iylshowcase:MY GIF IS ART, OK?by Luke ActonThe gif being native to the internet, the art side of t
iylshowcase: MY GIF IS ART, OK?by Luke ActonThe gif being native to the internet, the art side of the medium is in the minority. Fine art and rare Pepe memes, some memes are gifs but not all gifs are memes. The relationship between the visual languages of photographs and moving images is changing. The gif has yet to work out its own conventions and so everything is experimental, unlike mature mediums such as film where there is an established relationship between cuts and shots in film, or those of composition, colour, lighting in photography.Change is a catalyst for art, change in technology and change in society. The internet being the most important invention in communication since the Gutenberg Press, photography is not exempt from its influence. And photography’s influence is all over in internet and visual culture. The internet changing photography and photography changing the way we communicate on the internet, everything affecting everything, the gif forming memes, and art competing in the Saatchi (the Saatchi contest was shit despite the prestige). This all being the case while still being very much a native of internet culture.The recently IYL featured Josh Ethan Johnson uses gif to simulate depth perception in his images, adding another dimension, or at least significantly enhancing it. The perspective and composition of the photograph altered by the movement so you think about where everything’s going and where it is in the image. It also removes an element of the static image: you cannot inspect it for every detail in one frame, a temporal aspect has been added. It is like a wallpaper print in that the end goes into the beginning goes into the end. Experimentation is how you find out and that is happening so look out. These artists working in the medium still have a while to find their place in the artistic landscape, between the popular and the ‘high’ especially. Although this is less prominent for photographers using the medium than artists like Pi-Slices, using solely computer generated images, they still have few conventions to fall back on. Don’t be lazy, this is great! Nothing is cliché because clichés don’t exist yet. Just taste, and the right scene, update your Instagram – who you follow! It’ll all work out. In the work of artists like Canek Zapata Carminas and Isabella Auer, the use of glitches and collages of disparate images highlights the medium’s roots in digital culture. Maybe in something that could be called a genre they both share an aesthetic vein. Different to Johnson’s more photographic focus they are aimed at the degradation and reshaping of the visual. Motion being an inherently temporal element, no gif from any of the artists have a definite beginning or end like the rest of the media that utilises the moving image. I think this necessarily lends itself to abstraction and ambiguity. At the same time, the gif does have a past in the sense that its essential components are still images. So as much as it can challenge visual and photographic conventions, it also is from them. These are the gif’s initial conditions. Robin Davey speaking with the Guardian said: “For me, it’s a supplemental skill to my career in illustration and animation. With that said, gifs have been hugely valuable in popularising my work and getting my name out there.” This is the position of the medium as of writing. Another tool in the belt of artists, a supplement to photography as a larger practice. Gifs for gifs’ sake is far away. Despite efforts to bring it into the physical world, with lenticular printing and digital frames, it belongs in the internet and it there that these excited, creative people will work. -- source link