Refreshing the Loop:
Francoise Gamma and p1xelfool
Both Francoise Gamma and p1xelfool create works that accentuate historical, structural constraints and forms behind digital image-making. Gamma often creates animated GIFs utilizing technology and techniques optimized for obsolete browsers and operating systems to create commentaries that foreground fractured identities and archetypes, while p1xelfool explores nonrepresentational forms meant to evoke the spirit of the internet itself. In their conversation, the artists discuss their shared influences, including an affinity for abandonware, Technopaganism, and the online communities that helped shape them. Both artists were involved in the curatorial process for their installation, selecting works from one another that resonated personally.
About Francoise Gamma and p1xelfool
Francoise Gamma is an artist based in Barcelona who primarily uses obsolete tools to create his work. Gamma has worked professionally on the internet since 1995. He is a member of the online art collective Computers Club and has been one of the most prominent creators of GIF artwork across the web, beginning as early as Hell.com in 2001. Bipedal bodies created with single-pixel lines have been an active, consistent area of his work. Gamma’s work has been featured internationally in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, BOZAR in Belgium, and the Museo Sourmaya in Mexico City, and a solo exhibition at American Fantasy Classics.
p1xelfool is a Brazilian artist exploring the perception of time and phenomena through code-based generative art. He explores conversations between machines and humans and raises questions about the limits of organic and synthetic entities. Known for the intricacy and minimalism of their thick pixels, vivid colors, and black backgrounds, p1xelfool ‘s GIFs have received worldwide attention, including from some of the most prominent artists and collectors. His works are conceptualized with Processing, an open-source and community-led creative coding software. His pixelated worlds have been shown at Art Basel in Miami, Public Records in New York, and curated by Casey REAS for Feral File.
![Francoise Gamma, <em>Spamgas</em> [from <em>Videogramo</em>] (2009)](https://movingimage.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/FGamma-Spamgas-fromVideogramo-2009.gif "FGamma-Spamgas-fromVideogramo-2009")
Refreshing the Loop was made possible with support from GIPHY. Additional support was provided by 4thBin and Jeffrey Scudder.