Say there's this really good GIF that you must show your friend while waiting for the G Train, yet there's no WiFi connection and a 45 minute delay until the next train rolls along. What do you do? Well, Alessandro Scali and Marco Calabrese at Officina K have a physical solution to this extremely pertinent predicament: enter the Giphoscope.
The duo create "retrofuturistic designs" that mix analog and digital technology, with the Giphoscope serving as the premiere example. Inspired by Herman Casler's Mutoscope (and not too far off from the Edison/Dickson's Kinetoscope), the fun device projects a sequence of images on a wheel with a hand-crank that rotates the images like a flipbook. Now you can bring your GIFs anywhere, anytime, regardless of proximity to your MacBook.The creators explain their invention on the Giphoscope website: "We have conceived, designed and handcrafted the Giphoscope with the objective of proposing to artists/galleries/museums/collectors a minimalistic, unconventional, retro-futuristic analog GIF player, entirely tailor made and handmade in Italy. Thanks to Giphoscope, animated GIF becomes a tangible and exclusive artwork."Last week, we shared with the world GIFs of entire movies from start to finish, so feasibly, you could now bring a GIF-ified flick with you on the go. Who needs a projector, anyway?
Or, of course, you can bring a GIF of Rob Ford falling down to the office:
The Giphoscope reminds us a bit of Gifpop, the Kickstarter-funded tool that can be used to make custom cards from animated GIFs via lenticular printing. Both are a nice take on tangible digitalism, and even though the Giphoscope is a bit pricey at € 299, it may be the best Holiday gift for your one friend obsessed with vinyl and cassettes. Edison and Casler would be so proud.For more on GIFs (if you haven't had enough already) re-visit The Creators Project documentary on Mr. GIF who taught us how to make stereoscopic GIFs:Tip via The Verge@zachsokol
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