GIF art is a form of digital art that first emerged in 1987. The technology for the animated GIF has become increasingly advanced through the years. After 2010, a new generation of artists focused on experimenting with its potential for presenting creativity on the World Wide Web. Mass access to the Internet allowed their GIFs to travel rapidly and virally online, through social platforms such as Tumblr and Giphy, and to be recognized as a new form of art.
GIF art has been around since the year 1987, increasingly gaining attention from the audience some years after 2000. [1] one of the earlier implementation of GIF art can be traced back to web design in which they were used as banners, later they were adopted into the greater meme culture as a niche and have now become a staple on the internet through social media most notably from Giphy, Reddit and Tumblr.
GIF art animations have been exhibited in galleries and festivals around the world. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Some works are exhibited in the form of physical, lenticular printed images. Contemporary art galleries [6] and institutions like the Museum of the Moving Image (New York City) are popular among many young artists. [7] [8]
Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are either tradtional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms.
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on June 15, 1987.
A zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion, by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. A zoetrope is a cylindrical variant of the phénakisticope, an apparatus suggested after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in 1833. The definitive version of the zoetrope, with replaceable film picture film strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful.
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names have been used to describe digital art, including computer art, electronic art, multimedia art, and new media art.
The Computer Museum was a Boston, Massachusetts, museum that opened in 1979 and operated in three locations until 1999. It was once referred to as TCM and is sometimes called the Boston Computer Museum. When the museum closed and its space became part of Boston Children's Museum next door in 2000, much of its collection was sent to the Computer History Museum in California.
Paper Rad was an art collective from approx. 2000 until 2008, based on the East Coast in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Providence, Rhode Island in the United States. Known for creating comics, zines, video art, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and music with a distinct "lo-fi" aesthetic often associated with underground culture or 1990s "retro tech", juxtaposed images and featuring bright colors.
Olia Lialina is an Internet artist and theorist, an experimental film and video critic and curator.
Matthew Weinstein is a noted and versatile contemporary American visual artist, installation sculptor and film maker.
Internet art is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the physical gallery and museum system. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work of art. Artists working in this manner are sometimes referred to as net artists.
Betaworks is an American startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York City that invests in network-focused media businesses.
Jason Eppink is an American curator, designer, and prankster. His projects emphasize participation, mischief, surprise, wonder, generosity, transgression, free culture, and anti-consumerism, and they are staged in public spaces and online as street art, urban interventions, and playful online services and hoaxes, frequently for non-consenting audiences.
Giphy, styled as GIPHY, is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search for and share animated GIF files.
Claudia Hart is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. She has been active as an artist, curator and critic since 1988. She creates virtual representations that take the form of 3D imagery integrated into photography, animated loops and multi-channel animation installations.
Lorna Mills is a Canadian net.art and new media artist who is known for her digital animations, videos, and GIFs. Mills has done work in other mediums such as installations. Her work explores how "the notion of public decency is anachronistic" Her use of GIFs are gathered through the dark net which includes 4chan, pornfails, and Russian domains. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Amalia Soto, known as Molly Soda, is a Brooklyn-based internet performance artist. Soda works across a variety of digital platforms, producing selfies videos, GIFs, zines, and web-based performance art, which are presented both online and in gallery installations in a variety of forms. Molly Soda's work explores the technological mediation of self-concept, contemporary feminism, cyberfeminism, mass media and popular social media culture. Molly Soda is the co-editor with Arvida Byström of the 2017 book Pics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned from Instagram.
Erdal İnci is a Turkish new media artist, as well as painter, photographer, filmmaker and Graffiti artist based in Istanbul. He is primarily known for his cloned action looped videos, which are presented online in a reduced GIF format. He studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Hacettepe University, graduating in 2005.
AS Long As Possible (ASLAP) (2015–2017) is a 1,000-year long animated GIF made by Finnish artist Juha van Ingen. It premiered at Kiasma National Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki on 28 March 2017. The animation is created in collaboration with developer and sound artist Janne Särkelä.
LaTurbo Avedon is an avatar artist, curator, the designer and founder of Panther Modern. Their work emphasizes the practice of nonphysical identity and authorship since 2008–2009. They have explored the growing relationship between users and virtual environments. They create this body of work using the simulation tools of the current moment. The genesis of their identity occurred in various profile creation processes, eventually taking a more rigid form in Second Life.
Milos Rajković is a Serbian animator known by the pseudonym Sholim.
RaFia Santana is a non-binary American artist, musician, and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work ranges from animated gifs to self-portraiture, videos, and performance to editioned clothing and electronic music exploring gentrification, the millennial mindset, mental health, and the lived black experience. They use the internet as a medium to share their artwork, empower black and brown communities, and challenge ideas of solidarity and alliance. She had exhibitions and/or performances at the Eyebeam, AdVerse Fest, SleepCenter, Times Square Arts, International Center of Photography, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Babycastles, Museum of the Moving Image and Museum of Contemporary African Disaporan Arts, Roots & Culture amongst many notable venues. Her work has been featured in publications such as Huffington Post, HyperAllergic, Rhizome, ArtFCity, Vogue, Teen Vogue and Salon. They have participated in panels, performances and discussions such as Cultured Magazine, "Late at Tate Britain", Creative Tech Week NYC, Afrotectopia at Google NYC, NYU, "Black Portraitures IV: The Color of Silence" at Harvard University and International Center for Photography. Their music is released through Never Normal Records.