the re-materialization of commodification

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Four years after the rematerialization of art was beaten to a bloody pulp as a discussion topic, the corpse rises again in Jennifer Chan's 45 page meditation on net art commodification (intro/link to PDF).

Chan seems to have missed the re-materialization confab on Rhizome but it's the same issues. Without even the beginnings of a consensus on what net art is, by all means let's keep diving into the shallows of how it can be sold. In America (and maybe elsewhere) we don't know much about art but we loo-o-o-oove to talk about money, or our lack of it.

stretched pixel landscapes

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miller_screenshot

Screenshot/detail from large page of enlarged pixel animations by A. Bill Miller.
Miller is using Nullsleep's code to make browsers render pages accurately rather than mandatorily fuzzing them out.
Viewing Miller's ocean of pixels the right way inspires after a couple of years of browser (and Apple)-induced myopia. So this is what cyberspace looks like!

"New Shortcut"

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"New Shortcut" [mp3 removed -- some of this got incorporated into New Shortcut Medley, on Bandcamp]

MIDI drums and some FM percussion under live-synthesized dual leads.
One channel is an ADSR signal output used as a control voltage to sweep evenly down through a series of harmonized sine waves in a wavetable oscillator.
These sweeps themselves change pitch according to simple MIDI sequence.
The same sequence is also triggering a synth in the other channel - also a sine with slight FM modulation and heavy tremolo (almost like a "phone off the hook" sound).
The nursery room melodies of this and many other recent songs are inspired by the idea of what Carl Orff called "streetsongs" - simple figures anyone can play as an ensemble. The timbres of the electronic instruments are the main focus here.

invasion of the giant one bit gifs, part 4

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On the topic of GIF file sizes, maxlabor fleshes out* what was said about GIFs' lack of a "reference" frame rate:

[frame rate for gifs is] a result of how varied the source material is. i run into this issue whenever i composite more than one gif in {AfterEffects] and it's also interesting to see what happens when you do a similar operation on photoblaster.** people who work in data visualization often make gifs that are 100-200 fps, and have 7-30 frames. those who work in film and video (even animators) have to abide by motion picture / broadcast standards like 29.97/23.98/25 fps. people who make gifs from scratch can choose whatever frame rate they want in their various softwares and often choose more antiquated frame rates like 8 or 15fps.

and

if i take footage shot at 24fps and want to make a gif out of it, the frame rate dictates the fidelity of the gif. in the 360-frame gif you're talking about,*** there is no fidelity to speak of, because it is merely an abstract thing that moves nicely. fidelity doesn't really matter for most people on the internet, but i never remove frames from footage to reduce file size -- if anything, i edit the action (i.e. in and out points)

To each one's own - editing the length or number of frames is all fair game - it's the result that matters. Maybe you want the GIF to look like a poorly restored silent movie.

*he wasn't fleshing out so much as disputing the post before reading all of it (which he later thoughtfully acknowledged)
**a gif mashup site
***the giant one-bit GIF in question