Strange times for animated GIFs: at the same time people struggle to explain what they are to a largely paint-on-canvas addicted art world, voices of angry reaction claim they receive too much attention.
Note to Man Bartlett, next time you write about animated GIFs, please consider:
--is a science demonstration GIF (e.g., an animation showing the transformation of a Moebius strip into a Boy's Surface) insincere? does an artist's appropriation of it automatically make it insincere?
--are uses of GIFs in the culture (as jokes, gags) always the same as uses of GIFs to make "art" statements a la Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad, et al?
--how might a dump.fm user page be different from an animation log on a blog? (You do know how dump works.)
--might GIFs be at the same place photography once was (that is, rejected as a "serious" medium) or will their ephemeral nature always place them on the outside?
--can a file extension be only about aesthetics and post-hipster at the same time? do hipsters care about aesthetics?
--couldn't use of twitter as a medium also be considered trendy and hip and raise questions as to its insincerity?
--how might "just plain weak images" differ from what Boris Groys has called "the weak universalism"?