House hunting: Artist makes online tour with GIFs

The artwork, Idle Self, comprises a series of luxurious rooms in an apparently abandoned house. Each area contains a surreal moving sculpture – including a bubbling liquid, a rolling carpet and a rock with chains running through it – animated by endlessly circling GIFs. The artwork was created for ANI GIF, a GIF-only online gallery.

‘I had themes in mind, but I wasn’t necessarily trying to tell a story,’ says Hancocks. Idle Self resembles a digital art gallery, through which viewers wander to form their own impressions. Brands could easily use the format to show off retail or fashion items. The combination of flat, featureless surfaces and surreal abstract shapes echoes the Flatforms design direction we profiled in 2012.

GIFs, the digital image format common in the early days of the internet, have enjoyed a resurgence in recent times. For more on GIFs and how to make them work for your brand, read our Return of the GIF microtrend.