"The loop is the infinite repetition of a very short portion of an image... a Dantean 'contrappasso': we isolate an action and force the subjects to repeat it endlessly, unable to ever free themselves from the terrible, fascinating spell."
Experiment II | Okkult Motion Pictures & The Giphoscope
The concept
What happens when you remove the official archive from the art equation?
Following the investigation into physical invisibility (Nanoart), this second axis of research shifted towards a different, more contemporary paradox: the hyper-visible yet institutionally unreceivable. The investigation focused on the animated GIF — a digital format designed for obsolescence, infinite repetition, and mass circulation
. Despite its pervasive presence in global visual culture, the GIF has been systematically excluded from traditional museum archives due to its lack of physical weight and built-in disposability.
The dual-axis inquiry. Revealed in retrospective analysis as a single, consistent experiment, the research was deployed along two symmetric axes to test whether cultural significance exists independently of institutional certification:
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The digital axis: Okkult Motion Pictures
Founded in 2012, this platform produced artistically intentional loops that circulated without any institutional mediation. To date, the OKKULT channel on GIPHY has generated over 2.9 billion views — a figure exceeding the combined annual attendance of the world’s major physical museums. This massive engagement demonstrates that cultural meaning can take root and survive even when the "delegate" for its certification (the archive) fails to record it.
Okkult Tumblr Blog (okkult.it)
Platform: Tumblr (Launched in 2012)
Metrics: over 816 original editorial posts and 22,553 active readers/followers.
Significance: the conceptual and historical "mother house" of the entire Okkult experiment. Tumblr served as the original creative crucible where Scali and Calabrese began curating, distorting, and distributing loop-based digital animations, initiating a dialogue on pre-cinema and modern digital ephemerality years before expanding to GIPHY.
Explore the original Okkult Tumblr Blog
Okkult GIPHY Channel
Reach: over 1,300 original digital artworks generating more than 2.9 billion views.
Significance: a testament to massive, decentralized cultural circulation. Despite surpassing the combined annual attendance of the world’s major physical museums, these billions of views exist completely outside institutional art registries.
Excerpts
Medium: curated archive footage redistributed as digital loops.
Description: A systematic, "double" exercise in cultural anthropoperiphery. Okkult retrieves forgotten, public-domain moving images (ranging from early pre-cinema to historical documentaries) and redistributes them as perfect looping GIFs, using the very digital platforms that traditional archives ignore to circulate forgotten collective memories.
Talking GIFs
Medium: Looping digital images with embedded acoustic data [2.1.3].
Description: Digital loops containing hidden audio tracks, activated only through the PhonoPaper smartphone application [2.1.3]. Formally connecting this phase back to Nanoart, Talking GIFs present a content that is physically present yet perceptually absent, requiring post-human technological mediation to complete the act of reception [2.1.4].
Read the article on Vice
The physical axis: the Giphoscope
A handcrafted analog player that materializes digital ephemera into a physical object.
The Giphoscope transformed the infinite loop into a tactile, mechanical apparatus that required the physical presence of the observer.
By acquiring weight and texture, the work forced the institutional threshold to shift: the Giphoscope has been exhibited at the Serlachius Museum (Finland) and theorized in academic publications by Bloomsbury Academic and the University of Bologna.
Explore the official website
Craftsmanship & Made in Italy: each Giphoscope is a unique, numbered specimen, entirely hand-assembled in Turin over a period of four to ten days. It is an expression of high-tier Italian craftsmanship, utilizing premium materials such as Italian walnut, marble, aluminum, brass, gold, and silver.
The mechanism of presence: inspired by Herman Casler’s 1894 Mutoscope, the device re-engineers a 19th-century optical toy for 21st-century imagery. Through a manual crank-operated system mounted on precision ball bearings, it visualizes a 24-frame animation. Unlike a digital screen, the Giphoscope requires the viewer's physical touch and active motion to exist: the loop does not start on its own; it requires a hand.
Institutional impact: by acquiring weight, texture, and the "luxification of atoms", the work forced the archive to respond. Over 300 bespoke units have been created for collectors and museums worldwide. The Giphoscope has been selected for the Serlachius Museum (Finland) and historicized by Bloomsbury Academic as a foundational theoretical apparatus in contemporary visual archaeology.
The philosophical discovery
The experiment exposed the archive not as a mirror of culture, but as a peripheral tool of visibility with its own optics and blind spots. The loop revealed itself as a "Dantean contrapasso": a gesture isolated and condemned to repeat infinitely, visible yet structurally unable to escape.
Epilogue: the market vs the archive
The final confirmation arrived in 2020 when Meta acquired GIPHY for one billion dollars. While the institutional archive still struggled to process the format, the global market fully absorbed its value. This epilogue proves that cultural significance remains independent of the guardians of memory: the human being, as a builder of archives, is as peripheral to meaning as the eye was to existence in Nanoart.
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I. Institutional exhibitions & Catalogs
26 Oct 2019 – 29 Mar 2020 | THE QUEST FOR HAPPINESS: ITALIAN ART NOW.
Serlachius Museum, Mänttä, Finland.
Curators: Maria Stella Bottai, Lorella Scacco, Pirjo Immonen.
Official catalog published by Parvs Publishing. ISBN: 9789527226346
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14 Jun – 18 Aug 2018 | STOP & GO: THE ART OF ANIMATED GIFS.
International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Curators: Valentina Tanni, Saverio Verini
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11 – 31 Oct 2017 | POLISGRAPHICS.
