tom moody

on Rising Tensions.

Or, gloppy rainbow liquids jet from water glasses to exchange information (or gametes) in two-dimensional space.

From wikipedia: "he is on a search for a wind that is sweeping across his land and destroying any plant [life]... He can reshape his entire body into several forms for some of his attacks using a plant theme, and plant smaller, child like versions of himself. He is one of the few characters in the game also to feature a healing assist." (emphasis added)

original kandinsky homage on rising tensions

Spent a day remaking some old posts that were altered by the blog's new format and/or changing browser specs. It's one thing to say, "the web interprets code as it will, man," and quite another to see a fairly straightforward idea wrecked by someone trying to idiot-proof all users' experience. There is a distinction between being mad at "the web" (pointless) vs being mad at individual designers who happen to have a bad idea (whose minds might be changed through constant ridicule).

Matt Smear made a GIF I posted a while back showing how the grid above was being read in an RSS reader. Made a slight design tweak and am curious how impervious it renders this to good taste, so am reposting.

Also redone were enlargements of Charles Westerman's shrinkages of a couple of earlier GIFs, and this layered molecule animation. Folks with Macs (the "smooth jazz" of computers) will get to see these works for the first time--woo, yay.

Update: Ha, well bloglines reads the above GIF array now as a solid rectangle blinking red and orange. Not really an improvement over evenly spaced stripes, since it is the intervals that would seem to be the point here. "We don't do intervals."

Update 2: Not to overdo the self-exigesis but there are also horizontal intervals here: the lightning-like irregular arcs that crackle across the grid when the browser attempts to transition simultaneously all the (identical) vertical stripe color changes. This behavior will change across browsers.

Paddy Johnson asked 18 people to make a single pick for her 2009 best of the web post. Mine was Stephanie Davidson aka Rising Tensions (who made the GIF above). Davidson stands out on the list as the only artist making use of the web as a medium (both as content generator and aggregator). Other "best of" picks focused on individual freaky, aesthetic, or informative single web works. Not sure what conclusions to draw from that except maybe that the web is still a place of momentary sensations for most people and not a place for a sustained body of work.

remix of found GIF of a "popular superhero" (missing in action)

Large version (more exciting)

Am continuing to remake previously-posted GIFs (this one a cpb.tumblr enlarged thumbnail) in an effort to keep up with changes in browser technology: the slicker and smarter your Web experience gets, the GIFs will look older and clunkier.

moving version - GIF by Paul Robertson (thx to Travis for helping me identify the author)

Screencapture from the Amiga-made video "Center Core Never More" (via jmb on Rhizome--scroll to bottom of post). Early '90s, home computer animation.

Another animation captured for posterity, a bit too large for the blog bytewise: [700 KB .GIF]