Mad Mesh was made by photographing disturbed mesh patterns from a television camera tube. An Image Orthicon camera in the Federal Engineering section of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation at Gore Hill, Sydney) had developed a fault with the mesh in the pick-up tube that could be moved around with magnets. This produced mobile fluid patterns on the monitor.

David Perry recorded these disturbed mesh patterns by exposing the film with red, green and blue filters as a series of multiple exposures so that they gave a crawling, irregular moire pattern, a bit like light reflecting off ruffled water, while moving randomly across each other. Occasionally this produced a full range of colours as the mesh patterns mapped onto each other through the RGB filters. The mesh controller was Tom McGrath and the film featured electronic music by Ken Parkyn. (See also Peter E. Mudie, National Film Theatre Program Notes, pp. 97, 98, 260.) 

Perry has always called this a film, but as it was made using an electronic image from a television camera, displayed on and recorded from a television monitor, it is closer to the broad category of electronic imaging.