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Two shows opening this week:
Tom Moody, Room Sized Animated GIFsAnd, Rhizome.org Net Art News on The GIF Show*:
artMovingProjects
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
166 North 12th Street
917-301-6680
May 5 - June 25, 2006
Opening: Friday, May 5, 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Music Performance/Lecture: May 19th, 8PM
Note: gallery closed June 8-11
Animated GIFs, the tiny, blinking, often annoying image files that draw your eye to particular parts of a Web page, have been around since the Net's early days. There is a sizeable do-it-yourself culture built up around them, which now includes a second generation of Web and gallery based art using them ironically and/or proactively.
For the past several years, Moody has been drawing GIFs in a simple paint program and posting them on his blog. The gallery will project two of these pulsing, but defiantly lo-fi animations huge on opposing walls of the space. Others will be displayed on monitors scattered on the floor.
The gallery will also feature a lecture/performance by Moody where he will present some of his music. These catchy compositions, made with a combination of old computers such as the Macintosh SE as well as more current soft synths and samplers, have a punchy concision similar to his GIFs. The styles range from videogame Electro to a string quartet piece written for a softsampler. --from ArtCal
The GIF Show, an exhibition opening May 3rd, at San Francisco’s Rx Gallery, takes the pulse of what some net surfers call ‘GIF Luv,’ a recent frenzy of file-sharing and creative muscle-flexing associated with GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format files). Curated by Marisa Olson in a West Coast Rhizome collaboration with Rx, the show presents GIFs and GIF-based videos, prints, readymades, and sculptures by a range of artists, including Cory Arcangel, Peter Baldes, Michael Bell-Smith, Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Lovid, Tom Moody, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear (aka 893/umeancompetitor). GIFs have a rich cultural life on the internet and each bears specific stylistic markers. From Myspace graphics to advertising images to porn banners, and beyond, GIFs overcome resolution and bandwidth challenges in their pervasive population of the net. Animated GIFs, in particular, have evolved from a largely cinematic, cell-based form of art practice, and have more recently been incorporated in music videos and employed as stimulating narrative devices on blogs. From the flashy to the minimal, the sonic to the silent, the artists in The GIF Show demonstrate the diversity of forms to be found in GIFs, and many of them comment on the broader social life of these image files. The opening is sure to be just as lively, with music by Eats Tapes and visuals by Nate Boyce. Spread the luv! - Rhizome.orgThe MySpace page for The GIF Show has a lot of new material added.
*Update, 2011: The Rhizome link has been changed to http://rhizome.org/editorial/2006/apr/29/gifs-galore-and-more/
From US News and World Report:
Skewering comedy skit angers Bush and aidesSome kind of personal smear will no doubt be surfacing about Colbert: "not today, not tomorrow, but when he least expects it." Bush is like the character Paul Lazzaro from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Nursing grudges and getting payback is what he's all about.
By Paul Bedard
Posted 5/1/06
Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.
"Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.
"I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow."
Colbert's routine was similar to what he does on his show, the Colbert Report, but much longer on the topic of Bush, suggesting that the president is out of touch with reality. Aides and reporters, however, said that it did not overshadow Bush's own funny routine, which featured an impersonator who told the audience what Bush was thinking when he spoke dull speech lines.
In fact, some aides crowed over reports that the president easily bested Colbert in the reviews of both comedy acts.
Today is the third anniversary of Bush's aircraft carrier photo-op. On May 2, 2003, I posted these pics:
I mentioned at the time that "[t]he photo above and left is an Agence France-Presse photo. As documented here, the AP story changed the wording of the banner to make the protesters sound more violent, or desperate: 'Sooner or later US killers we'll kill you.' Hardly any US media ran the above photo, only AP's altered description."
Amazing and sad that after so many Americans and Iraqis have been killed, Bush is still in power and the press is still covering for him.
Matt Stoller at MyDD:
Stephen Colbert's incredible roast, where the room of pompous DC-tards wasn't laughing but everyone else was, has been seen several hundred thousand times on YouTube. The stupid and hackish Bush impersonation, replete with such witticisms as Laura Bush is "hot," isn't even listed. The people choose Colbert.You can thank Stephen here.
And on cue, Elizabeth Bumiller's article on the evening in the New York Times doesn't even mention Colbert, and talks about how Bush stole the show. Amazing. Ridiculous. In a few months, the insiders at the dinner will be claiming that they thought Colbert was terrific, that they were the only one laughing. That's how these people work. They'll hear about the legendary Colbert performance, and they'll rewrite history to make themselves seem savvy enough to "get the joke."
Anyway, it doesn't matter. This is the gasp of the royal pretensions of the punditocracy. And Colbert laid them bare, brutally. Thank you, Stephen.
Update: The New Pravda, I mean, the New York Times, mentioned the Colbert roast five days after the fact, but didn't convey that it was insanely popular on the Net, only that it was generating "controversy" in the "blogosphere."
Update 2: the blackout squad ramps up the aggression level: "public affairs channel" CSPAN claims "copyright" and YouTube pulls the Colbert video. I removed the link I had here to YouTube. It's still floating around--eventually I'll post links.