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Artists Create a 1000-Year GIF Loop

Posted by timothy on from the loading-loading-loading dept.

jovius writes: Finnish artists Juha van Ingen and Janne Särkelä have developed a monumental GIF called AS Long As Possible, which loops once per 1000 years. The 12 gigabyte GIF is made of 48,140,288 numbered frames, that change about every 10 minutes. They plan to start the loop in 2017, when GIF turns 30 years old. "If nurturing a GIF loop even for 100 — let alone 3,000 years — seems an unbelievable task, how much remains of our present digital culture after that time?", van Ingen said. The artists plan to store a mother file somewhere and create many iterations of the loop in various locations — and if one fails, it may be easily synchronized with, and replaced by, another. Maybe they should use FLIF instead.

5 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Let me be the first to point out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    BFD. Displays of sequential numbers, or randomly generated pixels that have no interest except to "contemporary ahhtists".

    1. Re:Let me be the first to point out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Science starts with something complicated and tries to make it simple.
      Art starts with something simple and tries to make it complicated.

  2. So... by minkowski76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Was there a contest somewhere for 'Wasting Your Time In the Least Meaningful Way'? If so, these people win first place.

  3. OK firing up Virtual Dub by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

    Get the damned gif, change the frame rate and I am going to see how it all ends and post the spoiler all over the net. Ha, Ha, Ha...(-- Evil laughter while caressing a docile white cat)

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  4. Only 85 years short... by fisted · · Score: 5, Informative

    1,000 Years are 525,960,000 minutes, i.e. 52,596,000 10-minutes

    According to TFS, the thing has 48,140,288 Frames, one of which is displayed ever 10 minutes.

    So they seem to be 4,455,712 frames short of having it actually take 1000 years to complete.
    That's 85 years. ...artists... what a meta-failure.

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    CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!