The most striking media of the past week was a security recording of the train wreck in northwestern Spain, which was transformed into a short, looped video. While the emergence of endlessly repeating animated GIFs as a mainstream narrative is a relatively recent phenomenon—and Vines, six-second video clips, more recent still—the framework of the loop has been present since the birth of cinema. Some of the earliest iconic film clips, from the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, lend themselves to being looped; the Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy’s assassination has been repeated ad infinitum; artists experimented with continuous repetition throughout the sixties and seventies; and during moments of disaster, like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, the loop both haunts us and forces us to reckon with the tragedy. These days, it’s easier than ever before to create and consume loops—we have embraced the form. Above is a short tour of looped videos through history.
Matt Buchanan was a science and technology editor for newyorker.com from 2013 to 2014.
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