Xkcd's Long-running "Time" Comic: Work of Art Or Nerd Sniping? 190
Fortran IV writes "Randall Munroe's xkcd webcomic has done some odd things before, but #1190, 'Time,' is something special. It's a time-lapse movie of two people building a sandcastle that's been updating just once an hour (twice an hour in the beginning) for well over a month (since March 25th), and after over a thousand frames shows no sign of ending; in a few days the number of frames will surpass the total number of xkcd comics. It's been mentioned in The Economist. Some of its readers have called it the One True Comic; others have called it a MMONS (Massively Multiplayer Online Nerd Sniping). It's sparked its own wiki, its own jargon (Timewaiters, newpix, Blitzgirling), and a thread on the xkcd user forum that runs to over 20,000 posts from 1100 distinct posters. Is 'Time' a fascinating work of art, a deep sociological experiment — or the longest-running shaggy-dog joke in history? Randall Munroe's not saying."
How is this interesting? (Score:2, Interesting)
I looked at it. Big black flat space with two stick figures. The Economist cares about this why?
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:4, Interesting)
I looked at it. Big black flat space with two stick figures.
You got stick figures? All I get is the word "TIME" all alone by itself. Profound, or hungover?
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I looked at it. Big black flat space with two stick figures.
You got stick figures? All I get is the word "TIME" all alone by itself. Profound, or hungover?
No Javascript.
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps it's done, I saw the same nothing you did. Other pages have a comic. I guess this one bowed and drew the curtain. /. Little kids draw stick figures as representations for communication of thoughts they cannot express, or as a utility, not so much art. So in a Warhol fashion, one needs to look beyond that, to the space where a comic was purported to exist. Like a star gone to black hole, it carries only memories of its existence embedded in any observers. So we can see a juxtaposition of relativity, repeated in the remembered grains of sand forming the castle, bringing to mind ; time as observed through the sands of an hourglass, thus are the days of our lives. An apocalyptic work, this should be displayed at the mens room in the Louvre on a very old computer which will automatically generate an hourglass when refreshed giving the viewer time to see the complexity of artists intent. Dead blind genius.
The art is; the page hits this link is generating from a link on
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:4, Informative)
You got stick figures? All I get is the word "TIME" all alone by itself. Profound, or hungover?
No Javascript.
Javascript's turned on. Firefox/Iceweasel on Debian wheezy. Refreshed, now I see two miniscule stick figures on a black shoreline looking out over water(?) under a white sky. Zzzzz ...
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the history, in slideshow form: http://xkcd.aubronwood.com/# [aubronwood.com]
Explainxkcd has the transcript (Score:4, Informative)
It is... for very low values of interesting. (Score:3, Funny)
Javascript's turned on. Firefox/Iceweasel on Debian wheezy. Refreshed, now I see two miniscule stick figures on a black shoreline looking out over water(?) under a white sky. Zzzzz ...
Wait for it...
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... now I see two miniscule stick figures on a black shoreline looking out over water(?) under a white sky. Zzzzz ...
I guess I spoke too soon. Now "he" has dropped his pack and is walking down to the water's edge(?).
Where's all the explosions and car chases, blood/gore/guts? And sex? Comedy? Drama? Hello?
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:4, Insightful)
I looked at it. Big black flat space with two stick figures. The Economist cares about this why?
because it's updating? the wiki has a history to browse through... not that exciting even then though, but I guess if you're a really hardcore xkcd fan you'll check every frame if there's god in them or something... what's good about this is that the artist didn't use the main strip for all of this, tbh. so I suppose economist is out of stories, any what-if would make for a better story.
Re:How is this interesting? (Score:5, Interesting)
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"You can watch the entire progression here"
Rather could, before it got slashdotted.
I am on the only one with the reaction (Score:4, Interesting)
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I found it kind of interesting. When the comic first came up, I waited several seconds thinking it was a slow moving gif, decided it was a waste of time and haven't given it a second thought until now. It's nice to find out what was actually up with the comic, and I wouldn't have heard of it otherwise.
Re:I am on the only one with the reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
Watch the video. It's basically a (low framerate, very slowly downloaded) animation. Without sound. Very "Randall." No reason to obsess, just enjoy every couple months as it gets updated.
