Even though I have some trouble doing anything with it (other than filming my friends’ kittens), I find the concept of Vine quite interesting: six-second videos made with an app that works like old Super8 cameras (only recording while you press the trigger), encouraging both synthesis and all kinds of in-camera experimentation. And even though Instagram though has similar capabilities, Vine’s lower six-second limit just seems more interesting, focused on action rather than on beautifully-filtered meditations.

To the point, here’s a compilation of six-second science experiments and explanations. Awesome. (via It’s Okay to Be Smart)

A Short History of the GIF. I remember when I was a teenager ‘gifs’ was slang for digitized porno imagery (was this a portuguese thing or did the video authors gloss over that?). That this was followed by annoying Web 1.0 animations and banner ads didn’t do wonders to rehabilitate people’s view of the Graphics Interchange Format. That day only came a quarter of a century after the format’s introduction, when we got enough bandwidth to start doing all kinds of awesome things with it.

I wonder what goodness may come if we just insist on certain technologies rather than eagerly adopting shiny new things whenever they appear. (via Ideas Repository)

A Brief History of John Baldessari is probably the very best mini-documentary I’ve seen recently. Narrated by Tom Waits and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the guys who made Catfish. This is not boring art.