Francophile
Animated GIF
2012
Animated GIF
2012
The lethargic, cyclical and self referential aspects of contemporary culture is reflected in the GIF as a means of conveyance..
The GIF functions as a means to compress information, images and ideas. It is heavy with connotation but light at first
appearance. This information can be 'unzipped' and re-expanded by those who wish to. It is usually built around the pay-off
moments of a video and structured like a joke. It does not require an embedded player to be viewed and has remained functional
through many changes – it is democratic in the way the internet purports to be.
But all forms of compression eventually reach their logical end, where whatever material that was compressed is no longer able
to be recovered in quite the same manner it previously existed, resulting in an unzipped product that appears to be a faint shadow
of the dense form it once took. Is the GIF a true harbinger of conceptual efficiency or an ornamental novelty of its own lightness?
The GIF functions as a means to compress information, images and ideas. It is heavy with connotation but light at first
appearance. This information can be 'unzipped' and re-expanded by those who wish to. It is usually built around the pay-off
moments of a video and structured like a joke. It does not require an embedded player to be viewed and has remained functional
through many changes – it is democratic in the way the internet purports to be.
But all forms of compression eventually reach their logical end, where whatever material that was compressed is no longer able
to be recovered in quite the same manner it previously existed, resulting in an unzipped product that appears to be a faint shadow
of the dense form it once took. Is the GIF a true harbinger of conceptual efficiency or an ornamental novelty of its own lightness?
