and The Machines Possessed Me (v1.5) all came in as semi-finalists in the Austin International Art Festival.
3/3/2023
My music video Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) ran in the 2023 MidWest WeirdFest.
1/20/2023
My videos The Machines Possessed Me (v1.5) and Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) both came in as semi-finalists in the Sicily Art Cinema Festival.
1/13/2023
My videos The Machines Possessed Me (v1.5) and Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) both came in as semi-finalists in the Berlin Shorts Award.
12/20/2022
My videos The Machines Possessed Me (v1.4) and Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) both came in as semi-finalists in the Paris International Short Festival.
12/19/2022
I’ve put many finished “Abductions with the Alter Boy” episodes on YouTube because we can more easily enter competitions from that platform. Here’s a link to the episodes: Robots and Reptiles Theater YouTube Playlist.
11/29/2022
My music video Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) has won an Accolade Global Film Competition Award of Recognition in the Music Video and Remixes / Mashups and Concept categories. Also, my video The Machines Possessed Me (v1.5) was an Official Selection in the Experimental Short category.
11/18,20/2022
My music video Arise Robot Minds (v1.2) ran in The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival in the Best Sci-Fi/Horror and Psychedelic/Transpersonal Short categories.
6/2/2022
The Abductions with the Alter Boy show is now in high definition.
5/20/2022
This was the event day of the San Francisco Arthouse Short Festival. My video The Machines Possessed Me (v1.4) came in as a semi-finalist in the Best Experimental Short category.
Post-production Instruction with Professor Bo (2020-present)
Click to visit my Vimeo showcase Post-production Instruction with Professor Bo. These videos should help my students learn Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects for the fields of video post-production and motion graphics design.
Abductions with the Alter Boy (Vimeo On Demand, 2017-present)
Original advertisement: "The flying saucer Nucleus descends into Chicago so Alter Boy can deliver his cyborg message from space. Abducted guests tell their stories while Control 9, the ship’s sidekick computer, spews verbal abuse. Cosmic cartoons and digital image processing wreak cyberdelic meltdowns in this DIY experiment in "?"." Vimeo On Demand provides the latest versions of the Abductions with the Alter Boy episodes.
Video Art Night: The Cyberscope Wizards (DVD, 12/13/2004)
The Cyberscope Wizards Trish Happel and Mike Bohacz present Video Art Night which took place on December 13, 2004 at The Improv Kitchen in Chicago. This DVD is very rare.
Abductions with the Alter Boy (DVD Set, 2003-16)
This collectable Abductions with the Alter Boy DVD set presents the episodes: "Giovanni Module 3.2," "Robot Taboo Module 1.1," "Dark Ages Module 3.0," "Global Warming Module 2.2," "Andromedans Module 1.1," "Being In Light Module 1.1," "Psychotronic Module 1.2," "Devil Girls’ Module 1.1," "First Episode Shoot (excerpt)," plus other goodies! These DVDs are very rare.
Robots and Reptiles Theater (1997-present)
Click to visit my YouTube playlist Robots and Reptiles Theater. Robots and Reptiles Theater was the working title of our experimental television series (that we started making in 1997) before we named it Abductions with the Alter Boy. After creating many Abductions episodes, I started making an additional TV series with the original name Robots and Reptiles Theater (1st episode 2003). This YouTube playlist contains videos from both series.
Electromagnetic Fields Forever (5/11/1995)
Electromagnetic Fields Forever represented the second of my major videos where I used the aesthetic method I called "Video I Ching." I pulled the work together with video tapes I had recorded from TV (or extracted from movies and TV programming distributed on VHS tapes) and ran them through a technical process whereby the scenes could mix together randomly. Next, I used the Sandin Analogue Image Processor, the Fairlight Computer Video Instrument, plus other special effects devices and methods to produce composited sequences. I then edited a "narrative" from what I found the most interesting and intriguing composites. I saw meanings in the combinations of sequences much like a patient in psychotherapy would see images in ink blots. Unlike History of the Moon (the major work I did with the Video I Ching method prior to this one) where I took meanings from the composites passively, I made it a point with EFF to express meanings that I chose rather than just see what would come of the image combinations. This was because many meanings I took from History of the Moon were too scary for my conscious mind and I felt I had to mitigate them. Electromagnetic Fileds Forever cannot be shown publicly because of its many copyright infringements. Contact me for a private showing.
The first finished version of Electromagnetic Fields Forever premiered at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Video Area on May 11, 1995. Thanks so much to Mira Gelley for curating my one-man show. A newer version ran at Chicago's Poop Studio in June 1997.
