The Guggenheim’s new-ish blog, The Take, recently posted a short history of the animated GIF, which (did you know this?) is actually quite old—much more so than the web as we use it now. Go forth and learn, Tumblrites: net art pioneer Olia Lialina is manning the CMS here, after all. (Remember My Boyfriend Came Back from the War? Well.) Lialina cites Tom Moody without a link!, who situates the GIF in its rightful place within the visual lexicon of the web, as “a kind of ubiquitous ‘mini-cinema,’ entirely native to the personal computer and the World Wide Web… along with JPEGs and PNGs comprise its most authentic visual language.” Visually speaking— and as evidenced here on Tumblr more than anywhere—it seems that web designers (which all of us are now, to some degree) have grown comfortable enough with the web’s full range of graphic capabilities to permit the return of a file form once reviled for its distracting nature.
I think Lialina would agree with me here, however, that the resurgence of the GIF has perhaps as much (if not, less) to do with visual proclivities than it does with the social nature of the web as we now know it. Remember: the GIF has always been about making and exchanging free files. In fact, I just sent a GIF file of a snow white kitty puking blood, all Exorcist-like, to a friend as a birthday present. See: Free!
NB: The GIF above was made by Canadian artist Stephanie Davidson, whose new GIFS will be featured in a group show, Private Investigation, that opens at Mastadon Mesa in LA on September 15th.
+ Ubiquitous Minicinema (The Take/Guggenheim.org)
