April 2011

gotta GIF revolution, or not

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If the discussion of animated GIFs on this page or elsewhere comes off as an "argument about whether or not GIFs comprise an avant-guard art world revolution" and/or a "polemic attachment to [a] medium," that's bad. Defending an idea of GIFs against a misconception or misinterpretation of why someone might make one probably seems over-adamant when the misconceiver shouts and slurs--internet discourse rises to the level of the loudest person in the room.

The "GIFs went away and now they are back" narrative is, in fact, wrong--they have been standard elements of web design throughout the '00s and have been used on "meme" sites such as YTMND more or less steadily. Some attempt has been made to describe how they are used "artistically"--messing with the timing, arranging them in HTML tables or using CSS--but no one I know claims this as an exclusive or essential way of working. It has some "urgency" in the sense that all browsers read GIFs and you might want to make "art" where it can most be read but this is not the stuff of Castro or Mao.

The New York Times is even using GIFs in its editorial art; that's about as un-revolutionary as it gets.

"Factory Demo"

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"Factory Demo" [mp3 removed]

The (very) analog Vermona Perfourmer synth, playing a midi test pattern that comes loaded in the machine.
The Perfourmer is four monosynths that can be patched together various ways, modular fashion. I finally figured out how to plug the VCO output of one synth into the filter of another, allowing both synths to play the same oscillator output simultaneously with two different filter settings (this isn't in the manual, and involves pushing the jack only halfway into the VCO out port--this must be a mistake). The piece consists of four rhythm instruments (tweaked-out white noise as described above) multitracked with four melodic instruments (using FM modulation that works the way it says in the manual). Each synth is kind of doing its thing but everything stays mostly in sync.

Update: Revised and reposted. The melodic part was too loud so I made it quieter, and added software drums and synth at the end for a climax.

mix or motion?

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"The relationships between the images (and how those relationships evolve) is usually more interesting than any of the individual images"

Art is remixed because, at least initially, to the remixer, it is "interesting." Maybe the remix is interesting (or better!) and maybe the process is interesting but those are always secondary attributes. Our problem isn't a dearth of interesting images on the web, it's too many of them.