 Thank you, great to be here. So as a bunch of journalists, educators, academics, we generally in most cases have, I think, the same purpose, to inform people. And we do this in a lot of different ways, some of which we've already been talked about, and some we'll get to in the next two days. But there is one tool freely available to us that I think we've only just begun to use. And that tool is the loop, specifically in the context of the internet, the animated GIF. So we might overlook the GIF because we associate it with certain usages. And while GIFs are everywhere now, they typically show up, and I'd say three main forms. So let's take a look at some of these. We have reaction GIFs, which express an emotion or a particular situation. And people spend a ton of time researching and trying to find the perfect one. Whole search engines have been created to help you say exactly what you mean in GIF form. Then there are mashup GIFs that combine words and pictures. Often these are just bizarre. So we'll keep going. Then there are breaking news or kind of capture a moment GIFs. We typically see them highlighting sports events, celebrity bloopers, or catching a llama on national television. But in my mind, as much as these GIFs are awesome, looped images have a much richer past and a much greater potential than just these three forms. So for the rest of this talk, I'm going to take us through some of the history of looped images, some theories about how and why they work, what loops have to do with music, and then some more sort of experimental applications. So to begin at the beginning, GIFs actually have quite a long history. And no, I am not just talking about the 1990s when GIFs were first getting started. I think we can go back even further to the earliest forms of looped images. So starting in the early 1800s, we saw a variety of devices that repeated images to create the sort of illusion of motion. And these were the first animation devices. So you had the phenocistoscope, which is basically a spinning disk of images that you looked at through a little window to see one section. Then you had the praxinoscope, used mirrors to reflect pictures on the inside of the spinning cylinder. The zoetrope used another spinning cylinder, but this one you'd look through slits to see the picture change on the inside. And so whether it was a spinning disk or a series of mirrors, the end result was actually I think pretty similar to the GIFs we know of today. There's also the poor man's version, the flip book, which was actually invented around the same time as these other contraptions. And it's not like this method has totally gone away. In fact, it showed up on the Boston T a few years ago when the movie Coraline was promoted with a series of posters they put up within the subway tunnel that you would see through the window as you went by. But back to the 1800s, photographer Edward Mybridge in 1872 took this idea of looped images even further and created a system that actually projected them, which some say was the first movie projector. Okay, so look closely at the image being projected here. Does this remind you of anything? What about this? Is this something like you might have come across in data visualization before? Okay, well does anybody recognize this? So this is the same Edward Mybridge. He made this piece called Horse in Motion. Basically a series of images he used to settle an argument about whether a horse gets all four feet off the ground at the same time. But this is also a classic example of small multiples. And small multiples are useful because they put all the information in front of us at the same time. If we saw just a single video of this horse in motion it might be harder to see differences because I can't hold everything in my working memory. But small multiples let us sort of offload our memory onto the page in this nice way. But what if we turned this series of photos into a single looping gif? Now here's our horse in motion, the gif edition. And the power of the gif is that it repeats forever. So rather than just repeat this image over and over again in space like small multiples do, we've just repeated it over and over again in time forever. And so with gifs I think we introduce onto the web this notion of the infinite, right? Where does it start? When will it stop? When do I leave? Like maybe I should stay. And I think it's this repetition, this sort of infinite looping that makes gifs such a powerful tool. So let's turn to why looped images are so useful to us as journalists, as educators, as communicators. And to show you initially why they might be useful to us I'm gonna show you some examples of loops that exist already today. A lot of these have to do with explaining a process. So this is actually the first gif I ever saw that made me think gifs would be useful at all. Here's how a cheetah runs, sort of similar to our horse example. Here's how a lock works and how to pick one. Here's a sewing machine, how a sewing machine works and kind of gets the thread around the bobbin. Mind blowing, I know. There are quite a lot of these sort of how stuff works gifs which often fall into food categories. So pretzels or pop tarts. Who said uh, what? If you have ice cream sandwiches or pasta or dough. Then we've got how chains are made or paper clips. Some more sort of complex ones. Oh yeah, it's cool, right? Show us the inner workings of how a creature, how different creatures breathe or how a fan rotates. Then some processes that you've probably not even thought of like how to make a globe. This is like the opposite problem of map projection, like try to take a flat surface and make