Re:I am on the only one with the reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
No it's not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Art is both a process and the product of an attempt to encapsulate and transfer a human experience through a medium.
Without audience, it's just masturbation.
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Art escapes all attempts to define it. enjoy being wrong.
Then why use the term at all?
Don't look now but... (Score:5, Funny)
Art escapes all attempts to define it. enjoy being wrong.
...your onus [wikipedia.org] is showing.
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Apparently so [wikipedia.org]
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I don't really care? I even like xkcd
Nope, I'm with you - although I've found xkcd to be hit or miss, so I'm not quite the fan that a lot of Slashdotters are.
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Watching the animated
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Apparently not, since there's an XKCD Sucks [blogspot.com] site. I often like it, though.
Is it art for art's sake? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it's not an either-or situation, and setting it up as a false dichotomy isn't going to generate meaningful discussion.
Re:Is it art for art's sake? (Score:5, Informative)
If you watch the whole thing up to now as an animation, then go back and review the frame with dialog, it's very clear this is going somewhere.
http://xkcd.aubronwood.com/ [aubronwood.com]
I think it's fantastic.
Re:Is it art for art's sake? (Score:5, Informative)
Aubron Wood has made a nice web page out of the comic, he was the first one to do so. But I like this one even better:
http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ [geekwagon.net]
It also has all the "special" frames (when something changes, when there is dialog,...) listed at the bottom.
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No, just down the mouths of liberal arts *majors*.
There is a difference, you know.
Re:you realize that art is a field of liberal arts (Score:5, Interesting)
No, "the field of liberal arts" is a division of study in university environments. "Art" is a fundamental part of the way in which humans express themselves. The difference is subtle, just like hurricanes and clown make-up.
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and the author of XKCD takes a gigantic shit down the mouth of liberal arts on his main page?
It's a major part of art to question itself. XKCDs "gigantic shit" is a tame in joke compared with what Magritte and Duchamp did.
It display at least one thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It display at least one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, it shows how bored we are with the internet and that ANY new content sparks interest, however trivial.
In my head I hear my response in Louis C. K.'s voice: You've got a slab of plastic and metal you can carry around under your arm that lets you look up the answer to any question, have a text conversation in real time with anyone on the planet, access all the works of art ever created - and you're bored. Seriously. I just searched the word 'artichoke' and got 9.9 million links in under a second. And you are jaded. That's not even good enough to hold your attention anymore?
Re:It display at least one thing (Score:5, Interesting)
I think of the Star Trek universe, in particular Picard explaining to characters in "First Contact" that as money is outmoded (apart for the stubbornly mercantile Ferengi situation) the utopia of self advancement for the betterment of all as a primary activity is pretty much a reality in the Federation.
Then there is this, the dystopia, just a few hundred years early. GP can access all this accumulated knowledge and better themselves, maybe even the world, yet their view is so etiolated it seems like too much effort. Gene Roddenberry is spinning in space right now.
Perhaps we ought to let it all go to hell and become servile chattels of a corporate controlled stagnated "society" because no one gives a flying fuck apart from getting their fix of kitten pictures.
Sometimes I really despair of this world.
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Any change you try to make, however moderate, will bring its own group of whining a*holes complaining how you do it wrong. It gets tiresome after a while. In the end you stop trying.
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Uhm, yeah, and then you die.
Waiting for something to happen (Score:3)
Either the site's slashdotted already (after twelve minutes, on a Sunday afternoon?), or it's The Most Boring Movie Ever Made.
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or it's The Most Boring Movie Ever Made
C'mon, the pacing isn't that different from a Tarkovsky flick.
Re:Waiting for something to happen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Waiting for something to happen (Score:4, Informative)
It's about to drop: http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment
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Waste of... (Score:2, Insightful)
He's reminding us all that we have too much time on our hands. (And I was sure that I had posted a longer post before this one, but it appears not to be showing. In it, I also mentioned a forum that is also a long running joke on it's participants...)
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No, I don't believe that's it.
Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Well done.
