animations - tm

Crop from a larger GIF posted by a Dump.fm user/troll. I took a section out of the middle of his GIF, which was about twice this size.

I like these GIFs that look like pixelated analog TV static, and prefer the above to similar ones of more self-consciously made or art nature, such as this elegant but rather stiff and claustrophobic specimen by Dylan Fisher or even these neo-psychedelic pixel art examples by Emilio Gomariz (to cite a couple from Art F City's "Gif of the Day" posts). Those have a very controlled, art-directed look in the sense of, "made by a professional illustrator." Whereas the one above looks like it just happened, or happened onstage when a punk band's amplifier blew during a two-note lead guitar solo and accidentally fried the Veejay's video display (if punk bands had Veejays). Or, think, early Steve Reich with tape recorders vs Music for 18 Musicians after Reich became polished and self-consciously classical.
The one above is 400 x 400 pixels, 221 KB, so rather modest in terms of trying to impress anyone with a "blow you away" art experience. It's relatively easy, however, to enlarge it for more walk-up impact: see this 800 x 798 pixel version at 572 KB.
Opening the GIF up, I noticed it had several 1 x 1 pixel frames. I removed them to see what would happen, and realized they were important in creating the jerky, random movement of the "strata" above. So they came back in. On the subject of randomness, one of the most appealing things here is the apparent directional movement of those strata, some fast, some slow, some going right, some going left, some bouncing up and down. A programmer could put all those variables in (maybe someone did here) but the trick would be to hide the methodology or obvious thought processes. Otherwise you have a "library music" version of punk.

Thanks to Paddy Johnson for GIF of the Day coverage for the GIF above, originally posted here. Here's what she wrote:

I’ve never bought into the popular art world belief that an in between state is somehow implicitly good, but this GIF by Tom Moody and deaniebabie makes a good argument for the value of that state. It’s not that the morphing from ring to shrimp necessarily makes a greater statement, but as a viewer, you’re inclined to look a little harder as the identifiable shape disintegrates and reforms.

In this case, there’s a real beauty to the simplicity of movement and grace to the shifting of states, so the loop has the same kind of satisfaction as watching a metronome. It’s surprisingly mesmerizing.

I replied via Disqus:

Thanks for the post. The color version of this (as I recall from its momentary appearance on dump.fm, when deaniebabie posted it) had vaguely greenish colors and the "tween" frames were somewhat wispy. Converting it to this black and white dot rendering gave the whole more solidity and conviction. One reason it's so engaging is the way the ellipses twist in mid-morph. You would think the circular shape of the ring would follow the curve of the shrimp, but in just a few frames it becomes a kind of Moebius strip. In a way it convinces you that almost any two shapes can be morphed. The algorithm has powers of cleverness that seem greater than ours.

Both of us skirted an issue someone on dump.fm raised, the most basic content-level kind of question: what's the symbolic connection of the shrimp and the ring (suggestive of a diamond wedding ring)? You could ask the maker of the original morph (it may or may not be deaniebabie -- aka Dean Schneider -- I'm not finding that GIF on his site). You could say it's Dada/absurdist or computer/random connection with no inherent meaning. Or you could draw your own connection, such as "marriage and seafood both stink after the first three days." Have fun.

hat tips peur, the scientific GIF community, dump.fm and OIE

hat tips peur, the scientific GIF community, dump.fm and OIE