One of the many GIFs in “threehundredfiftysixcolors” (screencapture from film clip)
CHICAGO — In the GIF world of twohundredfiftysixcolors, there is no time to process visual imagery; viewers are left with reaction options to each short GIF much like those found on a Buzzfeed post. It’s all <3, LOL, WIN, OMG, CUTE, WTF, UNBELIEVABLE, SCARY, FAIL TRASHY, OLD, EW, <heart break!<3 > or whatever and then it’s over. Even for a person who spends many hours a day at a computer, this film is torturous, and a painfully accurate experience of today’s over-saturated Internet media environment. Depending on what type of imagery you’re intuitively drawn to, those images in the GIF form will keep playing over and over in your mind long after the credits role. The video is a perfect, breakneck portrayal of the Internet world we live in.
The average GIF is a brief, soundless animation, and lives on social sites that we love to hate. In Jason Lazarus and Eric Fleischauer’s 16mm filmtwohundredfiftysixcolors (2013), produced with assistance fromTheodore Darst, is named after the palette of colors available in a single GIF. Over the course of 97 minutes, it soundlessly and without any narration whatsoever visually charts the trends of this cultural phenomenon. In other words, the viewer gets to experience thousands of mind-numbing GIFs one after the other. It is a single portrait of a momentary medium that normally spreads one-by-one across the Internet, attaching to websites, social networks, blogs and other spaces like parasites. By condensing it into a single movie that’s longer than it should we, the only thing we can really say is: “Shake your GIFs, shake your GIFs,” and then swing your dick, swing your dick.
Read the full post here: http://hyperallergic.com/68355/twohundredfiftysix-colors-flashes-one-gif-too-many/
