GIF & ARCHITECTURE                                                              Visual Practice as Critique

Animated GIF: Theory and Practice

Short educational programme about animated GIF is conducted in three parts: the introductory public lecture, workshop with participants and final exhibition of their works.

The lecture is focused on history of animated GIF, its cultural and technical characteristics through analysis of selected GIFs that are classified in the following groups:

1. beginnings of animated GIF – websites of corporations. Relation to XIX Century optical toys 
2. reaction GIFs 
3. frame grab (frame capture) GIFs and animated culture
4. collages and interventions on visual materials 
5. glitch and kaleidoscope effect
6. artistic illustrations and animations 
7. authored documentations: time-lapse photography and stop-motion film (architecture and art)

The workshop is organised through field work with students within an urban area or a single building which is an example of modernist architectural and cultural heritage. Students approach it through art research in form of photographs and animated GIFs, focusing on pedestrians, movement, open space, model of the object, light in interior space, facade, staircases, etc. Though individual work and consultations with the lecturer, students consider additional visual effects, manipulations, editing and interventions on the digital or analogue material they created, as well as the ways in which the works can be exhibited.

The resulting exhibition will present the created works in two ways. All final animated GIFs will be projected in continuum in order to be seen in their final form. Apart from that, each GIF will be presented in analytic-deconstructive form so that each of its fames/layers is seen. This segment is of particular importance because GIFs can be very fast and have low quality, so the more complex works require a static version that reveals the full quality of these works. This static version can take a form of small format prints, or a form of a booklet, or diagram which presents the process of making or author’s path while taking photographs, or a map with marked points where each of the GIFs was created.