aristotle would totes love tumblr
by kiera geraghty
The digital era has exploded the limitations of art.
The internet revolutionized people’s idea of art and photography. A world of frozen moments has been allowed to come alive. One of the ways that it has done this is through the creation of the medium of GIFs.
A GIF is an animated image comprised of a series of frames that play on a continuous loop. GIFs have been a part of internet culture since all the way back in 1987. Many early websites used GIFs for their logos or alerts like the iconic mailbox that eats your mail. During the early 2000s, GIFs fell almost completely out of fashion until around 2008.
In the second stage of the evolution of the internet, known as “Web 2.0” (the internet after 2000), the social networking universe has flared out to unbelievable levels. People are in contact with each other in ways like never before. The average teenager can have around ten or more social media accounts and personas.
One of the major effects of the new social media culture is the evolution of language. At this point, some people practically speak in GIFs online; or at least there seems to be a GIF that relates to nearly every situation. They’ve become intrinsic to humorous, satirical, emotional, or revolutionary moments.
GIFs even have subcultures. Two visual artists named Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg have coined an art form that originated in the animated GIF culture called cinemagraphs. They capture a moment in a picture and through a system of cutting together isolated parts of multiple frames a cinemagraph is born where small parts of the photo have come alive. The cinemagraph encapsulates the most important part of a moment or its essence and by keeping every other part of that moment frozen; focus is completely drawn to that essence unlike in a photo or video.
In the world of aesthetics, Aristotle is most famous for his views on the dramatic arts, but his views can still be applied to the medium of cinemagraphs. He agreed with Plato that art is an imitation of the physical entity of something. However, unlike Plato, Aristotle believes that art is important because human beings learn through imitation, making good art is an intrinsic part of the human learning experience. He also believes in the healthy emotional response that humans have to art unlike Plato. Good art pulls a strong emotional response out of the spectator. When that emotion overcomes the spectator, he or she can revel in that moment like a good cry or laugh. Those emotions then leave body and one feels cleansed. The cleansing of the body from an intense emotional experience is called catharsis. Moments of intense pity or fear were especially important when Aristotle talked about the dramatic arts like tragic plays.
In respect to cinemagraphs, Aristotle would agree that capturing a moment of everyday life is a very important piece of art. A cinemagraph slows down the actions of life and allows the spectator to focus on one specific area of life that embodies the essence of that experience. In some examples, that moment can be very cathartic.
For example, a cinemagraph could capture a photo of a small, lost child but the only thing that moves is the single tear running from the child’s eyes that stare into the camera. The spectator can’t get lost in any other movement but that tear that exemplifies the child’s sadness and brings new meaning to the photo and can even make the spectator feel like he or she is living the moment him or herself.
Aristotle would appreciate how cinemagraphs spread moments of life through the entire virtual world, leaving something to experience among many useless things that fill up one’s dash.
Aristotle, like Plato, believes that even a photo’s that’s alive cannot compare to the physical moment or the perfect concept of it, but he points out that even the representation of a representation contains a lesson from the original form. In this digital age, the lessons from imitation are spread at unprecedented rates in unprecedented amounts, so even the representations of representations have meaning and can make a positive impact in realistic ways in modern life. People can learn about life and each other through these animated photos and have an emotional, cathartice experience.
The internet revolutionized people’s idea of art and photography. A world of frozen moments has been allowed to come alive. One of the ways that it has done this is through the creation of the medium of GIFs.
A GIF is an animated image comprised of a series of frames that play on a continuous loop. GIFs have been a part of internet culture since all the way back in 1987. Many early websites used GIFs for their logos or alerts like the iconic mailbox that eats your mail. During the early 2000s, GIFs fell almost completely out of fashion until around 2008.
In the second stage of the evolution of the internet, known as “Web 2.0” (the internet after 2000), the social networking universe has flared out to unbelievable levels. People are in contact with each other in ways like never before. The average teenager can have around ten or more social media accounts and personas.
One of the major effects of the new social media culture is the evolution of language. At this point, some people practically speak in GIFs online; or at least there seems to be a GIF that relates to nearly every situation. They’ve become intrinsic to humorous, satirical, emotional, or revolutionary moments.
GIFs even have subcultures. Two visual artists named Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg have coined an art form that originated in the animated GIF culture called cinemagraphs. They capture a moment in a picture and through a system of cutting together isolated parts of multiple frames a cinemagraph is born where small parts of the photo have come alive. The cinemagraph encapsulates the most important part of a moment or its essence and by keeping every other part of that moment frozen; focus is completely drawn to that essence unlike in a photo or video.
In the world of aesthetics, Aristotle is most famous for his views on the dramatic arts, but his views can still be applied to the medium of cinemagraphs. He agreed with Plato that art is an imitation of the physical entity of something. However, unlike Plato, Aristotle believes that art is important because human beings learn through imitation, making good art is an intrinsic part of the human learning experience. He also believes in the healthy emotional response that humans have to art unlike Plato. Good art pulls a strong emotional response out of the spectator. When that emotion overcomes the spectator, he or she can revel in that moment like a good cry or laugh. Those emotions then leave body and one feels cleansed. The cleansing of the body from an intense emotional experience is called catharsis. Moments of intense pity or fear were especially important when Aristotle talked about the dramatic arts like tragic plays.
In respect to cinemagraphs, Aristotle would agree that capturing a moment of everyday life is a very important piece of art. A cinemagraph slows down the actions of life and allows the spectator to focus on one specific area of life that embodies the essence of that experience. In some examples, that moment can be very cathartic.
For example, a cinemagraph could capture a photo of a small, lost child but the only thing that moves is the single tear running from the child’s eyes that stare into the camera. The spectator can’t get lost in any other movement but that tear that exemplifies the child’s sadness and brings new meaning to the photo and can even make the spectator feel like he or she is living the moment him or herself.
Aristotle would appreciate how cinemagraphs spread moments of life through the entire virtual world, leaving something to experience among many useless things that fill up one’s dash.
Aristotle, like Plato, believes that even a photo’s that’s alive cannot compare to the physical moment or the perfect concept of it, but he points out that even the representation of a representation contains a lesson from the original form. In this digital age, the lessons from imitation are spread at unprecedented rates in unprecedented amounts, so even the representations of representations have meaning and can make a positive impact in realistic ways in modern life. People can learn about life and each other through these animated photos and have an emotional, cathartice experience.