Not sure how long this will be up but here's an interesting layering of Cowboy Bebop hands GIFs, combining the original titles, the "art room" version, and the GucciSoFlosy flipped minimal version.
The maker is lrntrlln aka sumoto.iki. No idea what page is linking to this--it came in via my stats.
Those hands/arms are all over dump at the moment. Some have cropped and rotated them and used them as legs! #history_of_net_art
Exhibition of animated GIFs curated by Paddy Johnson. Johnson's essay limns an intriguing parallel universe to the now-familiar net art history posted by her former intern Karen Archey. (Funny how the grand timelines lately seem to culminate in paintfx.biz and Jon Rafman.) Archey's essay is all about assimilation of the internet into institutional art world practice; whereas Johnson has chosen a medium that has proven particularly resistant to the museum/gallery Borg.
Alert readers may have noticed that this is the second show called "Graphics Interchange Format"--Laurel Ptak organized one three years ago in Brooklyn, which I missed but read about on Rhizome.org:
Some of the artists are among the net's gif stars and others made their first gifs for the show--they were all commissioned on three days' notice by Ptak and are being sold in unlimited editions (accompanied by a personalized note from the artist) for $20, instigating "gif shop" puns across the net art blogosphere.
Never really got the premise of that show--like, GIF slam? Three days' notice?
By contrast, the GIFs in Paddy Johnson's were years in the making, or at least, it took years for them to be recognized. Just BS-ing around here, can't really comment objectively because am in the latter show but wasn't in the former. Most documentation of Ptak's show has disappeared, so the only people we know were in both shows are Petra Cortright and M. River (who is in Johnson's show as one-half of MTAA). If you were in both, drop me a line and will add your name. At the time of Ptak's show, tumblr was just getting going and most of the GIF discussion centered around surf clubs. One such collective appears in Johnson's show (those "spirit" guys); of more recent vintage, and not a club exactly because anyone, even Brad Troemel, can join, dump.fm is represented by a "daily hall of fame" consisting of the day's most "fav"-ed posts. There you have the GIF world: the exalted platonic vs the vote-hungry mundane.
hat tips to ahem, D_MAGIK, and dump.fm "mystery room"
Update: Of course I should have recognized Spike's hands from the Cowboy Bebop intro. They passed through dieFlaneuse and GucciSoFlosy before weaving their way to the mystery room.
Update 2: Spike's hands, or Edward's? They seem too feminine to be Spike's but that credit sequence predated Edward. Faye's? Time for some fan page research.
gap in documentation from may 2009 to feb 2010
all tweets from feb 2010 to feb 2011 copied and pasted:
10 Feb 2011
long horizontal jpeg (2000 x 239 pixels) depicts collaged salon style hanging of hundreds of illegible photos
diamond shaped chandelier with glow wire hangs in darkened Art Nouveau building lobby
Every day in Feb. 2011 artist will release new track exploring topics such as swag, Contemporary Art, etc (embedded soundcloud file)
artist uses an internet-based trophy-making service to create trophies, one for each book he supposedly read in 2010 (photo of trophies)
tennis ball hovers before Christian tableau painting while man squats on the museum floor
small grey smudge in jpeg could be dead military satellite floating in space near the Moon
yellow and black sawtoothed geometric sculpture is affixed to wall over swirly, solarized, grisaille, biomorphic quasi-photo
'60s Euro-Pop style painting depicts stylized symmetrical figure integrated with patterned abstraction
crosshatched marks resembling crisscrossing fabric threads adorn large sheets of white paper (or cloth) hanging from overhead pipes
woman shoots video of photos on tabletop to create projected images watched by seated audience
grid of grisaille photos depicting heads of exotic birds in profile
animated GIF of Escher-like rotating dome made with black and white fill patterns
8 Sep 2010
photo of blond haired woman drying hair with a blow dryer
array of drawings: diamonds and triangles on left; naked man and flowers on right
tables, books, magnifying glass, video projection, paintings and an X-ray image on a light box
trial of henry kissinger takes place in tasteful minimalist gallery setting
performance photo: about 50 naked women submit to doggy style sex on beach towels from the same number of pixel-faced naked men
flow chart with arrows connecting photos of mountain, explosion, crystal, framed collages, etc
