Internet - FUUUCK!

Sometimes you strike gold.

Changegasm

This is hypnotic.

That's terrible! Still to come on this programme ...

No no no! or: My Hair is Getting so Long!

ballet1.gif

New version of this GIF from the Commons.

Different Types of Movable Bridges

Different Types of Movable Bridges from You Had Better Know.

There is a large collection of movable bridge anigifs in the Wikimedia Commons, I like this configuration best.

Animated GIFs at Wikimedia Commons

Throughout my various random searches across Google Images I have found a number of interesting animated GIFs, many of which came from Wikimedia Commons. Now, I know I'm slow to process things, but even I'm surprised at how long it took for me to just search the commons for GIFs, because there's a very large collection of high quality (technical and content wise) images available. Wikimedia Commons was set up by volunteers as a "media file repository" and looks for members of the public to contribute bits of educational material, such as animated GIFs, but also looks for video, sound, still images, and text to be shared on its site. Most images are technical illustrations or diagrams demonstrating various mechanical actions, theorems, processes ...





But some stuff is just weird (and entertaining) ...

"New Internationalism" and the Information Aesthetic

Throughout the year, my programme offers guest lectures by various artists and academics that deal with contemporary art practice and thought. Yesterday we had our first visiting lecturer, Neil Mulholland. He introduced himself with this Powerpoint presentation he made originally for a panel discussion at the Frieze Art Fair 2005 on New Internationalism which asked:

Does the rapid development of new art centres encourage greater cultural diversity, or has it resulted in a new international orthodoxy? How can discourse keep up with information?

This was his response:



The context he presented it in for yesterday's talk, however, was not New Internationalism, but for the potential of Art Writing as an alternative to traditional criticism and art historical texts. He argued that Art Writing, as a mise-en-scène, can offer information and criticism without necessarily being mimetic, allowing for greater freedom in the act of writing.

In this context the video (the format we're seeing it in now - as Powerpoint it embodies the tone of the presentation a lot more authentically) is not only an ironic answer to the panel's question, but an exploration of language as well. This typically American style of corporate speak or legalese is used to poke fun at the corporatisation of contemporary art through art fairs and biennales (it also reflects artspeak's own obtuseness) but also looks to it as a new development in language with its own value and merit. It's a linguistic turn with a similar aesthetic value as the images he chose to illustrate his presentation, and one that reminded me a lot of the image bookmarking and surf club scenes.

I guess you could say it's the information aesthetic, but a kind of nostalgic information aesthetic - one that hearkens back to a more innocent time when artificial visual and linguistic representations of utopia had a nice plastic, almost Orwellian, quality, and computers were a pleasant shade of pale taupe.

Animated Found Images

I think I miss snow ...

Images from Getty Footage - they have nice little storyboard images for every video.

(lol)Cat GIFs II! (+ Bonus!)

So it's been nearly two months since my first cat GIF post and, though I thought I'd gotten it out of my system then, it turns out I'm still saving most of the cat GIFs that I see and enjoy. Before the collection gets too big, I'll share a few of my current favourites. Again, the images come from various sources, mostly re-bloggers that found the images elsewhere and, again, original sources have long disappeared, all except the "Sun Burst Cat" which comes from Sally McKay (and thanks to TM for finding that sweet laser-eyed cat).








And now for the bonus!!! Kids (and a cat, to ensure smooth transition between main feature and bonus) getting kicked!!!





Moral of the story? GTF out of the way!!

dancing_bear.gif

Rehashing of this animated GIF.

Sometimes things go wrong in a good way.



And sometimes they don't ... or do they?