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From what I can tell, artist Jeffrey Scudder is the only post-internet artist to figure out Tik-Tok, with his Whistelgraph project recently hitting 2 Million followers. Whistlegraphs are tiny songs that are performed through drawing, where the sonic and visual gestures synch up poetically - kind of like a haiku that you animate in real-time - that for the past two years have been performed in videos by Scudder alongside artists Camille Klein and Alex Freundlich. Pioneers in their own experimental artform, Whistlegraph seems to be channeling a lot of things at the same time - If I were to free-associate I’d say it feels spiritually connected to Brendan Fowler and Odwalla88 and Tori Kudo, but also Josh Smith and David O’Reilly and Susan Cianciolo - not that any of their devoted fans would know or care about that stuff. Their audience is predominantly between the ages of 8-17, and the most comprehensive interview with Whistlegraph to date was done by a 13-year-old superfan named Perry. Watching Perry perform “Butterfly Cosplayer” with glee makes me wonder if the current iteration of Whistlegraph is just the beginning and that the most exciting manifestations of this art form will be found in generations to come.
Dec 21, 2021
Related Recs
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There’s a subtle art in making tiktok edits that’s often overlooked by a lot of people. It takes an incredible amount of knowledge, editing, and composition. From picking the clips to choosing the right the right song and making everything fit nicely and cohesively, it takes a serious amount of artistic skill to make an edit. We often disregard them bc they’re on social media — so how good can they be, right? — but I seriously think they’ll be studied someday as an art movement of our time.
Dec 23, 2024
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Legit the strangest way to express myself but there’s just something about it that makes me euphoric yet emotional. ive linked what im taking about. I’m obsessed im in my tumblr girl era.
Jul 20, 2024
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Not sure if it’s cool to recommend my own Instagram account but the fact of the matter is, is that Tik Tok is a huge part of my life (not sure how I feel about that statement) and I can’t recommend the whole app of Tik Tok. I actually DON’T recommend anyone download Tik Tok - it’s confusing, scary and demented. Personally, I like all that kind of stuff (raised on a computer - i’ve seen it all, I’m numb, jaded, etc) so this is how I can filter and showcase what I believe is the best of the best, which also usually happens to be the worst. I made this account in April to show my coworkers on How To my favorite Tik Toks I was finding without flooding the group chat (it was getting to be A LOT…). It kind of spiraled into a deep fascination with what kids are doing online creatively and socially - I became addicted, obsessed and a half a year later now have like over 10k Tik Toks saved to my phone and an entire community I’ve cultivated and love deeply. Follow because there are big things coming soon and most certainly I will be demanding producer credits on at least 5 new TV shows and indie films..lol
Nov 16, 2021
Top Recs from @asher-penn
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Eugene Kotlyarenko’s debut film 0’s & 1’s is still my favorite - and it’s heartwarming to know that it’s only been a decade after its premiere at a tiny Brooklyn theater that it’s finally getting the big screen screenings that it truly deserves. The simple story of a guy retracing his steps trying to find his lost computer - Slacker meets Dude Where’s My Car for the first generation of terminally online. But it’s the film’s relentless art direction that truly sets it apart - a multicam extravaganza framed within dozens of custom interfaces that rival both Hackers and The Net in channeling and elevating the aesthetics of the moment with painstakingly detailed easter eggs to be found on every fleeting frame. I’d also like to give a shout-out to We Are, my second favorite film by Eugene. Self-released almost a year ago, We Are is a continuation of his romantic comedies about breakups A Wonderful Cloud (2015) and Wobble Palace (2018) starring hapless losers mired in technological detritus - in this case, the employee of a pathetic virtual reality arcade. But unlike its predecessors We Are is Eugene’s most casual film to date, made with a whimsical looseness echoed in the character Stick’s XL tourist t-shirts and the soft soothing pace of his fidget spinner. It’s a funny movie, but it’s also sad… when Eugene breaks the 4th wall and slates a scene with Dasha, there is a self-accepting effortlessness that really feels like letting go. We Are is just a movie and that’s all it needs to be.
Dec 21, 2021
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Nymphet Alumni are a podcast devoted to analyzing the niche mainstream - cultural touchstones that didn’t necessarily die but instead morphed, rebranded, and shapeshifted into obsolescence, alongside contemporary trends that are almost too pervasive to identify. Sometimes these are brands (American Apparel, Oh Mighty), or platforms (Rookie, Tumblr), or social phenomena (Tik Tok Physiognomy, Nepotism Babies). Just because these subjects are massive in scale doesn’t make them easy to talk about, as the topics are so recent and fleeting that to subject them to thoughtful critical analysis feels too early or too late or just plain pointless- and maybe that’s the point. Listening to Alexi, Biz, and Sam’s compassionate and highly personal insights it’s clear that the ephemeral doesn’t arrive from - or exit into - the void.
Dec 21, 2021
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RIP to this absolute GOAT of a sobriety meme account. I think I stopped drinking around the time that sobriety memes were in their second wave - 12-step inside jokes that were ideally harrowing, embarrassing, and hopeful in their shared hopelessness - and while Brutal Recovery, Fucking Sober, and Dumbsoberbitch are great, no account could perform these lacerations with the expertise of a surgeon as @facebooksober. Like an elephant balancing itself on a dime, facebook sober managed to capture the divine paradox’s inherent to recovery with such aesthetic grace and poetry I was 100% convinced that the person behind the account was a hot girl (it was a dude, lol). Whatever. Hot Newcomers Are Forever.
Dec 21, 2021