Ideally, compression does not delete information or material but conceals it within itself, making all hidden components readily accessible should the person interacting with a compressed product wish to unzip or re-expand its contents. Of course not all methods of compression lend themselves to different subjects equally well. Compressing a cat’s personal space for plane travel in the manner a watermelon is compressed for a fruit smoothie would be disastrous. As art is digitally mediated, so too does it become materially and experientially compressed. This inevitably creates a dichotomy of quality of experience versus ease of access. Positions over which or if any forms of compression should be applicable to art arise. People against art’s digital mediation claim it to be a vulgar distortion of experiential affect and a forcible removal of aesthetics. People in support of art’s digital mediation point to the way it opens previously rigid institutional and architectural boundaries of participation, allowing an exponentially larger number of viewers to become aware of and join in art’s discourse. Though in the past I have favored the latter of these two positions, I wonder if such distinctions are quite so black and white. For instance, what role do formats that are native to digital viewing play in this conversation? They cannot be judged against the backdrop of a formerly physical existence but must be critically analyzed unto themselves. One such example that comes to mind is the artistic GIF.

The general popularity of GIFs is easy to understand. They’re simple to make, playfully animated, cross-browser compatible and fun to watch. GIFs have a history in both vernacular net use and internet art, as well as a history at the intersection between the two. As a visual medium, GIFs are caught in a space sandwiched between still images and film. Arguably, all film is just a rapid procession of still images, but while film conceals this fact the GIF often reveals which frames comprise it by plodding through them in a manner similar to stop animation during the process of loading. GIFs lend themselves to subject matters that may be quickly summed up in the fewest number of frames possible or to content that has no beginning or end and may be understood equally well starting from any moment in a brief, looping format. As writer Jonah Weiner says

[Many GIFs] are built around the payoff moments of Did you see that? style viral videos. These GIFs are structured like jokes, with the barest minimum of set-up … They get to the point instantaneously, and at the exact moment when one feels the impulse to rewind and watch the climax again, the loop restarts right where it should … Like an enhanced bumper sticker or T-shirt, the GIF offers a pithy, punchy means for self-expression.

This kind of self-expression is largely conversational; on message boards the GIF provides an excellent way of responding to a previous poster in a direct manner that transcends the time necessary to read and decode language. The lure of using a GIF is that it is designed not to be poured over as an individual object of dense decoding but to be seen, to trigger an immediate response, and be moved on from. On the subject of the GIF’s accepted immediacy, writer Joshua Kopstein states

Human memory is intimately tied to isolated moments in time. According to the Atkinson-Shifrin model — the same one that divided human memory into long-term, short-term and sensory — most of the things we experience are not committed to long-term memory beyond a few select moments. So it makes sense that we’ve embraced GIFs as these suspended moments in time, looping only the information necessary to conjure a particular emotion or memory.

The GIF’s straightforward looping mechanism revels in its own simplicity and the manner in which it professes to be nothing more profound than what 3~ seconds of your time can possibly allow for as a work of visual art. In an online environment that exalts immediacy and ease of use, the GIF is not a fetishization of the past or Web 1.0 culture- as many have argued- but a fetishization of the internet’s propensity for compressing information to the furthest degree possible. In a world of Macbook Airs, external hard drives the size of a thumb, and 140 character limits on textual communication, the GIF is a suitable alternative for those who can’t quite make it through a 2 minute Youtube video without advancing forward to the 1:00 and 1:30 minute markers after the first 10 seconds prove too dull for viewing. The most crucial question for artists to ask in response to the GIF’s obsession with compression is whether the GIF is a true harbinger of conceptual efficiency or an ornamental novelty of its own lightness?

GIFs do not require an embedded player to be viewed and have remained functional throughout many shifts in applicable file formats on the web. This longevity and uniform accessibility has lead many to characterize the GIF as a file format as democratic as the internet purportedly aspires to be. However, unlike Hito Steryl’s accurately egalitarian description of the poor image, the low visual quality of a GIF is not a result of pirated mass reproduction or individuals cycling images through a slew of diverse copying and transfer methods. Instead, the GIF’s limited capacity for narrative and often pixilated appearance is due to the increased bulk each frame adds to its total file size, subsequently slowing down the process of loading and viewing the larger the file gets. Without the external support of a video player, the GIF must behave as an image while appearing to be a video.

As a culturally distinct and informationally narrowed format, the content of an artistic GIF rarely strays far from the realm of the expected due to the inherently minimal range of visuals and narrative advancements it may include as a time-based medium. All forms of compression eventually meet their logical end, where whatever material that was compressed is no longer able to be recovered in quite the same manner it previously existed, resulting in an unzipped product that appears to be a faint shadow of the dense form it once took. The fault of the artistic GIF is not that it has rendered conceptually rich subjects to a point incapable of being critically expanded upon with conceptual depth, but that the format itself is a censorship of an amount of information necessary to create ideologically rich narratives transcendent of their own interface. In a recent essay on the state of internet-inform
ed art, curator Lauren Cornell states

While the field of art online continues to thrive, art engaged with the internet does not need to exist there; because the internet is not just a medium, but also a territory populated and fought over by individuals, corporations, and governments; a communications tool; and a cultural catalyst.