it round. Or how the bus stop gets those perfectly painted letters and look, these are not like stencils or anything. These guys are just pros. They do it all by hand. And gifs can also help us explain more abstract things like concepts or theorems, et cetera. So here's the Pythagorean theorem or different sorting algorithms or how they turn zip codes which are basically just a collection of points into areas known as zip code tabulation areas or common passwords. This one is actually quite depressing for any computer security person out there. Or how positioning in CSS works. This would have come in handy like years ago. So gifs can also help us show probability and chance. So here's a looping graphic on a New York Times article about the jobs report. So on the left is what the unemployment rate could be and then on the right is what the jobs report could look like. So even if job growth rate were totally flat, you could, if job growth were flat, the jobs report could look like it's going up or down or any kind of combination. Here's another one from the Times where pressing a button gives you a different possible outcome of who will win the Senate. So again, the more you spin, the more you see how the probability shifts. And so those are just a few examples of journalistic or explanatory gifs in the wild. But now I wanna ask the question, why do they work? Like why is repetition so great and what is it actually that happens when an image is looped? So I'm gonna talk about some theories. The mere exposure effect says we tend to like things that we've been exposed to before. And we start in this phase at a pretty young age. In fact, almost every parent I talked to and mentioned I was doing this talk on loops, mentioned children's stories. And kids love to listen to the same story over, read the same story over and over and over again. Like things that are familiar and comfortable. They're predictable. Our tendency to like repetition is how we begin as children to learn, to recognize patterns, to pick up new vocabulary, to make predictions about the future. It is also why hit songs are a thing, right? So we hear a song once and we might think it's okay. But then you hear it at the gym, at the grocery store, and then you're singing along in your car. But if you think about it, repetition is actually pretty central to music in general, both internally within songs, right? Like the chorus repeats at least a couple of times in a song. And then externally, any time you hear a song you've heard before, sometimes on repeat. So it's kind of odd. Besides children's stories, which most of us grow out of anyways, there are few areas in life where we're totally cool with repeating the same thing over and over again. Like think about it, if somebody told you the same joke 18 times, like this would be really annoying. But if you hear your favorite song 18 times or for the 18th time, it's probably just as great. So if anything can help us solve this sort of mysterious power of loops, it should be music. And one reason why psychologists at least think music is so powerful is that we become, imagine participants in a song. So when you hear a few notes of a song, you're already imagining what's gonna come next. Your mind is unconsciously singing along. And in a way, I think this is why the little bouncing ball in those like old Disney sing-along videos work so well. We can imagine and prepare to sing what comes next. And every time our imagination is right and every time our expectations are confirmed, it's almost like a surprise, we get this big rush. And I think there's some parallel in this type of expectation to visual repetition. Even if we know what comes next, we are still somehow surprised over and over and over again. So I don't know how many of you've seen this gift, but let's just wait for Edward Norton to wake up. Boom, okay, this will never get old, I swear. And I don't know how many times I've watched this Hitchcock poster, but every time I'm still surprised that the actors move, it's crazy. Some people at the Smithsonian Library clearly had some fun in adding a little element of surprised old images and illustrations like turning this common flying squirrel into a legit flying squirrel. Yeah, I love this one. Or making these whales actually swim or just having a little fun with skeletons or making part of the page come alive. And there's also something expectational in this story which is told as a text message conversation. So you have to keep clicking to read the next text and to see how the story unfolds. It even comes complete with the little dots you see that let you know someone is typing, you're sort of anxiously waiting to see what they have to say. It's really hard to stop clicking again and again to see the next text, the next text. So in all these ways, loops can kind of play with our expectation, with our imagination into what will happen next. But another theory as to why repetition is so effective is that it allows us to shift where we focus each time. So when we listen to a song, we shift our attention. So first, perhaps we're listening to the melody, then to our guitar riff, then to some interesting lyrics. So we're never really listening to the same part of the song each time. We focus on different aspects of the sound on each new listen. And this happens in language too. It's something called semantic satiation. And it's what happens when you repeat a word over and over and over again, and suddenly the word stops having any meaning at all. So repetition effectively makes you stop focusing on what the word means, and instead you focus your attention on something else, what the