optidisc 3D

1350497836556-dumpfm-woodfloors-optibreak

woodfloors made this version of the venerable OptiDisc gif
Don't break it on my account, wf, but if you're going to mess with it might as well go all the way. (Looks great.)
Wf has a web app he's working on that enables you to jack with the disc in many other ways but until it's Windows-friendly it doesn't exist -- just kidding! Meaning I haven't played with it yet.
File under: anti-contemplative

OptiDisc Addenda

Thanks to Paddy Johnson for the plug on her page and for using my artwork in her masthead. Just to be totally "meta," I added a couple of notes to her text.

"The piece is meant to be big, dumb, and iconic, a moving, pulsing symbol of both the promise and failure of technology," said Tom Moody of OptiDisc* during Geeks in the Gallery, a detail of which now resides in my masthead. Aesthetically the gif looks just as Moody describes it, the rings klutzy yet mildly hypnotic; though past this, its life as a meme underscores the artist’s excitement and reservations about the web as a medium. Referencing artists such as Kenneth Noland and Jasper Johns, without reiterating color field painting or Minimalism, Optidisc speaks as clearly to a tradition of Fine Art painting, as it does regular surfers looking for something "different" for their myspace page.**

* The wall-sized projected version.

** This version of the GIF has "gone viral," meaning it has been used on scores of MySpace, YouTube, and LiveJournal pages, and as a web graphic and avatar. (example) I have been collecting screen shots wherever it appears and I have 60 so far (the ones that hotlink the image from my server). I'm saving them out of simple boredom/vanity but also for a work in progress--more "meta" web stuff. Here's a group of thirty screen shots on my studio floor.

Very Large OptiDisc

pol.iceman

Am continuing to document, with screenshots, the appearances of my OptiDisc GIF on the world wild web (as wallpaper, avatars, etc), as sort of a meta-meta-bored at home project. This may not be up long, but please check out pol.iceman's handiwork for his Yahoo! profile--he has enlarged the GIF like a gazillion times. He might be amused to know that's how it was also displayed in a gallery context--although not limited by browser size and viewed in pieces via scrolling. (I'm assuming this is someone I don't know.)

Update: It's gone, so I removed the link and added the screenshot above. It's quite possible it was a mistake and that the user sized the image incorrectly. Oh, well, good while it lasted (less than a day?).