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Art

ASLAP: 1000 year long GIF animation – the longest GIF in the world?

AS Long As Possible (ASLAP) is a 1000 year long animated GIF loop. It’s an art project by Juha van Ingen in collaboration with Janne Särkelä. It is the longest GIF in the world. After 1000 years it’ll start again from the beginning.

The starting point in making AS Long As Possible was to make a one extremely long animated GIF loop. ASLAP is made of black frames with a white number indicating the frames position in the loop. There are 48 140 288 frames which change in c.a. 10 minute intervals making the total duration of the loop 1000 years.

The GIF animation specification itself doesn’t limit its length.

The name of ASLAP is hommage to John Cage composition “ORGAN2/ASLSP” (1987) which is played with Halberstad organs for the next 625 years. The abbreviation of Cages composition included and instruction to the performer of the piece: As SLow aS Possible.