Here, take this: http://xkcd.com/917/ [xkcd.com]
So... (Score:4, Funny)
Are the frames worth any money? Is there any way I mine my own and sell them?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
If you can figure out how to predict the next hash (each frame is named [random hash].png, with the website pointing to a new one every hour --- so there are probably a bunch of not-yet-released frames on the server, if you could crack the random sequence generator), you will win at least three internets of nerd credit (and perhaps a job "offer you can't refuse" from the NSA).
Gif showing 'time' story (Score:5, Informative)
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It Fits Right In (Score:5, Interesting)
Every now and then, a graph or a chart or some insight appears in the xkcd lineup that seems somehow very different from what has gone before. I remember the day I brought up Time and was initially puzzled. I didn't get it. I moused over it and saw "Wait for it." and started staring at it intently. My mind started playing tricks on me and I thought I saw a pixel or two change, but after awhile I realized they hadn't. I checked back an hour later and the castle had changed a little, and I laughed at the notion that my experience with and interpretation of the comic had already changed with the passage of Time. I decided that that was one of the primary points. I like it.
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Re:It Fits Right In (Score:4, Interesting)
I forgot to mention - he had also done one not long before where you pan around on it exploring ( #1110 ) and after awhile you realize that it's huge. It would make sense that, having done a comic that plays with the concept of space in comics, he'd do one that plays with time.
really long science fiction short story (Score:2, Interesting)
The form of story is unusual, in that one must use additional technology to follow it. Which the reading community developed very quickly. I use xkcd.aubronwood.com/ [aubronwood.com].
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Their world does not work like our world.
In what way? I don't see anything that's non-terrestrial about it. Apart from them being stick-people and it being 2D.
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Well, their oceans and rivers (and general hydrological cycle) seems to have something going on that the characters (and us viewers) don't understand --- and might not be quite like our world. A monotonically rising ocean (with no waves)? Uncertainty about whether rivers are "broken"? Unknown gigantic rivers within a relatively short walk of where they live? Something tells me we're not in Kansas anymore.
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Well, their oceans and rivers (and general hydrological cycle) seems to have something going on that the characters (and us viewers) don't understand
That sounds very terrestrial to me.
A monotonically rising ocean (with no waves)?
Time flattens out short term fluctuations and leaves the trend.
Uncertainty about whether rivers are "broken"? Unknown gigantic rivers within a relatively short walk of where they live? Something tells me we're not in Kansas anymore.
Not knowing. Questioning. Researching. Something that takes a lot of time.
Did Dorothy leave Kansas? Or was she at home all the time. Those faces looked awfully familiar didn't they.
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Time flattens out short term fluctuations and leaves the trend.
The moving people aren't "smoothed out" by time --- so something odd is happening if their world is time-averaged differently than their bodies.
Not knowing. Questioning. Researching. Something that takes a lot of time.
I don't know what Randall has planned; however, if the result of the characters' research/exploration endeavors turns out to be a simple elementary-school picture of the terrestrial hydrological cycle (rather than something more of a philosophical/metaphysical allegory), I'd be a bit surprised.
Did Dorothy leave Kansas? Or was she at home all the time. Those faces looked awfully familiar didn't they.
The other 13 books in Baum's Oz series indicate a separate existence and
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The moving people aren't "smoothed out" by time --- so something odd is happening if their world is time-averaged differently than their bodies.
You're being quite literal. Art isn't literal, it combines ideas. It hints at things.
I don't know what Randall has planned; however, if the result of the characters' research/exploration endeavors turns out to be a simple elementary-school picture of the terrestrial hydrological cycle (rather than something more of a philosophical/metaphysical allegory), I'd be a bit surprised.
That wasn't what I was alluding to. I'd be gobsmacked and disappointed too if it was that. But I don't want to spell out what I think it is about.
The other 13 books in Baum's Oz series indicate a separate existence and continuity for Oz outside of Dorothy's mind.
Indeed. That's also clear from the current OZ movie. Again I was hinting, nor trying to prove or argue something.
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on me wall (Score:3, Funny)
Finally some use for my LCD picture frame.
Length (Score:2)
It's been over a month and it's still going. Hell, it seems like it's just getting started, if it really is trying to tell a story.
