tom moody

top to bottom: charles/me via timb; unknown via stefan; unknown via [not sure] (all appeared recently on dump.fm)

top to bottom: unicorngirl, unicorngirl, ryder

GIF above originally posted by halgand_cc on 544x378webtv (archives, week of 07/13/2003 - 07/19/2003)

Back when we were debating the "internet surf clubs" on Rhizome.org (conclusion: the Rhizome regulars said it wasn't art and if it was, it was something they invented), a commenter traced the idea of group image/may-or-may-not-be-art blogs back to the earliest days of blogging, late '90s-early '00s, in France I think. I first noted the phenom with 544 x 378 (Web TV) (see above). Nasty Nets came three years later, and added the term "internet surfing club" (pissing off a generation of academic net artists).

Tumblr blogs are too many and diffuse to be pigeonholed but their communal features and broad participation make the '06-'09 surf clubs seem creaky (the latter have drastically slowed their posting pace, anyway).

Now dump.fm has taken the concept(s) and sped them up even more with the addition of a live chat feature. Putting images in chat has been around--Yahoo! had a feature where two chatters could work on the same drawing in real time, using paintbox controls--maybe it still does. Dump.fm allows image and GIF uploads to a single public chat screen (also webcam shots) and is simultaneously creating a tumblr-like blog archive for each chatter consisting of that uploaded content.

The changing speed of the discussion and image uploading is not for the old or weak of heart. Chat is hell for me due to an inability to express myself in thoughts under a paragraph. (Twitter is fine for one-liners but lousy for conversations.) With chat you have to mesh quickly with the "house vibe" and have no ego about losing your precious words and pictures quickly in a volatile stream.

artist unknown - title by jakechase82

artist uncertain--custard posted it, among others

from rising tensions

4 x 64 GIF (from ulillillia via rising tensions) stretched to 450 x 400 and smoothed by...your browser!

Similar experiments with the aesthetics of involuntary smoothing (but more complex than the one above) are being done at renders.in. The issues are explained here.

Accepting data added to your images against your will by herd-following programmers and designers, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the anti-aliasing of everything.

The image above will be seen as "normal" on the SeaMonkey browser or Internet Explorer 6. In other words, by very few. It might surprise you to know the purple smear in the middle of this GIF is a clean line dividing red and blue. But it doesn't matter. Must...stop...caring.

One of my doodles is making the tumblr rounds.
Another tumblr blog (where the GIF above came from) swallowed my digitalmediatree blog whole [update, Aug. 2010, looks like mom pulled the plug on that site, links to it replaced with digitalmediatree links]. Well, not really--someone is making choices at least.
e.g.,
Mondo Mondo Trading Post with the caption "oh my god."
Bill Schwarz found drunk tank photo.
Jessica Ciocci
Kara Hammond (one of my first blog posts)
My photo of a Leif Ritchey installation detail.
Oops, I'm putting the verbal context back in.

Update: Due to tumblr's archive limit many images referred to here are now gone from this heavy user's archive, to make space for David Bowie.

Update 2: New tumblr archive format: every image on a blog is now thumbnailized on a single page - woa.

Update 3: As noted above, the heavy user's site is now gone.

from Rising Tensions