MIAAO (Museo Internazionale delle Arti Applicate Oggi), Turin, Italy
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2 Mar – 19 Apr 2017 | MODERNOLATRIA — BOCCIONI +100.
National Gallery of Cosenza, Italy. Featuring the installation Rovesciamo Tutto
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1 – 31 Oct 2016 | THE GIFER | INTERNATIONAL GIF ART FESTIVAL.
NH Carlina Hotel, Turin, Italy
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19 – 22 May 2016 | ATHENS DIGITAL ART FESTIVAL: DIGITAL POP.
Athens, Greece
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5 Apr – 22 Jul 2016 | STOP & GO: THE ART OF ANIMATED GIFS.
smART – Polo per l'Arte, Rome, Italy. Curators: Valentina Tanni, Saverio Verini. Official catalog published by smART
17 Jan – 7 Feb 2014 | 1840s GIF PARTY.
Tate Britain, London, UK. Institutional declaration of the GIF as the heir to pre-cinematic traditions
II. Academic literature & Peer-review
2026 | CHATZIPAPAS, A., TILIGADIS, K. "GIF-ITI".
In: AFIMinEC Journal (Open Journal of Animation, Film and Interactive Media in Education and Culture), Greece.
2022 | GRESPI, B. "Cadrer sans yeux".
In: Images Re-vues (Hors-série 10). OpenEdition Journals, Paris, France.
2022 | Eternidade do instante: gifs, loopings, imagem técnica atemporal
(Wayner Tristão Gonçalves), Editus - Editora da UESC, Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil
(Academic Monograph, ISBN: 9786586213799).
2020 | TANNI, V. Memestetica. Il settembre eterno dell'arte.
NERO Editions, Rome, Italy.
ISBN: 9788880560938
View on NERO Editions
2020 | KNIGHT, M., MCFADYEN, L. "'At any given moment': duration in archaeology and photography".
In: Archaeology and Photography: Time, Objectivity and Archive. Bloomsbury Academic, London/New York.
2020 | GRESPI, B. "The Power of the Mechanism. Cinema and the Machinery of Desire".
In: Technofobia and Technophilia in the Media, Art and Visual Culture.
ISBN: 978-88-255-3985-1 (DOI: 10.4399/978882553985112).
Download PDF
2019 | BOTTAI, M. S., SCACCO, L., IMMONEN, P. The Quest for Happiness — Italian Art Now. Parvs Publishing / Serlachius Museums' Publications No. 63, Mänttä, Finland.
ISBN: 9789527226346
View on Serlachius website
2018 | CHIARINI, A. "Modelli di simultaneità nella GIF animata. Il caso Giphoscope".
In: Fotografia e culture visuali del XXI secolo. Roma TrE-Press, Rome, Italy.
ù
2017 | JANKOV, S. GIF and Cities
Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Exhibition Catalog, ISBN: 978-86-7996-176-1
Download PDF
2016 | MARMO, L. "Looping, Laughing and Longing: The Animated GIF in the Contemporary Online Environment".
In: Comunicazioni sociali, n. 1. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Download PDF
2016 | DE ANGELIS, M. G. "Del Atlas mnemosyne a GIPHY. La supervivencia de las imágenes en la era del GIF".
In: e-imagen Revista 2.0. Sans Soleil Ediciones, Spain/Argentina.
Read on e-imagen
2016 | BAPTISTA, T. Lessons in Looking: The Digital Audiovisual Essay.
Doctoral Thesis, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.
Access via Birkbeck Repository
2015 | CHIARINI, A. Still/moving images. Il rapporto dialettico tra cinema e fotografia.
Doctoral Thesis, University of Bologna, Italy
III. Conferences & Speaking Engagements
23–25 Nov 2016 | "GIFmaking as an Artistic Practice". Arte Virale: i nuovi immaginari della cultura GIF.
Department of the Arts, University of Bologna, Italy. [Keynote Speaker].
Presentation of the Giphoscope as a theoretical case study
Watch the video
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IV. Special projects & Platforms
2014 – Ongoing | OKKULT GIPHY CHANNEL. GIPHY.
Curated directory of over 1,300 original artworks, generating 2.9 billion views to date
Link
2014 | EXCERPTS.
Systematic curation and redistribution of public-domain moving images as digital loops
2013 | TALKING GIFS.
PhonoPaper App. Experimental union of looping digital images and hidden acoustic data, requiring technological mediation
2012 – Ongoing | OKKULT TUMBLR BLOG (okkult.it).
Tumblr. The original creative crucible and conceptual "mother house" of the experiment
V. Media Coverage & Press (selection)
2016 | "Per un'arte che non dia troppo nell'occhio".
Doppiozero. Author: Paola Donatiello.
Link
2015 | "Digital Culture, Meet Analog Fever".
The New York Times. Author: Rob Walker.
Framing the Giphoscope within the global rise of analog media
Link
2014 | "3 Grainy GIFs and the wealth of cinematic history behind them".
VICE / The Creators Project.
2013 | "The Giphoscope turns your favorite GIF into a hand-cranked work of art".
The Verge.
Link
2013 | "These GIFs can talk".
VICE / The Creators Project.
Link
2013 | "Analog Giphoscope plays animated GIFs in the real world".
CNET.
VI. Collections & Legal registrations
2012 – Ongoing | GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION.
Over 300 Giphoscope units custom-made and collected by private individuals, corporations, and museums worldwide
2020 | MARKET ACQUISITION.
Involuntary transition of the Okkult channel’s content (2.8 billion views) into Meta’s proprietary infrastructure following the GIPHY acquisition, confirming the archive/market discrepancy