gifs and digital art as physical objects
Through the history of 'art' many things have been first shunned or looked down upon, misunderstood, or dismissed to only later be accepted by the powers that be into the classifiable. Artists like Van Gogh, Warhol, and Banksy progress our realm of 'accepted' art, and not gifs are being welcomed in. Rhizome art group curators are selling gifs and internet art, and 10 years from now this could be commonplace but the fact that buying a gif results in the gif coming offline and the buyer getting a the hardcopy file says a lot about where post internet art is going.
Its as if something material is coming full circle. a real kitten does something silly in the kitchen, a video turns into a gif, turns into sellable art and into a material, a hardcopy of this digital art for someone to own. Something material was caught digitally and is now transformed into another physical form. what does this mean for the experiences in real time not captured? what does this say about the physical vs. the digital worlds?
For more and more things being ubiquitously in the cloud, buying gifs is making a statement of owning a material object again rather than having it digitally. This speaks of more than art but rather what is important for us to have physically rather than on a screen. What else will we want to manifest in a physical way and what else will become digitalized?