word sounds like. So repetition can basically open up new worlds of sound, aspects not accessible on first hearing. And I think a similar thing happens for images. So when I see a gif repeated over and over again, I can focus on one part, and then the other, and then the other. And I start to notice new things. So you know those spot, the difference games, or you have to detect all the visual discrepancies between two pictures? So here's an example. Notice that it's a lot easier to see the differences when they loop back and forth than when they're just side by side. All right, so looping makes us notice differences because our attention can kind of shift around in different places. I think this bodes well for gifs that show changes over time because by repeating these images with lots of moving parts, I can notice new things each time. So here's a look at how US territories got added over the years, how Boston was filled in with landfill. Here's another Boston growth gif, seemed appropriate. How the New York subway system grew over time. Here's space junk collection over the past decades. This is not a pretty situation. The ebb and flow of the seasons year after year and the baby boom. Or how the alphabet has evolved from 900 BC to the present. Here's another gif that shows the urban sprawl of Walmart in different cities. And side note, remember when I mentioned small multiples a while back? So here, NPR actually used gifs for the mobile version and small multiples for the desktop version. So both use repeating, right? One in space and one in time, but they're catered to what platform you're on, which I think is super smart. So I can't mention repetition and music and not talk about earworms. And these are the bits of the song that work their way into our subconscious and then suddenly we can't get them out of our heads. And one theory about earworms says it's our brains trying to work out a melody or song lyrics, right? We repeat and repeat and repeat so that we can remember the last few words and when we figure them out or when we listen to the song again, that goes away. But think about this. When we repeat catchy tunes in our minds, we also repeat the attached words, right? The lyrics. And this is why it's much easier for us to remember song lyrics than it is, say, to memorize other sorts of things like speeches. Tunes become sort of like a hook for us to hang words on. And in addition to rhythm, right? You have the melody, the tune, the ups and downs, the pitch and these words accompany. So this provides a powerful set of cues to help you remember much better than random monotone stretches of speech. And people have taken full advantage of this fact to attach some useful words to melodies, to basically encode information in lyrics. Think of the ABCs, right? Or the days of the week in Spanish or all the 50 states or the presidents. The only reason I know how to spell Massachusetts is because I learned it in a song in school. And so it seems like we've already harnessed the power of musical loops for learning. So why not harness the power of repetition in visual ways to teach and inform? If a tune provides a hook to hang words, then I guess the question becomes, could visuals provide a hook to hang information? Well, yes. Since ancient Greece, people have used a mental trick called a memory palace to associate information with images. A memory palace is basically an imagined building in your mind's eye that you place various objects the crazier the better that you wanna remember. And our brains have a much easier time remembering places and images than words or numbers. And so by associating the two, you can memorize all kinds of things. And after repeatedly walking through this palace, people can recall the most intricate details and trivia years later. So we know that images can help us remember things. And I think we can use these same visual hooks for a different purpose, to provide instructions. If you need to help someone memorize a sequence of steps and then repeat them later, I think instructional gifts are perfect. So that could be how to dance the foxtrot or how to tie a knot or a bow tie. This is sort of a combination, small multiples, gift loop, best of everything. How to make assorted baked goods. I think there is a whole cooking category of gifts that we've only begun to explore. How to moonwalk. Apparently according to this guy, everyone is doing it the wrong way. This is a video that shows you, or gifts that shows you how not to. How to gulf and how to sign various internet slang. Here's an instructional loop that the New York Public Library put together to help explain how to use their new crowdsource building inspector tool. So you see this as soon as you get to their page and then can see on repeat exactly what you need to do next to help them out. And so just think of the possibilities here. What if public health officials used instructional loops to teach people how to say use a defibrillator or how to perform CPR. If we had a gift when we were learning these processes that showed us exactly how to perform them, we might remember them better later on. Because in addition to providing visual cues for memorizing, they also show us exactly what order to do things in, which is obviously important when it comes to say using an AD. An order is something we pick up on without even really knowing it. Kind of like after listening to a playlist over and over again, you know what song comes next, even if you didn't try to memorize that intentionally. So gifts won't replace health officials or hospitals, but I think they could be pretty useful for this sort of instruction. And as