The idea that art’s subject matter need not address the same medium it assumes is an adequate description of a contemporary field of art making that has increasingly come to rely less on medium specificity for critical validation. As Cornell echoes, the best art on the internet or otherwise exceeds its own medium, inspiring realizations divorced from whatever it is being transmitting through. The GIF is indelibly and formally linked to the compressed boundaries of the file format that transmits it, allowing art viewers none of the suspension of disbelief necessary to think the GIF they are looking at is not, in fact, a GIF at any moment of their viewing. The solution to the artistic GIF’s status as a pre-emptively self-referential medium would require it to betray its own maxim of economical viewing and transfer. Impossibly, this would force the GIF to aesthetically become, in a word, inefficient. Some problems just can’t be fixed. The artistic GIF will have to deal with it.

One theory that was not often heard was that Fischer might have been more than a little nervous about his challenger, the twenty-three-year-old leader of the new generation, Anatoly Karpov. In fact, when I proposed this possibility in my 2004 book on Fischer, My Great Predecessors Part IV, the hostile response was overwhelming. These were not merely the protestations of Fischer fans saying I was maligning their hero. There is a great deal of evidence to build Fischer’s case as the overwhelming favorite had the match taken place. This includes testimony by Karpov himself, who said Fischer was the favorite and later put his own chances of victory at 40 percent.

Nor am I arguing that Karpov would have been the favorite, or that he was a better player than Fischer in 1975. But I do think there is a strong circumstantial case for Fischer having good reasons not to like what he saw in his challenger. Remember that Fischer had not played a serious game of chess in three years. This explains why he insisted on a match of unlimited length, played until one player reached ten wins. With draws being so prevalent at the top level, such a match would likely have lasted many months, giving Fischer time to shake off the rust and get a feel for Karpov, whom he had never faced.

Karpov was the leading product of the new generation Fischer had created. They had a different approach than all the leading players Fischer had defeated on his march to the title and he had very little experience facing this new breed. In the candidates matches Karpov had crushed Spassky and then defeated another bastion of the older generation, Viktor Korchnoi. I can imagine Fischer going over the games from those matches, especially Karpov’s meticulous play and steady hand against Spassky, and beginning to feel some doubt.

Frank Brady discards this possibility hastily, perhaps justly so since there is no way we will ever know what was in Fischer’s head or, most unfortunately, what would have happened had the Fischer-Karpov match taken place. But I was surprised to read that there were contemporaries who put the blame for the match not taking place squarely on Fischer’s fears. Brady quotes New York Times chess columnist Robert Byrne, who wrote a piece titled “Bobby Fischer’s Fear of Failing” just a few days after Karpov was awarded the title. Byrne did not mention Karpov as a threat—he says he wouldn’t have stood a chance—but he pointed out that Fischer had always taken great precautions against defeat, to the point of declining to play in other events as well when he felt too much was being left to chance.

Brady’s dismissal of this theory misses the point: “What everyone seemed to overlook was that at the board Bobby feared no one.” Yes, once at the board he was fine! Where Fischer had his greatest crisis of confidence was always before getting to the board, before getting on the plane. Fischer’s perfectionism, his absolute belief that he could not fail, did not allow him to put that perfection at risk. And in Karpov, I have no doubt, especially after a three-year layoff, Fischer saw a significant risk.

One of the countless, and endless, debates around Fischer was whether his behavioral excesses were the product of an unbalanced, yet sincere, soul, or an extension of his all-consuming drive to conquer. Fischer had his strong principles, but the predator in him was well aware of the effect his antics had on his opponents. In 1972, the gentlemanly Boris Spassky was unprepared to deal with Fischer’s endless postponements and protests and played well below his normal level in Reykjavik.

Karpov, meanwhile, had beaten Spassky convincingly in 1974 without any gamesmanship. There is a fair case to be made that the match with Spassky was one of Karpov’s greatest-ever efforts and Fischer would not have failed to sense his challenger’s quality. The shades of color in real life often baffled Fischer, but he always saw very clearly in black and white. Along with Karpov’s modern play, Fischer would have seen a hard young man who had none of the older generation’s romantic notions and who would not be unsettled by off-the-board sideshows. (All reports say that Fischer was scrupulously correct at the board.) No matter how sincere Fischer may have been about his protests—playing conditions, opponent’s manners, and always money—they were as much a part of his repertoire as the Sicilian Defense.

The debacle of Fischer’s resignation led to yet another unanswerable question. Would Fischer have played had FIDE given in to all his demands? FIDE had accepted all of his conditions but one, that should the match reach a 9-9 tie Fischer would retain the title. This meant the challenger had to win by at least a 10-8 score, a substantial advantage for the incumbent. Had FIDE agreed and had Fischer come up with yet more demands, the book could have been closed in good conscience. Instead we missed out on what would have been one of the greatest matches in history and must wonder for eternity what Fischer would have done. In that light, 10-8 hardly seems like such a disadvantage.

