The Chans Explained

That is, 4chan, 7chan, etc.--collective sites of posts by mostly anonymous users that serve as breeding grounds for animated GIFs and other "meme" art. Vijay Pattisapu has an informative rundown on them in the Rhizome.org discussion forum. Some have furrowed their brows wondering how that kind of anarchic creative energy, native to the world wide web, can be translated into capital A art. But they have not furrowed their brows enough for some other people, as can be seen on the same Rhizome thread.