![]() ![]() In fact, it is quite obvious that GIFs have an intense affective power even without this recollection. Taking into account these transformations, that is to say the passage of the frames from being emotionally dependent from the original context to the completely independence, GIFs seems to negate the rule according to which, as stated by Debord and Wolman, «the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements». Therefore, the emotional load, remediated by the medium ‘GIF’, achieves rarefaction, abstracting itself from the emotions of the originally previous and following frames, so becoming expressive on its own. In every remediation, the content, even the emotional one, adapts itself according to the features of the arrival medium: in the case of GIFs, it gains the brevity, circularity and the being an object in its own right typical of the looped structure. ![]() In fact, when they pass from being part of a continuum (fictional or actual) to being a GIF properly defined, emotions are detoured indeed, but also re-mediated. Notwithstanding, in some respect, especially speaking about carrying emotions, GIFs seem to exceed the détournement. Then, independently from the origin of the detourned material, whether it comes from an audiovisual text or a real-life event, the emotional load is subjected to the détournement as much as the narrative and iconographic content. Extrapolating and detouring frames from the real life, GIFs realize what the Situationists called ‘ultra-détournement’, that is, as Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman argued, «the tendencies for détournement to operate in everyday social life», where to gestures and words are given other meanings. Even when the frame is taken from a real life event – and not from audiovisual materials – we must rethink that excerpt as it was taken from a storytelling, which is longer then a TV episode or a movie since it refers to defined characters (the individuals) inside a context (their lives). In Debord ‘s words «leaving the imbeciles to their slavish reference to “citations”», we may think at GIF as what Maria Rosaria Dagostino instead calls ‘cit-action’, defining it as «an active crossreference for the construction of a new sense», which applies independently from the origin of the raw material. The GIF follows the dètournement’s fundamental rule that is «the loss of importance of each detourned autonomous element – which may go so far as to completely lose its original sense – and at the same time the organization of another meaningful ensemble that confers on each element its new scope and effect». From this perspective, GIFs could be seen as a new form of what Guy Debord called détorunement, that is to say «the re-use of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble», where the extracted fragment looses its own importance to be part of a new significant whole. GIF acts as the summation of the discourses about intermediality of cinema which, hybridizing with other media, as it happens for the audiovisual fragments stolen by a user with the purpose of assigning new meanings in an online conversation, changes its narrative function and becomes part of a more extended “storytelling” which is not played by finctional characters anymore, but by real actors (the users) using the original medium with new goals. ![]() The audiovisual fragment is then assigned with a new specific meaning, when it is used for a communicative purpose (especially on the Social Networks), acting as a container of variable informations generally designated to substitute articulate colloquial elements both emotional or explanatory (Huber). In the first place, the image originates from a process of decontextualization of an audiovisual element, quoting or referring to the original audiovisual text itself (Uhlin) – which can be taken from several media: television, cinema, video art, home made. GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) can be defined as a moving image characterized by brevity, repetition (loop) and an apparently low informative content used as a pseudo-linguistic element, GIF is able to re-mediate a pre-existing text and to resemanticize it. ![]()
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