orange sidewalk awning installed in gallery doorway
6 Sep 2010
performance photo: woman holds paper with white dot on it several feet away from rectangular opening in gallery wall
sculpture of military helmet with microphone, head-mounted camera, and Mercury wings
strings of musical harp used as loom for woven tribal geometric patterns
store mannequins arranged like musical group on stage wear animal heads and skins over evening attire (one figure wears a track suit)
array of unusually stiff car magazines leaning against gallery wall
photo of tent erected inside miniature Stonehenge in rocky outdoor landscape
four canvas pouches in military olive drab form corral or pen on indeterminate white floor space
photos of birds on building clock hands: available roosting space changes with position of the analog dial
embedded YouTube video: screenshot shows shirtless man preparing to throw flesh-colored blob at giant hole in bathroom wall
four triangles of copper pipe linked in a chain hang on wall
geometric sculptures of diamond, parallelogram and cube with blue, grey, and yellow color scheme
connect-the-dots map of madagascar made of its geographic place names
Three oil paintings on polyester, three c-prints on paper, a 45 min one-channel DVD and seven fruit boxes in wood and cardboard
cy twombly-ish canvas cut and folded like a paper snowflake
fours sticks carved on a lathe with indeterminate splattery patterns
press kit for the film Gleaming the Cube (individual pages are in frames)
video still of Patty Smith from Dan Graham video with overlaid text about Rimbaud
photo of the words "6 HOURS" written in pencil on cardboard; title is "time-based currency prototype"
blurry montage of TV talking heads from Rai Uno, PTC, etc with link to video
diptych of CNN screenshots with link to video about CNN concatenation
7 Jul 2010
eraser crumbs from erased pictures in Flash Art shown in baggies as art
man walks through arid landscape wearing hexagonal leatherette tent costume
27 Jun 2010
movie theatre chairs in empty room face window looking out on to street as if what was happening out there was a movie
page of a scrapbook in which Eduardo Paolozzi put cuttings from magazines
photos of katie holmes and manatee screen-captured from artist's desktop
28 Mar 2010
one of those Magritte "vache" paintings that his wife made him stop doing because it wasn't bringing in any francs
burly workers erect vertical monochrome outdoors to catch shadows of trees
badly compressed photo of writhing orange flame-lump on crude stage
daily guided tours of Frieze Art Fair led by international fashion experts
apparent Tino Seaghal-like performance where artist describes contents of art fair booths
artists at art fair re-create artworks found in other booths
serial sculpure consisting of four upright, identically-broken concrete slabs
dramatically lit quasi-modernist throne chair surrounded by zigzagging light beams
aerial photo of Burghers of Calais sculpture from photo-book of twelve versions in as many cities
five original Rodin Burghers of Calais sculptures in as many cities
23 Feb 2010
jack goldstein nocturnal warfare painting with gradient
virtual blue poles with digital inscriptions hover in yellow sky
mosque floor plan on gallery wall, Pieta drawing, round white things
graffiti (Bill!!) on crochet, framed
aleatoric audio collage tribute to The Lion Sleeps Tonight composer
barbara krugeroid photocollage of Jacob Epstein warrior robot
Jacob Epstein sculpture of bulbous Jacob & Angel theme
tasty Kandinsky classroom drawing
the word TANDOORI in neon
Woodstock logo made of bent neon light
8 Feb 10
photo of snowman-shaped mud balls in trench; title is "land art iv"
human-sized sculpture of flame made of fresh clay
black-clad male smears mud horizontally along gallery wall
7 Feb 2010
gallery wall protrudes like videodrome tv bulge, cracking drywall and unpacking the white cube (again)
Made this using an interactive page designed by Duncan Alexander. You can drag elements around, resize them, and change the colors of the "window" elements by double-clicking them. The image above was made before I saw the note about double-clicking so I worked with the colors the screen gave me initially. Caveat: better screenshot something you like--after I made this I double-clicked a window and was not able to get that same combination of colors again. Also, note that refreshing the page gives you a new selection of shapes and color combos. Minor questions aside, the program is recommended as a hybrid of art, game, experimental platform, and lark--Peter Halley might be especially interested in it as a way to test out some new designs for his paintings.