I would not be exceptionally surprised if this lasted a full year. Or at least a significant portion of one.
Re:Length (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder idly if he has drawn every frame and they are now sat on a server waiting to be served up each hour, or if he's still drawing frames for it as it goes. Obviously he must have drawn them with at least some buffer space, but I wonder how much? A day? A week? If he's drawing them as he goes, is he going to keep it up forever?
I don't want to get involved in any discussions about whether it's high art or low nerd sniping or whatnot, but you've got to hand it to that guy for dedication to the art of internet stick men. Between this one, the massive pannable one, and his excellent log-scale ones, he's a man who puts some serious effort into his website...
TIME is running out (Score:2)
And that, sir, ain't no joke.
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Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean that there are people that don't consider most of xkcd a piece of art?
Anyway, of all the amazing, insightful, and informative things things that are in xkcd, probably the one that impressed me more recently was one in What-if [xkcd.com], explaining whats the worst that could happen missusing pressure cookers, few days before Boston bombing. That it remains there is a big message.
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Yeah, pretty much anyone* over thirty or who have otherwise outgrown the sophomoric phase of their life.
I've all but given u
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It's difficult at all. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
The hard part is dealing with unsophisticated and ignorant folk who mistakenly believe that because they read xkcd and watch Mythbusters they're sophisticated, informed, and educated.
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This site [blogspot.com] explains a lot of the issues many people have with xkcd as well as a well-reasoned response to a lot of the people who seem to get upset by what I think is pretty fair criticism.
Explains? It's a bunch of crap explanations along the lines of "I think this sucks". Oh wow, that's just a fantastic.
I don't get the XKCD hate. If you don't like it, DON'T READ IT. People that loudly proclaim how much they don't like XKCD come off as either butthurt douchebags suffering from some kind of "hey notice me I'm awesome too" syndrome, or they are somehow going for the "I'm über trendy because I disdain that which many other like", so they're angling for the hipster's hipster.
Figures you'd po
all (Score:2)
Is 'Time' a fascinating work of art, a deep sociological experiment â" or the longest-running shaggy-dog joke in history?
or simple all of the above ?
Yes (Score:2)
Xkcd's Long-running "Time" Comic: Work of Art Or Nerd Sniping?
Who says nerd sniping can't be art?
Not sure I needed to see Cue Ball take a dump though.
Personally (Score:4, Insightful)
I see something different in the story being told. The characters spend a bit of time building something amazing, and then worry that it's going to be taken away from them. They set out to figure out the reason for that.
Maybe because I've read his blog, or just because of http://xkcd.com/931/ [xkcd.com] that I see something darker in the story he's telling. Maybe it's just a metaphor, all good stories are. But that, as of now, the characters are almost visually back to where they started seems . . . poignant.
Too fast for me! (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer something less frantic, like: http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment [uq.edu.au].
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So I had to watch the one year time lapse camera shot. I couldn't notice any change at all.
You can see the whole thing here (Score:2)
or it might just end... (Score:2)
or it might just end...
... in decay: http://thecodelesscode.com/case/68 [thecodelesscode.com]
It's a waste of time to look before it's finished (Score:3)
I was puzzled by the image, the first time I saw the regular XKCD page -- I didn't see the point. So I looked at Explain XKCD, and found out it that the image was being updated periodically. I checked in again later, and saw that it was basically an animated movie, which is easily missed if you look at just one static image. The thing is, there's no point to watching an animation going up, one frame at a time, over months. You're not going to get any special insights that way that you can't get when it's completed, by watching the whole thing. You could presumably go back over individual frames at that point if you want to do a close analysis of it. But there's not enough to go on yet to make sense of it.
From what I've seen of this series so far, I'm guessing it will turn out to have some meaning that can be fully explained in a sentence or two.
There's a trend in entertainment of measuring out some serial narrative, one tiny fragment at a time, and encouraging the development of a fanbase that will analyze each succeeding fragment. This happens with Webcomics, and augmented reality games, as well as with series of computer games, series of novels, and television series. While there's no shortage of bunk that appears in the fanbase's theorizing, you'll inevitably see theories emerge that are far more interesting than what the writer originally had in mind. Inevitably, the fanbase will end up burned out and disappointed.
