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GIF Me, You Fool

By Marc Lostracco

5Aug09_streetcar_GIF.gif
Photo by Marc Lostracco/Torontoist.


Once upon a time, the computer world was viewed in only 256 colours. It was an era when consumers were wowed by aliased text and speckly, dithered sunsets. JPEG was an unknown acronym, and GIF was king. And before video, there was the animated GIF.
When the Mosaic browser blew the internet wide open in the early ’90s, the ability to embed crudely animated frames in a single image file was an essential part of the early web browsing experience, which frequently featured rotating globes, seizure-inducing backgrounds, and animated “Under Construction” workers. But what became overused eventually became passé, and as better image formats took over, the animated GIF format was relegated (apparently, un-ironically) to the technical ghetto known as MySpace.
But what is obsolete has a tendency to be resurrected as kitsch, which is where “Save For Web” comes in. Billing itself as “Toronto’s first animated GIF art show” and boasting an appropriately craptastic Angelfire website, the organizers are celebrating the re-appropriated retro art form with a three-day exhibition, highlighted by a concert on Friday featuring New Feelings, Actual Water, Jon McCurley, and MIDIs (natch!) by Michael DeForge.
Animated GIFs from “local and international artists” will be projected on the walls of XPACE from tomorrow until Saturday, sure to spur a new appreciation for the rich, 8-bit history of spinning mailboxes, ONTD user avatars, and dancing hamsters. Oh, and it’s supposed to be pronounced “jif.”
The “Save For Web” show runs from August 6–8 at the XPACE Cultural Centre, 58 Ossington Avenue; FREE. Doors open for Friday’s concert at 8 p.m.; $5.

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Comments

  • http://undefined tapesonthefloor

    HA! I like.

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    Of course it’s on Ossington.

  • http://www.guesswork.ca Patrick Metzger

    Only you could have written that first paragraph, Marc (that’s intended as a compliment.)

  • http://www.bitpicture.com Marc Lostracco

    I was raised in the more innocent era before Xtube and Goatse; when the 8-bit nudity of Leisure Suit Larry was scandalous, and when computers had turbo buttons (for recklessly jumping from 8 MHz to 11 MHz in Lotus 1-2-3).
    /single tear falls on my sheet of write-protect stickers

  • http://undefined Ben

    I thought you were the guy who was like 20 years old. Either your crib had a turbo button or I am confused.

  • http://undefined lunarworks

    So all the 19 year olds are amused by hideous animated GIFs now? I guess I suppose they’re the “cassette tape” of the web.
    I honestly never thought that “retro web” wouldn’t kick in that soon.

  • http://www.bitpicture.com Marc Lostracco

    I’m 37. And I’m nerdy enough to have had an email address from Toronto FreeNet in 1993—mind you, that was when web addresses were entered as IP numbers and when you got the email address that was auto-generated (like a5389bw@toronto.torfree.net).
    I also remember the first time I saw an animated GIF. It was amazing.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    My first computer had 8 colours. Except two of them were white and two were black. What I mean is that it had 6 colours.

  • http://undefined Svend

    I hate kitsch.
    Where’s the dislike button, dammit!

  • http://undefined W. K. Lis

    I still can’t find the UNDO button for the e-mail’s I send out.

  • http://undefined rek

    GIF is the new 8-Bit.

  • http://undefined xtremesniper

    Gmail has that feature now in the Labs. You can enable it and it gives you about 5 seconds to hit UNDO after you’ve sent an email and before it goes onto the interwebs.

  • mister j

    I’m tempted to dismiss this as totally vacuous, but I’ll go check out the installation…and try to remain open-minded.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    I’ll have you know that I’m the guy who is like 20 years old, not Old Oldstracco over there.

  • http://undefined Laura I

    This is the best thing.

  • http://undefined montauk

    The internet in the middle nineties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run…but no explanation, no mix of flashing “New! Updated!” buttons or MIDI files or animated GIFs can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and cyberspace. Whatever it meant. So now, less than ten years later, you can log into Myspace or Geocities or Angelfire, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rick-rolled back.

  • http://undefined smokestack

    WIRED just linked to this story, suggesting that GIFs should be relegated to “the world of retro-kitch art.”
    http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/8_Things_on_the_Web_We_d_Like_to_Throw_Down_a_Black_Hole