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April 10, 2007

The Fine Art (of) Image Macros

Like a lot of people over the age of 30, I first became aware of image macros with the briefly-ubiquitous Nancy Pelosi impeachment visual. Once I noticed them, it became quickly apparent that there was a huge world of image macros out there.

I became particularly intrigued by the sub-set of image macros known as "LOL Cats." (Chris pointed out that this would be a great name for a band.) I discovered them first by clicking on someone's signature line in a Woot forum, which begs the question of how incredibly bored must I have been to have been doing that and the answer is, pretty bored, but not as bored as you might think.

Anyway, here see my first venture into the art of LOL cats -- not a cat, not even a live animal but, to me, very, very gratifying. It was a hand-made e-card to a friend who had sent me possibly my favorite email of the year, which read simply: "THERES A SQUIRREL IN MY HEATER!!!!!" (subject line: "SQUIRREL"). Followed sometime after by the message, "THERE"S A SQUIRREL IN MY FIRE PLACE!!!!!!" (subject line: "squirrel"). I suggested he spend some quality time at squirrels.org and listen to the "This American LIfe" story about the flaming squirrel before trying to smoke his visitor out. This exchanged ended with one of weirdest emails I've ever received, which simply repeated the phrase, "The squirrel is gone!!!" for 498 pages and made my email crash.

Anyway, back to the image macros.

Shortly after I first noticed LOL cats, boingboing blogged them, which made me feel like I truly had my finger on the pulse of the internets, albeit in a 30-something way.

And after making my LOL squirrel, I was hooked!

Then I started thinking: why should l33t speak slogans in big ugly fonts be limited to defacing images of cute animals? I've been going to a lot of artsy things lately: why not fine arts image macros? The image macro form itself is reminscent of Barbara Kruger.

So, here are my examples of Fine Art Image Macros. If I were an art history teacher, I'd have my students do this as an assignment -- my students would probably do a better job. If I had them. You could probably do a better job -- and if you do, let me know! Some of my friends already have, as evidenced below.

Here are some directions (just replace the word "cats" with "fine art.") And here's one of many l33t generators.

Note: I'm also sure something like this has been done before, but I haven't found it yet with my brief search for "fine art image macros." I found the concept mentioned here -- I was thinking of doing Dante's Inferno as image macros, too!) Livejournal is a HOTBED of image macros, btw, if you didn't already know. I'll bet there are many more examples of fine art image macros in there. It also seems like something something awful would have done. Be that as it may! Here the ones I made in a hurry.

(after the O RLY Owl).

A FAIM by Nat, inspired by this of course.

Another one with the same inspiration.

(A FAIM by Nat inspired by the "invisible__________" line of thinking.)

(A minimalist version of the same thing, also by Nat.)

Nice one from Chris -- Pwned -- I'll say!

Here's Pete's Contribution:

Higgins's contribution to the Fine Art (of) Image Macros. I h8z it when th@ happens!!! (loosing ones contact lens in a wheat field).

Another one from Chris -- awesome, but is it ART?

Posted by mary at April 10, 2007 8:05 AM

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Posted by: melissa at April 10, 2007 9:00 PM

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