gifts were established as a free and
sort of like usable part of the web gifs
are great because it's a low berry
venture anybody can play around and it's
fun
the animated Jeff for us was just a
photograph that could move and existed
forever this is a photograph that is
still alive and so we were already
thinking beyond the limitations of the
file name an animated gif is an image
that's been encoded using the graphics
interchange format where it has multiple
frames and coded into a single image
file and a web browser or other software
will play those images back in animated
sequence automatically the original gift
specification came out in 1987 early
example of gifts that you see are flames
like flames are very popular and the
waving American flag is all over the
place most notoriously is the under
construction gift but then by the time
you get to like 95 96
you've got the release of the Netscape
Browser and these web browsers that can
automatically animate them and all of a
sudden you see this new spike in
popularity but following that there's a
sudden division between the web 1.0 70s
and 80s and 90s and then web 2.0 of like
the 2000s moving forward so the idea of
using gifts becomes way less fashionable
but around 2007-2008 popularity is
swinging back up people start to realize
that you can use gifts for tons of
different things like now that we're in
2011 2012 there's more gifts online but
you also have way more places to put on
things like Reddit and Tumblr WordPress
even like Twitter to a certain degree so
you're seeing actually this like
postmodern gifts and the tools for gift
creation are becoming more widespread
gifs can be anything but what unites
gifs is that they're short and they are
something that most tumblr users can
create themselves people are sharing
more I think Tyler definitely has a part
of that humans really like repetition we
feel comfortable with it and sometimes
just the longer you watch something the
funnier gets or it'll actually change
meanings you have the glitch art you
have pixel art TV movies and you have
stuff that you can't even really
categorize I think it's mostly young
people driving for them definitely
because it enhances their online persona
just being able to make some of those
makes you so cool it's uncharted
territory and I think really anything
has the possibility of the potential
being our form but certainly around
animated gifs we've seen a
transformation we've seen them go from
just people taking TV shows we see
people making original stuff with
mashups between video games movie
characters and even tumblr memes I think
there's other new art forms waiting to
be discovered that we just haven't
figured out yet
so we were doing fashion editorials and
that's all magazines and things like
that and the fashion world really didn't
latch on to the internet so we wanted to
push that it makes sense that the web is
there why put a still picture online
that image can now move so instead of
making still pictures you would make
animated pictures and they would just go
on infinitely forever
everyone always describes our work as
creepy what's creepy about it but our
work is very playful so I mean I think
the two biggest inspirations is one the
web we work off a memes and memes are in
our work they're just a kid making
something funny with their friend and
tossing it up online because because
memes come from you know accidents but
besides that videogames it lends itself
to like videogame culture like playing a
game and you know blowing people up on
the moon and slaying dragons and things
like that it's just this idea that you
could be anything and you can be going
anywhere
I mean these are possible in games we
get bored really really quick and it's
always about doing the next thing and
technology and it used to be that art
was in museums on walls and now of a
sudden with this thing of the web and
art on screens all of a sudden you go to
the MoMA and there's a screen with art
on it so we just want to be there
there's opportunities with this kind of
hybrid medium to show people something
they've never seen before
to have these moments that can just
exist forever see this little magical
warp of time we could live within a
moment within that moment like to dream
of something and then create it in a
camera and share it with people and let
them dream with you just for a moment it
allows a moment to live on and there's
something kind of fascinating about that
whatever that one thing is that is alive
is what your eyes gonna go to it sets
the emotional impact what the cinema
graph will be it's a big creative
decision for us like what moment to
focus on we have a single graphic called
Anna sees everything she's watching the
show and it's kind of like a little
portrait of her this is what she does
for a living so like watching the
footage of Bill Cunningham he doesn't
take a picture of every model then walks
by but he likes something he likes it
and shoots it when he doesn't he doesn't
and he doesn't even think about it so
like we get to learn something and
watching somebody for hours on end while
we work on it we understand them it's so
voyeuristic you look like you should
look away but then you can watch it and
so then you can watch it some more as I
go the simplicity of it I feel is really
beautiful and we see it as an evolution
of photography if you think of all the
ways that photography is displayed these
are areas that we want to go into
there's little parts of it that are
alive and you can choose to engage in
depth into the art or you can choose to
just glance at it it's the
and essentially something you'd never
seen before
who are those people for whom like they
thinking gifts or like they almost speak
in gifts I think once you get to that
point yeah
make sure it's art the idea of art has
changed and we've always seen moline get
away with it's fun when we started
making these we were calling them and it
may adjust but it was so much more than
that it's just too new and I love being
a part of this at a time when we're just
figuring it out
we should say again it's not a gift to
Jeff Jeff Jeff is how I learned it first
the founder of the format of Jeff the
CompuServe guy is ancient internet
history here he said choosy developers
choose Jeff like the peanut butter we
can talk about why you should say gift
because it doesn't sound like peanut
butter let's find this guy my
understanding is that this guy prefers
Jeff so you got to represent for the
Creator I say we got to go with the
inventor of the format your affix
everyone says gift it's chip