Art
The Art of the GIF by Paolo Čerić
Whether they’re driven by beauty, nostalgia, or humor, animated GIFs are undeniably captivating. Thanks in part to the popularity of image-sharing sites like Tumblr, the format has recently exploded, prompting visual artists and designers to experiment with its aesthetic potential. Celebrating the GIF as an artistic medium, Moving the Still was first shown at Art Basel Miami in 2012 and is currently on view at BAM on the corner of Flatbush and Lafayette Avenues in Brooklyn, NYC.
Curated by Paddle8 and Tumblr in collaboration with prominent figures from various creative industries, the show aims to present some of the most original GIF work being produced. Selected to participate by Michael Stipe, digital artist Paolo Čerić creates hypnotic animations with a personal style that moves from Glitch art aesthetics to pulsating geometry and computer generated optical illusions that rely on Čerić’s adept mathematical and coding skills.
Like many other GIF artists, Čerić uses the format’s looping effect to create seamless repetition. However, instead of focusing on a particular movement within a still frame, Čerić animates the entire subject – usually a twisting, turning geometric figure that endlessly rotates or collapses into itself, creating an almost meditative effect. “The reason my GIFs mainly consist of geometric or abstract objects is probably because I’ve always had a passion for things like that – symmetry, waves, polygons,” notes Čerić. “I love math and I like to incorporate it in my work.”
He explains that when he first began experimenting with GIFs, he used movies, documentaries, and even his own photography to try and say as much as possible through the small file format. “It was a fun and challenging exploration of the format,” says Čerić. “Then I somehow got interested in motion graphics and the tools involved in that industry, [so I] started producing work with those tools and tried to, again, tell as much as possible with the limitations the GIF format has.”
To create his GIFs, Čerić uses Cinema 4D and After Effects together with the programming language Processing. “Processing is for me the best tool for combining creative and mathematical ways of thinking,” he explains. “It also allows an easy way of making interaction with the user possible, so I decided to share some of my experiments with that (like “ZEF”) with the people that visit my blog. The idea is to make the users feel relaxed and generally just to enjoy themselves.”
Čerić, who is currently a student of information processing at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb, says that creating GIFs started out as a hobby, but he wouldn’t mind devoting more time to it. “I’m of course considering involving my passion in my professional work. There couldn’t be a better thing than doing something you love for a living.” Čerić’s other work, all published on his personal blog Patakk, is also worth checking out. Don’t forget to click on “ZEF” for a few minutes of good fun.
For more on Čerić, visit Co.Design and The Huffington Post.
Written by Elaine Ritchel (@elaineritchel)