Ironically, after Fischer was off the scene FIDE implemented some of his suggestions, including the unlimited match. Karpov also received the protection of a rematch clause, which gave him at least as big an advantage as Fischer had demanded. The absurdity of an unlimited match was only conclusively proven when Karpov and I dueled for a record forty-eight games over 152 days before the match was abandoned without a winner. And we were playing only for six wins, not Fischer’s desired ten.

Brady gives a straightforward account of Fischer’s rise to stardom as the youngest US champion ever, at fourteen in 1957, who then moved onto the world stage. It defied belief that a lone American could beat the best that the Soviet chess machine could produce. But even Walt Disney would hesitate to conceive of the story of a poor single mother trying to finish her education while moving her family from place to place and her unfocused young son from scho
ol to school—all while being investigated by the FBI as a potential Communist agent.

And so on, for 25 stanzas, unambiguous about the preferences of the parties, but also firm that the marriage was far from lacking in love. There were times when Hetta’s exercise of her freedom may have caused Empson some pain; he missed her badly when she went off to Hong Kong for a year with a lover, and seems to have been a little unhappy when she added illegitimately to the family (possibly, as Haffenden suggests, more because of his sense of obligation to his brother as head of the family than to common or garden jealousy). And it may have hurt that while he worked at Sheffield University, as he did for 18 years, living in conditions of squalor that amazed all who saw them, Hetta rarely paid him a visit. Not that conditions in their Hampstead house were very different from those of the Sheffield ‘burrow’ – they were described by Robert Lowell as having ‘a weird, sordid nobility’ – but of course it was much larger, and the company tended to be noisy and numerous, whereas in Sheffield he depended on his middle-class academic colleagues for talk and drinking company and even for baths, and nursing when he was unwell. More comfort was provided by Alice Stewart, a distinguished Oxford doctor and almost a Nobel Prize winner, with whom he had a long, intermittent and affectionate affair.

The Consenting Triangle was not a passing fancy but a serious preoccupation. An important aspect of Empson’s character was his bulldog unwillingness to give up an idea, and he was always ingenious in discovering in favoured works of literature evidence in support of his own theories, literary, social or psychological. For him sexual freedom was an ethical imperative even if the consequences might sometimes be painful. His belief that artists and people of intellect must break with social convention in order to bring about beneficial change naturally applied to sex as well as everything else.

These leading ideas would spread and colour his thinking about matters that might have been thought independent of them. One such instance is his view of the story Joyce tells in Ulysses. It was in 1948 that he first outlined the theory in a letter to his wife: Bloom would like to make love to Molly but hasn’t done so for ten years, since his first son died, though he is keen to have another child. If he could get Molly away from Boylan and ‘get her to bed with Stephen’ he thinks he could manage it provided Stephen preceded him – perhaps when Stephen returned to Eccles Street, as he promised. Joyce was apparently ‘shy’ about this bit of narrative, and hid the point from his readers. Not from Empson, however, who expounded it several times adding more and more detail in evidence: for example, in two successive issues of this journal in August and September 1982, and finally in the posthumous collection Using Biography. He reached a point where he could not believe an unprejudiced reader could help finding what Joyce had rather cravenly hidden; and in any case he would presumably have given up the hope of a triangular arrangement by the time he started Finnegans Wake. But we are to understand that his desire for it had been urgent, and Empson studies it with appropriate intensity: the triangular outcome is ‘amply foretold’.

Today, we have a similar selection. Anodyne comedies like Modern Family and Parks and Recreation present a pleasant, untroubled picture of the present at the same time that nostalgic shows like Glory Dayz (spiritual predecessor: The Wonder Years) present a romanticized past. Glee allows parents to project desired attributes onto their school-age kids. The Office, now far from Ricky Gervais’ unsparing portrayal of the corporate workplace, presents us a picture of American work that is fundamentally benevolent: the crazy bosses are quirky (and backwardly effective!) and careerists like Dwight Schrute are moved to the margins; everywhere, TV tells us, the common sense of the American mainstream prevails.

The late 80s feast of saccharine ended because advertisers became aware (through MTV) of another, younger demographic with their own ideas. If such a demographic existed today, where would they find them?

[Postscript: The obvious answer is that the internet now fills that role. There are cases for and against. For one thing, the internet is a different animal; many things that perfectly suit online behavior (comedy Twitter accounts, casual games) lend themselves poorly to TV formats. Some things, like YouTube Poop and SomethingAwful memes, have a doggedly insular appeal that would be wounded by any compromise.

On the other hand, MTV aired some pretty bizarre shit back in the day. It may be a matter of having TV stations staffed entirely by young people. Young people confuse advertisers, occasionally, into a benign neglect under which programming flourishes. But judging by the past, it can only be a matter of time before the same generation ages, turns against the lack of standards, and becomes incapable of producing or airing innovative shows. What’s to be done? Any idiot can make a movie now, with enough time and low enough standards. Same with a record, same with a book. Those are all engaged media. TV is one of the last remaining fortresses of the gatekeepers, and that sits uneasily beside the spirit of the internet.]