This selection of six poems built with a type of composite image known as animated GIFs used to create the earliest animations in the Web. In Zervos’ experienced hands (see his “Dimocopo” suite), this simple technology can be very expressive indeed, as can be seen in “Divorce” a kinetic concrete poem that uses moving typography to highlight some of the finer points in a divorce process. The narrative poem seen above, “A Kidz Story,” is best experienced in action because it is a story generator designed with nine animated GIFs, one per line, each with a different time interval between lines. This allows for different combinations to emerge over time, providing the illusion of variation in what eventually becomes very formulaic and repetitive— an incisive comment on the genre it represents.

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