Reading Blog 1

My initial thought when reading this article was “why in the world would someone list a GIF for sale at $5,800, and who in their right mind would buy it?”. I guess that comes from me not

really thinking of GIFs as art but rather as things that I simply tend to look over. In an average day, I would guess that I see around 70 GIFs a day just from Twitter and text messages. I think that social media, especially Twitter has helped to make GIFs become as mainstream as they are. I don’t really remember life without GIFs but there is no doubt that they would not be nearly as popular and recognizable without the influence of social media over the last 10+ years.

It is quite impressive thinking about how the GIF that Michael Green is listing was created. Taking an image and skewing/distorting it multiple times and then turning those series of images into an animation is extremely cool! I’m not sure if I would have initially thought that is how he did it, but it definitely makes sense to me after reading that fact. I think what is even more mind-boggling is the fact that the original balloon dog sold for over $58 million. What was the initial bid price for that given that the GIF was initially listed for only $2,000 before being upped to the current $5,800. It is crazy to think about how the digital age is also having an effect on how and what types of art are worth!