Why I Choose GIFs
I used to paint with oils on canvas as a daily practice. I used to show these paintings in galleries. And the more I studied art history, the more this archaic medium felt like an awkward anachronism.
But I don’t use pencils or paint brushes anymore. I only use a computer. I make digital art meant for the largest, most ubiquitous gallery in world history: the internet.
There are digital analogues to all of the traditional art forms. You can paint, draw, and sculpt on the computer. You can do digital photography and make videos and animation. And you can upload all this stuff to the internet.
But there is one digital art form that is exclusive to an internet browser, and does not belong anywhere else. It is the GIF.
A GIF is a thing that can ONLY live on the internet. You can’t put it on a gallery wall, or a TV/movie screen. It’s not a damn video so there’s no play button, time slider, nor volume control nor any sound at all. It lives and moves without your input. It is a pure denizen of the internet.
When you export a GIF from Photoshop, you have this little option- do you want it to loop Once or Forever?
I always chose Forever.
If I animate a running wolf, and I turn it into a GIF, it will run forever, long after I’m gone, and it will not wait for anyone to press “play.”
The GIF format also compresses the hell out of the image. The crunch really fucks with the look of it, messes with the colors and makes it look all pixely. It gives it a sort of lo-fi retro feel, and by “retro” I mean Y2K era internet. The Golden Age of the internet. But the GIF is still being used 20 years later. It is more popular than ever. It is timeless.
The GIF will slide easily into Web 3.0. I am putting my GIFs on the immutable blockchain, ensuring that this early creature of the internet will indeed live forever.
