I was interviewed for an article on animated gifs, but nothing I said ever made
it into the article.
Here is the article (in three parts, in Spanish) by Pilar Díez:
http://www.notodo.com/tecno/web/3574_gifmondo_i_pxel_nivel_dios.html
http://www.notodo.com/tecno/formatos/3587_gifmondo_ii_la_dicha_en_movimiento.html
http://www.notodo.com/tecno/formatos/3596_gifmondo_iii_la_gran_traca_final.html
Below is the interview.
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>> I'm working on an article which is going to be called GIFmondo and it's
>> about recent GIF art bloom and, although I know your artistic work is not
>> mainly based on pure GIF format development, I have notice that you are
>> involved with this topic. When did you really started to do it? Why?
>
> I use gifs in my web art. I have a site called playdamage.org that I started
> around 2001. It's not just single animated gifs. It's usually several
> animated gifs that are tiled, stretched, and stacked on top of each other
> using HTML and CSS code. Animated gifs can be transparent, so you can see
> through parts of them to what is beneath them. Also, png-24 images can be
> semi-transparent. So you can begin to "stack" layers of gifs on top of each
> other, creating a kind of animated collage.
>
> My original, self-imposed restrictions for playdamage were that each page
> could be no fatter than 250K. So with this restriction, video was out of the
> question. Animated gifs are great because you can get a lot of impact out of
> them in terms of motion, but they download very quickly. Also, they are kind
> of like micro-cinema, like early forms of cinema (kinetoscopes, etc.), before
> there was Hollywood cinema. So animated gifs force you to be minimal and
> focus on small moments or events rather than a larger story. In this sense,
> they are more like animated paintings than they are like videos.
>
> Here is a group animated gif project I started around 2000.
> http://playdamage.org/quilt/
> This one does use discrete, single gifs (as quilt squares).
>
>
>> GIF art or net.art looks to have not only a format dilemma or trend but also
>> a matter of size, position and way of showing the pieces. It looks to have
>> its own laws and rules. Do you consider GIF art or net art could be an art
>> itself such as painting, sculpture... for this reason?
>
> Yes, gifs are a their own medium. Gif art and net art are not the same thing.
> You can make net art without ever using gifs, and you can project gifs on the
> wall in a gallery without being on the internet. Even single gifs are
> different than the gif collages that I make at playdamage.
>
>
>> Do you recognize a net art scene or a specific GIF art scene? Do you think
>> is or will be a trend on art? How do you see the present of net art? Do you
>> think this conditions (scale, size...) are essential matters or topics for
>> any net artist? Do you feel like internet is the museum of your work or do
>> you consider other (more physical, less ethereal or virtual) ways of
>> exhibition?
>
> There is a resurgent interest in animated gifs associated with Olia Lialina
> and a kind of lo-res/retro fetishization of the early internet. This has to
> do with cheezy, kitsch gifs that are either found on the internet, or
> "original" gifs created in this cheezy style.
>
> Then there are communities like dump.fm that use found and original gifs to
> participate in a kind of visual dialogue (gif as glyph).
>
> Then there are other artists like Francois Gamma who make really beautiful,
> complex original gifs that don't have anything to do with crappy early
> internet gifs. Since gifs are RSS-able (re-bloggable), you get group
> photoblog cultures (surf clubs, computers club) that reblog and aggregate the
> original animated gifs of their members.
>
> playdamage.org doesn't really fit in with any of these cultures, because I'm
> not creating any single, stand-alone animated gif just for itself. The gifs I
> make are meant to be used in conjunction with page layout code in order to
> make a larger collage; but you can't really re-blog these entire screens (you
> can just link to them). Whereas any single animated gif can be re-blogged or
> tumblr'd indefinitely. So in that sense, the group photoblog (or blog, or
> tumblr) becomes like an online gallery. You are not merely posting a jpg
> snapshot of an offline painting. When you re-blog the gif, you are presenting
> the actual, original artwork right there on your blog.
>
> As far as formal conditions of the medium, it is just cell animation. You
> could use the same techniques and then export your animation from photoshop
> to a quicktime movie instead of an animated gif. Some people make really fat
> gifs (that exceed 10 MB). But tumblr won't let you post such large gifs. So
> if you want to participate in the re-blog gif culture, you can't just make a
> huge, fat gif. So the bandwidth constraints of the network still force the
> gifs to be minimal.
>
>
>> If you don't mind, could you tell me about other .GIF or net artists who you
>> like and why?
>
> artists (old and new):
> http://toliademidov.ru/crash/
> { http://fontgraphic.jp/2004/zx26green/index.html *
> http://web.archive.org/web/20040410092131/http://www.fontgraphic.com/zx26/index_tes.html
> }
> http://www.computersclub.org/club/?author=15
> http://pandaclock.com/phantom_hand/?cat=11
> http://antlerswifi.com/
> I like them because their work is pretty and cool!
>
> My favorite gif artist is Katie Bush:
> http://lovekatie.com/
> http://destroyevil.com/
> She is great because she does fullscreen collage work that critiques
> capitalism in a surreal, disturbing, hilarious way.
>
> and this is a great gif gallery:
> http://ani-gif.com/about/
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