Book part:

Die GIF-Erzählung. Medientheorie und Gestaltungspraxis einer digitalen Bewegtbildform

The subject of this article is the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), which was originally developed to obtain a significant and lossless compression of image files. Since then its popularity has increased vehemently due to another, inherent peculiarity. With GIFs it has become possible to display distinctive images in an explicitly short and at the same time coherent sequence of images and thereby give the impression of an animation or movement. Scenes from movies or television are summarized or used as a comment. However, GIFs always point to the unspoken because of their incompleteness. The unspoken, however, not only makes a significant appeal to the sequence of images, but at the same time divides the recipients into the camps of the knowers and the non-knowers. Recipients must close the gaps offered, which sometimes requires a knowledge of the source material. This paper provides a media theory of the GIF-narrative and a description of its design practice. It examines the knowledge that is transferred through a GIF-narrative, discusses its hypertextuality and transmediality, and finally declares the GIF-narrative as a further and at the same time new form of communication in the World Wide Web.