Recently the Guggenheim teamed up with Youtube to create Youtube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video— an exhibit of films that originated online. The videos in the bi-yearly showcase— currently on view digitally, as well as at the Guggenheim— were selected like this: Through an open call, Youtube received 23,000 submissions from their online community of film makers; Guggenheim staff whittled those submissions down to 125 selections; and later, a jury of world-class artists picked 25 videos to be included in the final Play exhibition.

If you have a couple hours to kill over the weekend, I recommend clicking through the juried Play picks (and if you want more, there's also the longer shortlist). To start you off, here are a few of my favorites from the exhibit.

Josh Bricker's "Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage)" is a chilly two-channel piece pairing real war footage (from the Gulf War and our current conflict in Iraq) with Call of Duty 4 game-play footage (displayed on the right channel). The audio is a mixture of both channels, and, like the videos, it's pretty easy to lose sight of what's real and what's fake. Check it (as well as some other selections from Play, after the jump):

Play also includes less weighty offerings. Lindsay Scoggins' "Wonderland Mafia" gravitates towards more common video memes:

Jarbas Agnelli's "Birds on The Wires" repurposed a photograph of birds perched on electrical wires, transposing their positions onto a musical staff— the result is this song and video:

Other films focus on visual innovation, like Luke White and Remi Weekes' "Seaweed":

There are many other Play videos worth checking out— some recognizable, like Die Antwoord's "Zef Side," and others more obscure and morose, like This Aborted Earth's (Michael Banowetz and Noah Sodano) "The Quest Begins." Alright, go ahead, waste the last few minutes of your work day.