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Rhizome.org Net Art News on The GIF Show*:
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.orgAnd on the subject of GIFs, here's another plug for my solo show opening this Friday:
Tom Moody, Room Sized Animated GIFs*Update, 2011: The Rhizome link has been changed to http://rhizome.org/editorial/2006/apr/29/gifs-galore-and-more/
artMovingProjects
Williamsburg
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
"Ninja Elements" [16 MB .mp4]
Audio only: [mp3 removed]
This is my AMV. The idea was to remove all the people (except for the long shot at the end) and have the abstract, amorphous bits be the characters. The title refers to the "four elements" (with smoke subbing for fire) but also "Premiere Elements," "Photoshop Elements," etc, where supposedly all the non-essential stuff is removed. (Although no Adobe products were used.) The .mp4 file is just a thumbnail--it has a bit more pixelation than I'd like but I really don't want to post a bigger file, or an .avi. I plan to show the full-blown video at my music lecture event thing on May 19 (as opposed to my show proper, opening May 5, which will only feature silent GIF videos). The song is my own tune, looking back again to the rave era.
That United Flight 93 movie is upon us and getting hyped. This is the preReview (which means I haven't seen it): "Don't Go!"
Some people believe that plane was shot out of the sky by a (belated) US missile.
The extreme fringe thinks the passengers were flown to the Cleveland airport and shot.
Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer's wife says his words on the plane "Let's Roll" are what he always said to the kids when he was ready to drive them to soccer practice or whatever.
"Let's Roll" became a patriotic song in the "Let's Get Some Payback--Any Muslim Country Will Do" phase of our nation's history.
Then the cockpit recordings came out and--whoops, looks like Mrs. Beamer was wrong and "rolling" possibly referred to a bunch of passengers rolling a dinner cart down the aisle in a last-ditch assault on the hijackers.
It's great if there was heroism--we'd all like to believe people rose to the occasion in this doomed scenario and that we'd do the same if we were there. Certainly the hijacking was villainy. But the cockpit utterances are spotty at best--a lot of the movie's narrative is speculation.
Are you ready for a work of semi-fiction that passes itself as fact when the bigger questions of 9/11 haven't been answered?
Questions like, were our leaders, or elements within the government, complicit in this thing on any level? Criminally negligent? We may never know, because the commissions were whitewashes and no one in the government got fired.
Is it right that the US has 700 military bases around the world, 17 years after the end of the Cold War? That we continue to prop up bad regimes long after the Cold War excuse has gone away?
Is it understandable that some might hate us for that, however heinous their methods of reprisal?
Are Americans responsible for the actions of their government?
The movie is voyeurism and jingoism without acknowledgement that there's a bigger story and that the film is fiction. The truth is we still don't know what happened that day.
"Ninja Elements" [16 MB .mp4]
Audio only: [.mp3 removed]
Recently added to the Young Turds tribute page: Two Howard S.M. Wuelfing reviews from back in the day, that is, ca. 1979-80. Pinched from :30 under DC. PMRagan says there, about the Turds: "I always thought it was ballsy as hell for them to go on with their Bonzo Dog Band image. In 1979 it was quite uncool to have a beard and long hair...and a button down shirt ..." Wuelfing says "[T]he Turds ain't power pop, art fascists, or nutty punks. They're better-than-smart nouveau greaseballs--intense earthshaking idiot fun and that is not what most straight [as in square --tm] clubs want to deal with, or even the art-dens (d.c. space, f'rinstance). The Turds capture something too dangerous for their taste--the essence of early rockin' rebellion."
From Curbed, a post captioned On Puke and Class War in the Central Village:
"This isn't relevant to anything or even remotely newsworthy, but I thought you'd enjoy these photos of my wealthy neighbor cleaning up the vomit that appeared on his East 11th Street stoop on Friday night at 11 o'clock, courtesy of a normal-looking, non-homeless person. The man had about 10 choices of places to puke in the immediate vicinity, including a tree and the back door of Jack's Bistro, and he chose the front door of a multimillion-dollar townhouse."
"Dance of the Nematodes/Calypsum (John Parker Mix)" [mp3 removed]. John Parker remix of a couple of my Mac SE tune(s). Work in process--Parker says this will change. Some interesting textures and a nice backwards bit I've been humming. Meme for the day: visual artists invade the province of musicians using new tech; work is not a substitute or facsimile but employs different skill sets in addition to the existing ones. It is nonetheless music--personally I'd rather listen to it than what's already known.
related: artists writing their own music hybridized with video.