far as I can tell, the current state of public health gifts is pretty grim because the only thing that turned up when I searched for a public health gift was this little collection. So I think progress is possible. All right, so finally another reason why loops are so powerful is that they can transform something mundane or average into something completely different. So let me tell you the story of Diana Deutsch. So Diana Deutsch is a psychologist at UC San Diego who studies how people perceive music and pitch and how that's affected by all sorts of things, like whether you're right or left-handed or where you grew up or even what you believe beforehand. And typically she conducts these experiments by having people listen to tapes that she records and edits herself. So one night she was editing a bit of audio and left the tape running on a loop when she went to the kitchen to make tea or something. And after a while she started wondering, what is that singing? And she realized it was her own voice on repeat that she had confused with a song. So this seems very strange. We know the difference between speaking and singing, right? Well, let's see for ourselves what happens when we listen to what Diana did. I think I have audio here, maybe. The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible. But they sometimes behave so strangely. They sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. So strangely, so strangely. OK, so raise your hand. And at some point, sometimes behave so strangely. It started sounding like a melody. OK, it's crazy, right? And just in case you think this is some open-viz conspiracy. Sometimes it becomes so strange. Okay, same thing. Sometimes it becomes so strange. Same thing happens to these kids. Sometimes it becomes so. Okay, so. Okay, the insane thing about this speech to song illusion is that now you can never unhear it. Right, you will always from now on hear the sometimes behave so strangely as a song. Like, let's go back and see. The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely. Right? This will never change. So you can do this on all your friends. You will never change. Anyway, so this is, okay, this tells us that repetition is so deeply rooted in music that we can turn words into music merely by repeating them in a loop. Okay, so if we can repeat a few words over and over again to become music, then what happens when we repeat other things over and over? So now this talk is going to go a little crazy, so hang in there. A year or two ago, the inventor of Giffy, Alex Chung, and a video artist, Paul Pfeiffer, they asked the same exact question. They thought, okay, if you think of a loop as a function and you put sound through this loop function, you get music. If you put an image or a video through it, you get a Giff. But then they took it one further. What if we put thought through it? What if we apply this loop to ourselves? Well, their answer to that question, what does repetitive thought look like, was hypnosis, applied loops of thought. And this maybe makes sense. I mean, the classic icons for hypnosis are either this kind of mesmerizing back and forth of a clock or a flame or this sort of psychedelic trippy spiral that zooms forever. But there's also this notion of the meditative state, saying things over and over again, mantras, ohm. All of these are the loop function applied to human thought. And what's more, the process of hypnosis is basically the process of getting access to your unconscious mind. It's your mind in a particular mode of brainwave in this sort of state of suggestibility. And if your mind is in this particularly suggestible state, their thinking went, then like a computer, it's possible to erase or override non-productive patterns and replace them with useful ones, sort of like this automatic update for yourself. And this also maybe makes sense. Like when we think of repeated images in other contexts, exposure therapy is a behavioral therapy technique that's all about repeatedly exposing a patient to feared objects or contexts in order to help them overcome those fears. Even the idea of desensitization that repeated exposure to a particular image or particular types of images could make you less sensitive to them. They all depend on this notion that repetition can be transformative, right? It can fundamentally change you. So Chang and Pfeiffer were thinking about all this stuff and how looped images could help reprogram our minds and came up with a crazy new startup idea, GIF-nosis. Using GIFs to reprogram yourself in the background. Specifically, they thought by using GIFs as screen savers, they could transform people's moods in all kinds of ways. So whether it was desensitizing you to particularly ghastly horrors or sort of boosting your mood by showing you these like adorably coordinated cats, GIFs they thought had immense power. And actually they paired these, particularly these two GIFs together. And the idea was like first you got over your fear and then you got happy. So I am not sure how successful a startup GIF-nosis was, but I do think it's fair to say that repeated images can be incredibly transformative. And whether they're used for good and bad, they're powerful tools. And we've already seen some of the ways that they can be used. But I think there are many, many more. And while I'm not quite sure what sorts of forms GIFs will take in the future, I urge all of you guys to think of ways to bring loops into the world of storytelling in a purposeful and hopefully insightful way. Because who knows what sorts of impossible or magical or transformative experiences we can create all with the power of loops. Thanks.