The New Demosceneoid GIF-scene

GIF is not something I feel like having an opinion about. I’ve always liked things like ulan-bator’s oldschool gaming oddities and Max Capacity’s VHS petscii etc. They are obviously putting a lot of effort into making good GIFs. Filesize, loopwise, colourwise. Enso also does nice works in the gif-format. The one below is one of my favourites by him, and you should check his exhibition at ani-gif.com.

There’s lots of GIFs that connect with the art world. Lately I’ve seen quite a few people doing complex geometrical gif-loops that connect more to the demoscene than the arts. Polyrhythmic clever visual trickeries that loop seamlessly into eternity. This interests me, because it seems to be inbetween mathematical geekery and design. Which is where the demoscene is sometimes too. When it’s not engulfed in mega-polygonal overloads of hi-res slime.

Things like this don’t really fit well anywhere, but they can still get very popular.

These loop artists use Processing and After Effects and powerful computers, I guess. But then they cram it all into the GIF-format. Often also in Tumblr’s version of gif (small filesize, low amount of frames, and various difficulties of getting Tumblr to accept your gif). Unsurprisingly, some of these artists are nowadays using Ello, which allows larger images and doesn’t rename the files you upload (which, for file-saving people like me, is strangely satisfying).

Anyway. Still feels demoscene-ish to me. So let’s hit the gifs. This is a quick and sloppy selection, but hey – atleast it’s something!

Echophon:

Big Blue Boo):

dvdp:

Bees and Bombs:

I’ll leave you with one final thought: ?