Just as the border between image and text has broken down, so too has the border between fact and fiction. The essay may best define this form: theoretical discourse in a fictive setting, or dramatic narrative in a discursive setting. Out of the Mouth of Babes explores the acquisition of language as an ideological process. It becomes apparent that the inculcation of language is inseparable from the power structure of parent and child. Using a lively surface of graphics and text, and enacted scenes starring artist Sherry Millner and her three-year-old daughter, the videotape concludes that language-as the foundation of consciousness-makes us receptive to the manipulation of authority. Millner and Larsen then draw a bead on Reagan's Central American policies in which ideological language and paternity have a nasty confluence. Peter Rose's Babel, a powerful blending of film projection and video, sees language as a much abused entity that finally refuses to voice our petty concepts. Primal chants from some non-existent race, Caspar Weinberger in the midst of verbal collapse and a made-up language spoken by possessors of a third nostril add to the humorous cacophony. The Nysts' L'Image, on the other hand, concerns itself with the breakdown of the image. When an image suddenly disappears from a garden terrace, Professor Coda and Theresa Plane (played by the Nysts) embark for NOMALA, a mythic land where appearance originates. The narrative is an unusual amalgam of computer graphics and chroma-keyed scenery that furthers electronic imagery as a storytelling device. The text, too, is unusual, using allegory, performance, and postmodern chit-chat to comment on the consumption of images. -Steve Seid