Unfinished preview Chicago showings of Electromagnetic Fields Forever included Zebra Crossing Theatre (Nov. 1994), Light and Time show at Chicago Filmmakers (Oct. 1994), Chicago Access Network Double Dog TV (1993), Revelations: Artists Look at Religions show at Gallery 2 (1991), Strange Video show at N.A.M.E. Gallery (Oct. 1988).
Cyberscope Wizards (1994-present)
Click to visit my YouTube playlist Cyberscope Wizards. Founded in 1994, Cyberscope Wizards is a transmedia production company. We also collaborate with others on creating, staging, documenting art events. What is a Cyberscope, anyway? It's the device which allows us to explore the wonderful world of flowing information, in all its fractal beauty. Others may call it a computer, but that's so 20th Century! The Wizards represents the next company I created after Leonardo da Video. I run all the branding for my output of video and related work through it.
This is the first major work of video art I made. I finished most of this video collage in 1986 using the aesthetic method I called "Video I Ching." I used the Sandin Analogue Image Processor, the Fairlight Computer Video Instrument, plus other special effects devices and methods to produce abstract source sequences. Next, I pulled the work together with other tapes I had recorded from TV (or extracted from movies and TV programming distributed on VHS tapes) and ran them through a technical process whereby the scenes would mix together randomly. I then edited a "narrative" from what I found the most interesting and intriguing composites. I saw meanings in the combinations of sequences much like a patient in psychotherapy would see images in ink blots. History of the Moon cannot be shown publicly because of its many copyright infringements. Contact me for a private showing.
Strawberry Fields (early 1980s)
A turning point came when I made this video. Our Leonardo da Video company sold ambient videos to dance clubs in Chicago in the early 1980s. We noticed that when you played any kind of music with our videos, the video and audio seemed to go together in an uncanny way. I took the next step when I randomly edited World War II documentary footage over the top of a Beatles bootlegged soundtrack. This created a new level of meaning that moved me and taught me. Strawberry Fields cannot be shown publicly because of its copyright infringements. Contact me for a private showing.
Leonardo da Video (early to mid-1980s)
Click to visit my YouTube playlist Leonardo da Video. The videos in this playlist were made during the time Leonardo da Video delivered ambient video to dance clubs around Chicago in the early to mid-1980s. My partners and I created them with the Sandin Analogue Image Processor, the Fairlight Computer Video Instrument, plus other equipment at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Video Area, where I instructed at the time. Michael Wayne Davis and I had discovered that if you added music to our ambient video, no matter what kind of music, it seemed to go with the picture. A meaningful synchronicity that one could sense but not quite express with words was created in the mind. Shawna Olwen also joined and worked with us before she left SAIC. Michael Roland Nordstrom created the logo for us.
8mm Films and Student Videos (mid-1970s to early 1980s)
Click to visit my YouTube playlist 8mm Films and Student Videos. The films and videos in this playlist were made roughly between the mid-1970s and early 1980s. My family, my friends, and I made films with our Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera. Most of my 8mm films were stolen from my locker when I attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). My twenty minute animated film Sega Noea (that I spent at least an entire semester in high school making) was also lost in the theft. I sorely miss that one because it was the most ambitious of all my work to that time. The videos were made when I was taking classes in the SAIC Video Area.
I inherited an 8mm Kodak Brownie home movie camera from my older brother Buddy. Buddy helped me and our younger brother Monte make some fun movies. When I took over the cinematography the films began to take on darker themes. All of my very early films are listed here with the exception of the Nick the Cliff Dweller animation below. Unfortunately, someone stole all of these old films from my locker at college (SAIC). All that remains are a few fragments which had been copied to videotape.
Nick the Cliff Dweller Animation Still (1970-71)
I inherited an 8mm Kodak Brownie home movie camera from my older brother Joseph Mefford (nicknamed Buddy). Buddy helped me and our younger brother Monte Paul Bohacz make some fun movies. The stop-motion animation effects were relatively sophisticated in the title The Great Race, which was inspired by the 1965 Hollywood movie. With Buddy as director and cinematographer, our film had the younger brothers racing around the house in imaginary automobiles. Buddy also helped me make a short animation of Nick the Cliff Dweller probably sometime around 1970 or 1971. I made the artwork and Buddy was the cinematographer. Unfortunately, someone stole all of these old films from my locker at college (SAIC). All that remains are a few fragments which had been copied to videotape.