Spinning Beach Ball of Death, a performance by Improv Everywhere:
“For our latest mission, a presenter at the TED conference has his talk interrupted by the Mac spinning wait cursor, commonly known as the “Spinning Beach Ball of Death.” As he stands awkwardly and waits, things get weird.”
“GIFs are one of the oldest image formats used on the web. Throughout their history, they have served a huge variety of purposes, from functional to entertainment. Now, 25 years after the first GIF was created, they are experiencing an explosion of interest and innovation that is pushing them into the terrain of art. In this episode of Off Book, we chart their history, explore the hotbed of GIF creativity on Tumblr, and talk to two teams of GIF artists who are evolving the form into powerful new visual experiences.”
Another great video by PBS Off Book series.
“For decades now, people have joined together online to communicate and collaborate around interesting imagery. In recent years, the pace and intensity of this activity has reached a fever pitch. With countless communities engaging in a constant exchange, building on each others’ work, and producing a prodigious flow of material, we may be experiencing the early stages of a new type of artistic and cultural collaboration. In this episode of Off Book, we’ll speak with a number of Internet experts and artists who’ll give us an introductory look into this intriguing new world.”
Featuring:
Chris Menning, Viral Trends Researcher, Buzzfeed
MemeFactory, Internet Researchers
Olivia Gulin, Visual Reporter, Know Your Meme
Ryder Ripps, Artist and Co-Creator, Dump.fm
John Kelly, PH.D., Founder and Chief Scientist, Morningside Analytics
Meet the mighty Leslie Hall…
[via]
A song about wasting time on the internet. Music by The Limousines, video directed by Mathieu Wothke.
A little too catchy but fun.
“We’ll end up numb from playing video games
and we’ll get sick of having sex.
And we’ll get fat from eating candy
as we drink ourselves to death.
We’ll stay up late
making mix tapes,photoshoping pictures of ourselves
while masturbate to these pixelated videos
of strangers fucking themselves.”
Required reading: “Five Emotions Invented By The Internet“, on thoughtcatalog.com…
“The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation. During this time the individual will have several windows open, generally several browser ‘tabs,’ a Microsoft Word document in some state of incompletion, the individual’s own Facebook page as well as that of another randomly-selected individual who may or may not be on the ‘friends’ list, 2-5 Gchat conversations that are no longer immediately active, possibly iTunes and a ‘client’ for Twitter. The individual will switch between the open applications/tabs in a fashion that appears organized but is functionally aimless, will return to reading some kind of ‘blog post’ in one browser tab and become distracted at the third paragraph for the third time before switching to the Gmail inbox and refreshing it again.”
Art Fag City just published an anonymous (of course!) essay named What Relational Aesthetics Can Learn From 4Chan. This is a refreshing reading, indeed. The only problem is that art people who are not familiar with Internet Culture simply won’t get it…
‘There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.’
Vannevar Bush, ‘As We May Think’, 1945
TRAILBLAZERS is a live web surf event where you can show off your PRO surfing skills. No keyboard, no google, just pure links! At the event, the participants use a prepared computer with a modified browser: the address bar is removed and each click on a link is tracked by a counter. The goal is to get from one website to an other one by just clicking on links.
[via today and tomorrow]
