mbransons:

Playing with the Don’t Turn That Dial main tv today.

I need to find out how to put a gif in here…

giphy:

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: ELLE MULIARCHYK

What GIF best describes how you are currently feeling?

I love any of the gifs on ThePop. When you press on the screen you see the “punchline”. 

I love the DIY ones that kids do on the spur of the moment. 

Right now I’m about to go to bed so I will feel like this guy in the gif. He turns off the light but then realizes that he had forgotten to plug in his phone so he desperately stabs into the wall in the dark. It’s so silly and goofy and “low-production”…. but I think about this GIF every night and laugh every time. 

When did you first start making GIFs? What was the first GIF you made?

About 2 years ago. I did just a couple back then, but now I’m a total convert and addict!  

What attracts you to the GIF format?

It’s a more organic and intuitive medium to relate an experience - more so than a photo or a video. Think of how we recollect memories: close your eyes and think of something from your past. You don’t see a frozen still image - you see GIFs! Even when we dream at night we see fragments of events that collectively create some kind of narrative which we assemble into a story when we wake up. Even when we daydream we don’t watch a full-feature uninterrupted film in our heads - we think in fragments, often non-linear. 

There’s a real sense of fun and joy in your GIFs, something fashion photography isn’t exactly known for. Do you think the GIF medium lends itself to a more lighthearted mood in fashion shoots?

Yes, I do! Comparing to GIFs photos and videos tell a story in a very “epic” way. They feel like something that happened long in the past. They are always so perfect, set in stone and immovable like the great statues in Rome.  GIFs, on the contrary, feel very “NOW” and ephemeral. I don’t know why, they just do. They feel like a medium where experimentation and mistakes are allowed. That’s why there is more fun and ease about them.

Along those same lines, the light tone gives the GIFs an almost improvisational feel to them, but they’re also very tightly constructed. Do you have a vision of exactly the way you want them to turn out, or do you play around with a lot of different ideas?

I create original content for my GIFs. They require a different approach than the ones created by extracting a fun moment from an already existing content. Which, by the way, I consider creatively equally valid and challenging. For me, however, I need to edit them in my head long before I create them. I often practice using myself, dolls ets before I get a real model. Once my storyboard is complete I will experiment with speed and crops. I find GIFs extremely difficult - much more so then a video or a photo. The fact that they have to loop in a hypnotic way is the hardest.  There are certain works of art that SEEM to have a repetition, but it nothing remains static forever. Phillip Glass’s music is repetitive but always evolving. But the great GIFs you can watch forever without getting annoyed. There is no formula of how to do it - it’s a kind of magic. I play with mine until they reach the certain “groove” where I could watch them forever, Then I know it’s right. Once I was looking at my own gif for 15 minutes while riding the subway. (now THAT’s what I call narcissism, lol)

Do you see GIFs as the future of fashion photography?

Absolutely! I want to be one of those who will create this future! 

Who are some of your favorite artists?

I like Kasumi. 

Current favorite GIF? 

Any fun projects you are currently working on and can share with us?

The model go-sees with girls playing with cutouts from their portfolios is my latest project.

Want to see more of Elle’s GIFs? Check out her page on Giphy.com. And, if you have a Mac iOS 10.7 or higher be sure to download the fashion-fun screensaver.

thisistheverge:

The era of Facebook is an anomaly
To boyd, social media isn’t new. It’s just the latest scapegoat for America’s obsession with overprotection. She took a few minutes to speak to The Verge about her new book, human nature in the age of Snapchat, and where Facebook fits in an increasingly fragmented social landscape.

It’s complicated. We need deception. Hmmm…

Huize Heyendael - A spine chilling tale 

This week at the DS106 Open Online Participant Offices (OOPO) we have been exploring the structure of story in different ways. Inspired by one of our co-workers over at GMU I decided to play with Ken Adams story spine idea. In his blog ‘bcodelson’ (I do wish our colleagues at GMU gave us a human friendly name to call them) wrote a sweet story spine about 'The shape of the sneetches' . Ron over on Google Plus has been creating some lovely atmospheric photos, animated gifs, videos using the Diana App. I thought I could put some of this stuff together into a video story spine. I called it ‘Huize Heyendael - A spine chilling tale’. I found this simple frame for creating a story helpful - there is a child-like quality to it. It feels like a game we can play the kids and make up lovely stories. I like that.  

It is also a helpful checklist to remind us that the spine of the story never contains all the details:

The Story Spine is not the story, it’s the spine. It’s nothing but the bare-boned structure upon which the story is built. And, that’s what makes it such a powerful tool. It allows you, as a writer, to look at your story at its structural core and to ensure that the basic building blocks are all in the right place. Now, of course, turning your Story Spine into a story is a whole different topic…

Source for clip: http://youtu.be/zL1_twK2NDc

Brief for this assignment was:

Make a Movie that Abruptly Changes Its Setting

Did I get it?