workshop: hacking the gif

what's this? two posts in a row on this blog?!?

next week i'll be visiting SAIC in chicago as part of RE:MESH.WWWERK/s, and for some reason i decided to make the centerpiece of my visit an in-depth workshop titled hacking the gif. was it a bad idea to do a workshop instead of a performance or screening? probably! but that's how i roll.

this won't be some intro-level workshop about how to make gifs.  it picks up where part 3 of my databending primer left off and then plunges way deeper. i mean it's really in-depth. i have scoured the GIF spec and other technical documents from 20-30 years ago, searching for all the hidden and little-known features within, and figuring out how to hack them.

if you're in chicago on tuesday, come on by. it should be one hell of a workshop. here's the rest of the info from the facebook event page:

Workshop: Hacking the GIF
Tues, April 12, 2016. 12:15 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL 60603

The popular Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is widely misunderstood and unfairly looked down upon. Some would tell you it's obsolete, but even today, GIF offers several unique features that no other video or image format has. This in-depth workshop with glitch art pioneer Benjamin Berg (aka stAllio!) explores how to use, misuse, and abuse these features to create animations, still images, and even videos.

* Color tables (global and local)
* Dithering
* The GIF canvas
* Transparency effects
* The interlace flag
* Glitching GIF image data

This workshop is FREE and open to the public. ¶

stAllio! music "news" - sword to your mother, fixed that for you, ++

it's about that time when, once a year, i log in and post something on this blog instead of tumblr, facebook, or any of the other fragmented shards on my online presence. 

first up, a music update: last year i finally completed the sequel to wack cylinders, titled sword to your mother. it's kind of glitchy and kind of ambient. it's a meditation on death and digital decay. it's part 2 of a trilogy i haven't named yet. it was released for free download last october and promptly ignored by music lovers everywhere.





but that's not all  -- i have other releases in the pipeline, ready to be unleashed soon upon this earth. probably the next up will be a post-mashup EP titled fixed that for you. this EP will be the culmination of everything i've been doing with mashup-type music for the past several years. mash smarter not harder was always meant to be a basic introduction to some new ideas, a sort of "lesson one", and a huge smash was then lesson two. it's all been building up to fixed that for you. this is the one you've been waiting for. i expect it to come out in the next few weeks.

and i have a split cassette coming some day on german label betonblume... that was actually done before the others but will probably come out last. so it goes.¶