Didn't want to "explain" that GIF in the same post, so this is a "related text."
Photoshop always goes haywire when resizing the "crosshatching" of 1-bit (monochrome) MSPaint drawings. I think the program's trying to make a nice smooth photographic image and the grids confuse some algorithmic averaging process (just a guess). There are "tipping points" where the image partially disappears or goes black, or turns into various-sized checkerboards.
I changed the size of Gradient Circle (or rather, a single still frame from that earlier black and white GIF) in Photoshop's "view" mode 14 times (more or less equal steps from small to large) and took a screenshot each time.
The screenshots, unaltered, are the GIF frames for the "Gradient Circle (Crushed)" GIF.
Thus are the bugs turned into features of interesting (to me) chaotic patterns, and art is made about how previous art has been unintentionally messed up in reproduction.
December 2008
"Chillout Librarian"
"Chillout Librarian" [mp3 removed]
Psychedelic easy listening for the masses. Some Electribe groovebox preset melodies "treated" with a couple of filters and made into a slow, rather tuneful song. This is basically two "live" takes cut up and selectively muted to get the better passages of each. Am especially happy with the bass on this one.
Aron Namenwirth at vertexList
Panoramic view of Aron Namenwirth's art opening at vertexList, Brooklyn, NY. Midway between bin Laden and Bush, gallery proprietor Charles Beronio introduces Glomag, preparing to play a Gameboy music set to the left of bin Laden's beard.
The show's meticulously painted acrylic on canvas imagery in a Warhol meets Chuck Close by way of Yahoo! vein also includes the future President and (gulp) Secretary of State. The title of the exhibit is "Made in U.S.A." That's what we do these days--gin out imagery of political celebrities to frighten or amuse the world. The icons exist in endless feedback loops--one such eddy is internet thumbnail --> painting --> art exhibit --> photo --> internet thumbnail. Eventually we may get things back on track and stop leading the world in the production of simulacra but this show bears witness to our current predicament.
File under: Artists with Computers
Bettie Page Science Fiction Stretch
Posted as a comment to L.M.'s Page-inspired GIF cluster:
A C.M. Kornbluth story called "Shark Ship," written in the '50s, I think, has a flotilla-based oceangoing people surviving and conserving every calorie in a Waterworld type scenario.
The mainland has killed itself because of a death cult that took hold in the over-refined, decadent general populace.
The cult was started by an Irving Klaw-like bondage photo entrepreneur, who recognized in B&D the public craving for death and turned that appetite into a repressive mass cult.
The oceangoing people were set adrift years before by wise social engineers, in anticipation that the mainland would inevitably burn itself out. The boat people's purpose (unbeknownst to them) is to revitalize the mainland culture. By focusing so keenly on group survival, for several generations, they have rediscovered what is good and necessary in life and become Earth's next generation of leaders.
(Your science fiction tie-in for the day--although it doesn't deal with the mysticism aspect of your mandelbrotdalas.)