Slashdot Mirror
Xkcd's Long-running "Time" Comic: Work of Art Or Nerd Sniping?
Fortran IV writes "Randall Munroe's xkcd webcomic has done some odd things before, but #1190, 'Time,' is something special. It's a time-lapse movie of two people building a sandcastle that's been updating just once an hour (twice an hour in the beginning) for well over a month (since March 25th), and after over a thousand frames shows no sign of ending; in a few days the number of frames will surpass the total number of xkcd comics. It's been mentioned in The Economist. Some of its readers have called it the One True Comic; others have called it a MMONS (Massively Multiplayer Online Nerd Sniping). It's sparked its own wiki, its own jargon (Timewaiters, newpix, Blitzgirling), and a thread on the xkcd user forum that runs to over 20,000 posts from 1100 distinct posters. Is 'Time' a fascinating work of art, a deep sociological experiment — or the longest-running shaggy-dog joke in history? Randall Munroe's not saying."
I don't really care? I even like xkcd
Sure, the author of XKCD might have a sarcastic streak, but even if part of the reason is a shaggy-dog joke, I'm sure part of the reason is also art.
I mean, it's not an either-or situation, and setting it up as a false dichotomy isn't going to generate meaningful discussion.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
If anything, it shows how bored we are with the internet and that ANY new content sparks interest, however trivial.
In my head I hear my response in Louis C. K.'s voice: You've got a slab of plastic and metal you can carry around under your arm that lets you look up the answer to any question, have a text conversation in real time with anyone on the planet, access all the works of art ever created - and you're bored. Seriously. I just searched the word 'artichoke' and got 9.9 million links in under a second. And you are jaded. That's not even good enough to hold your attention anymore?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
http://xkcd.com/1190/
Explained xkcd has a gif that combines most of the individual 'time' comics: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1190:_Time
Every now and then, a graph or a chart or some insight appears in the xkcd lineup that seems somehow very different from what has gone before. I remember the day I brought up Time and was initially puzzled. I didn't get it. I moused over it and saw "Wait for it." and started staring at it intently. My mind started playing tricks on me and I thought I saw a pixel or two change, but after awhile I realized they hadn't. I checked back an hour later and the castle had changed a little, and I laughed at the notion that my experience with and interpretation of the comic had already changed with the passage of Time. I decided that that was one of the primary points. I like it.
It's about building something (a person's life to be specific) then time comes along and destroys it (death), like tides destroy sand castles. At least I assume that's what it's about, that might be too obvious though.
No, "the field of liberal arts" is a division of study in university environments. "Art" is a fundamental part of the way in which humans express themselves. The difference is subtle, just like hurricanes and clown make-up.
If you can figure out how to predict the next hash (each frame is named [random hash].png, with the website pointing to a new one every hour --- so there are probably a bunch of not-yet-released frames on the server, if you could crack the random sequence generator), you will win at least three internets of nerd credit (and perhaps a job "offer you can't refuse" from the NSA).
Perhaps it's done, I saw the same nothing you did. Other pages have a comic. I guess this one bowed and drew the curtain. /. Little kids draw stick figures as representations for communication of thoughts they cannot express, or as a utility, not so much art. So in a Warhol fashion, one needs to look beyond that, to the space where a comic was purported to exist. Like a star gone to black hole, it carries only memories of its existence embedded in any observers. So we can see a juxtaposition of relativity, repeated in the remembered grains of sand forming the castle, bringing to mind ; time as observed through the sands of an hourglass, thus are the days of our lives. An apocalyptic work, this should be displayed at the mens room in the Louvre on a very old computer which will automatically generate an hourglass when refreshed giving the viewer time to see the complexity of artists intent. Dead blind genius.
The art is; the page hits this link is generating from a link on
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I think of the Star Trek universe, in particular Picard explaining to characters in "First Contact" that as money is outmoded (apart for the stubbornly mercantile Ferengi situation) the utopia of self advancement for the betterment of all as a primary activity is pretty much a reality in the Federation.
Then there is this, the dystopia, just a few hundred years early. GP can access all this accumulated knowledge and better themselves, maybe even the world, yet their view is so etiolated it seems like too much effort. Gene Roddenberry is spinning in space right now.
Perhaps we ought to let it all go to hell and become servile chattels of a corporate controlled stagnated "society" because no one gives a flying fuck apart from getting their fix of kitten pictures.
Sometimes I really despair of this world.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Art is both a process and the product of an attempt to encapsulate and transfer a human experience through a medium.
Without audience, it's just masturbation.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Here's the history, in slideshow form: http://xkcd.aubronwood.com/#
I prefer something less frantic, like: http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment.
Like molasses through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Art escapes all attempts to define it. enjoy being wrong.
...your onus is showing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm pretty sure it's a server time hash that loads the next image. You can see the progression here
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I wonder idly if he has drawn every frame and they are now sat on a server waiting to be served up each hour, or if he's still drawing frames for it as it goes. Obviously he must have drawn them with at least some buffer space, but I wonder how much? A day? A week? If he's drawing them as he goes, is he going to keep it up forever?
I don't want to get involved in any discussions about whether it's high art or low nerd sniping or whatnot, but you've got to hand it to that guy for dedication to the art of internet stick men. Between this one, the massive pannable one, and his excellent log-scale ones, he's a man who puts some serious effort into his website...