Here’s a blast from the past:
Due to its smooth loop, complex movement, and stray pixel (bottom right corner), the 1995 GIF “Dancing Girl”, or hulagirl.gif, has been a particular point of study for artist, New Media professor, and “Digital Folklore” co-author Olia Lialina. Thanks to Lialina, we know that the GIF was made by an ex-military Arkansas Geocities user Chuck Poynter, who passed away in 2001. More digging revealed that the GIF was a demo animation made from VideoWorks, which Poynter apparently colored in.
“Dancing Girl” has inspired no end of artworks, as early as a Lialina’s 1998 Rhizome splashpage and through 2005 tributes as animated GIF model. And then Lialina’s oldes to “Dancing Girl” became Peter Baldes’s Odes to Olia. We post her again here to perpetuate the cycle. The steps are provided here.
