Wiggling, jumping, looping images capturing individual moments fill every corner of the Internet. Those gifs—graphic interchange format, a.k.a. the twitching images you find in so many comment sections—not only provide endless hours of entertainment on Reddit forums, they’ve become a kind of shorthand in online conversation: a pixelated dancing banana or Shaq’s grinning shoulder-shimmy conveys an emotion in less than a second. But the repetitive nature of gifs holds more potential than mere meme savviness. For some, gifs represent the next phase of art. This Friday, three local artists take the medium out of isolated laptop viewing to display original gifs in a gallery setting.
The Gif Interaction Fest, G.I.F. for short, is Seattle’s first gif exhibition, but it’s not the first of its kind. Large-scale gif exhibitions have popped up occasionally, usually under the protective umbrella of a greater organization. Miami Art Week featured the exhibit “Moving the Still” in 2012. Gifs sourced internationally were displayed on a website and projected in a physical space. And San Francisco had UPLOAD.gif in 2013, a weekend extravaganza sponsored by multimedia art collective New Hive. Both placed original gif subjects alongside gifs created from found materials, photo projects next to gifs of Beyoncé dancing and Dumb and Dumber segments.
The creators of G.I.F., Sofia Lee, Kelton Sears and Trevor Crump are the millennial face of gif-making in Seattle. They’re all for those pop culture gifs, but Friday’s festival spotlights personal creations instead of movie clips. To them, gifs are the next level for highlighting human experience.
“My very first gif was right over there in that corner,” says Lee, gesturing diagonally from our table at the Capitol Hill Caffe Vita, where we sit with her fellow gif-makers. A moment of camera looseness led to her discovery. “My friend Liam was talking and pointing his finger, and I was just sitting there, click-click-click-click-click-click. And then I hit play, I went back and forth with the wheel, and was like, whoa. It looks like it’s moving.”
Everyday life fascinates Lee, whose gifs feature people in ordinary situations moving through the alchemic formula of rote tasks. “A lot of the universe exists in all these different, little repetitive motions,” says Lee, “When you chew you chew with the same muscles. This rhythmical, predictable motion, which I’ve found actually averages around sixteen frames. All my gifs end up being sixteen frames.” Her gifs are often stitched together, large enough to span across several panels, almost like a comic book. The images feel cinematic, small glances or dances, actions thumping repetitively.
Crump started by shooting gifs at local rock shows. Unlike the looping excerpts in which Lee specializes, Crump shoots with a 3-D camera on film to capture a single moment throbbing with life. He then works with the images in a way that fleshes them out, giving them kinetic motion that manifests actual space and time.
All three artists have an unseen beat to their work, an undercurrent revealed through the format’s constant looping. Stare at it long enough, and the movements almost sync with your heartbeat. “It’s this really meditative thing. You look at it and you just chill out,” says Sears, who integrates gif and gif comics into Seattle Weekly stories.
Sears also creates panels, but his gifs are inspired by a D.I.Y. ethos, more moving zines than fleeting moments. He features a subject’s miniscule motions, but overlays that with crude, pulsating handwriting. The quivering drills into the brain, an explosion of energy that cannot, will not, be contained. He cites Beavis and Butthead as a cultural inspiration. Looking at his gif text, it’s an obvious connection.
Lee and Crump met at Seattle Central Creative Academy, where they both study photography. Creating gifs drew the two photographers together. Lee began pushing for a gallery show, but it was once Crump connected with Sears that things started happening. “It couldn’t have been possible with any of us left out,” says Lee.
For G.I.F., Lee, Sears and Crump formulated a display from odds and ends. Some gifs will be shown through projectors, some through rented computer equipment, others on the artist’s personal tablets. “The way we’re doing it is pretty punky. The whole conceit of, oh haha, you’re in a gallery looking at something you just look at online,” says Sears.
Don’t let the punk vibe fool you; the creators all approach gif making as a serious new method of expression. “I mean I want to make art. I’m not trying to just make bullshit,” says Crump. Sears draws parallels between gifs and movies. Both took a while to come into their full form and be accepted as cultural currency. He believes the conversation about gifs is just beginning.
Still, none of the artists want gifs encased in untouchable respect. “We don’t want that stand and stroke your chin and nod your head kind of gallery experience,” says Lee, “It’s really sad when you go to this room filled with white walls and white ceilings, and then there’s a sign saying Do Not Touch.” The G.I.F. encourages touching. Interaction is key.
That’s where the scrolling hands-on GIF comix and mysterious “interactive 6-headed Hydra GIF Machine” touted on the Facebook event page come in, along with the photographic animations and ridiculously large GIF projections.
The GIF Interactive Fest takes place this Friday, April 17 at 7 p.m. at Gallery 1412. It’s all ages, free, and BYOB.