At some point, people need to learn to develop the self-respect to just stop hitting refresh to find out what the answer is to the enigma. Just check in again in a few months, when it's all over. It'll probably seem quite clever or interesting for the minute or two it takes to watch the whole thing.
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If you are watching it unfold as it goes, your imagination can get involved.
It's like reading a book and speculating about what is going to happen. Sure you can do a little of that in a movie running at 24 fps, but not for long before the next bit of info comes along.
There is merit for those watching it in real time.
Work of Art Or Nerd Sniping? Yes (Score:2)
Art? (Score:2)
Comic sans comic. Yet still I return.
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When done for the first time? Yes.
Re:Slow animation (Score:4, Interesting)
I bet this makes the people who look at it think a bit more than they would during the first two minutes of Fantasia. If your own mind is a barren wasteland, then I guess moving slowly is a waste --- but if you can bring something of your own mind to the work, so you don't need to be force-fed sound and color full-blast to make up for your own lack of creativity, the comic gets more interesting.
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How was this modded Insightful?
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It's not MORE impressive than Fantasia. They're both innovative animations in their own way. They're both impressive.
Fantasia (Score:2)
Re:Fantasia (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, things date. I saw Fantasia just once, on the big screen at a film festival. And because the festival were good about putting the film in context of it's achievement, I could appreciate it for what an achievement it was when it was made.
It's a bit like Laurel and Hardy. It doesn't make many people laugh out loud these days. But you can still appreciate how it had people rolling in the aisles at the time.
I wonder what people will make of our best, innovative stuff in 70 years time?!
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If you have to ask... the answer is no.
An artist might do a work of art that could be classified as playing a musical piece very slowly. But (s)he wouldn't do it because they are copying the idea of another contemporary art idea, nor would they ask if it was art before making it. And it would be good or bad on it's own merits, not because it shares some obvious physical attribute of another artwork.
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To be honest, the comic copied the musical piece:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible [wikipedia.org]
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There you go. Not a contemporary idea, and the artist didn't have to ask whether it was art.
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Re: Slow animation (Score:4, Informative)
Your time dilation factor is gamma = 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). Thus, to go from 1 frame per hour to 24 fps, you need gamma = 3600*24 = 86400. This means a velocity v/c = sqrt(1-1/gamma^2) = sqrt(1-1/86400^2) ~ 1 - 1/(2*86400^2) ~ 1-6.7*10^-11. As a percentage, that's about 99.9999999933% of the speed of light.
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We are all RM. Also, we are all Satoshi Nakamoto, Anonymous, Spartacus, screwed, out to get you, living in a yellow submarine, entities in a simulated reality, and Captain [wikipedia.org].
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I'm not!
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Was that so hard? [lmgtfy.com]
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I'm not sure that's quite right as a definition.
It's almost a distant cousin of trolling. It's where you basically post something which you know will cause a nerd to "nerd out", with the intention specifically of getting them all fired up. The meme-maker was probably this XKCD comic:
http://xkcd.com/356/ [xkcd.com]
Other examples might be asking in a sci-fi forum about which spaceship was bigger, the Battlestar Galactica from the reboot series or the Mothership from the computer game Homeworld 2. Suddenly the whole plac
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When I first saw "time," I read the caption, "wait for it."
"Wait for what," I thought to myself.
I then spent a brief moment pondering, and then decided that whatever it was I was supposed to wait for was not worth my time, and moved on with my life.
Since then, I've cleaned my garage, put my TV up on my wall, and planted some grass seed, all of which probably would not have been accomplished had I allowed myself that nerdy sense of self-importance that comes with being a self-righteous elitist who misplaces value on "art" projects like this.
Of course, I suspect that of the number of people that do enjoy it, there is only a very small percentage that sit there and literally "wait" for an update. There are those of us who will clean our garages, put TVs up on walls, plant grass seed and so on and then once a day or so, go back and spend 2 minutes or so checking what's happened over the course of the day in the comic.
Personally, I'm really enjoying it thus far. The characters are somehow beautifully naive about the world and have a curiosity to