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What the GIF?! Where is my culture?

“A GIF tells a thousand stories”!

I wrote about adding GIFs in your own language (yes, not everyone speaks English!) back in 2016 highlighting the importance of open licensing. A lot has changed since then. What remains constant though is the lack of representation of the diversity that this world has to offer. Platforms like GIPHY and Tenor dominate the current GIF APIs -- meaning that the GIFs uploaded to these platforms appear in a range of social media platforms that support GIFs. Such platforms include Facebook-owned Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram (in its Story feature), Twitter and Telegram among the others.

GIF and stickers are kind of similar as both have a series of still images in a sequence. Stickers generally have a transparent background. So, all stickers can be GIFs but not all GIFs are stickers. Below are some stickers (in my native language Odia) that I have recently created.

Does a GIF speak your language?

There is a huge disparity of the linguistic representation when it comes to pop culture and social media as the majority of the digital/online interactions happen in the majority languages. The 2019 Decolonizing the World’s Languages Conference by WhoseKnowledge? that I was a part of highlights that only 7% of the world’s 7,000 languages are included as published content. The digital representation of these languages is much lower. When it comes to GIFs and stickers, there is hardly anything available in less-known languages. A big factor behind that is also the lack of writing systems/scripts as majority of the world’s language are oral and not written. But GIFs/stickers do not need to have a piece of text in them. A GIF can be made from any image -- snippets from popular media culture make great GIFs.

License matters!

GIFs lie in a weird area of licensing as they are closely related to popular culture that is generally contemporary and relevant. It also means that most content in the GIF libraries are copyrighted by whoever owns the rights of the original work. A GIF including a clip from a movie, for instance, is copyrighted by the movie production company (or whoever own the movie based on the contracts). Independent artists neither have the bandwidth nor the legal backing to acquire the copyright of a short clip to make a GIF by remixing existing content. As GIF is still an emerging area, there is not much information available in terms of guidelines on copyright. There is no ready solution available, but creating your own GIFs by animating artworks that you yourself have created can be a safer way forward. If you create something, say a hand-drawn artwork, then you will be the copyright owner of that. The next step would be to license it under a Creative Commons license (this tool makes it way easier) so that others can not only use your work, but they can share and even make derivatives (if you choose a fairly open license). Open content spreads like a wildfire!

Cut to the chase.

Neither licensing nor the knowhow of contributing GIFs that represent one’s own culture are discussed widely. So, if you are not a speaker of English (or a majority language) and Hollywood films (or Netflix web series) are not everything that you watch, your GIF-search related to your own culture would result something bizarre. I searched for “Santali” (a language spoken by 7.6 million speakers South Asia) and all I could find were “Santa Claus” GIFs. So, I took help from a friend Ramjit to create the very first two stickers in Santali which are now available on GIPHY.

It’s certainly irritating to see the internet not representing your people and your culture. A baby step that artists could take to address this issue is by creating art (GIFs and stickers in this case) to tell the story of their own society, and upload the same on platforms like GIPHY and Tenor. There will hopefully be a day when searching Santali will no longer show the Santa Claus GIFs (P.S. I have nothing against Santa Claus!).

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Celtic Knot Conference: Kathabhidhana, open source toolkit to record pronunciations of any world language from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

Kathabhidhana is an open toolkit for anyone to record their language in a human and machine readable form. It is a collection of open source tools, educational material, and open sample datasets. It not helps one to record their language but helps creating resources that can be used for building Machine Learning and Natural language Processing tools. More than 2000 words have been recorded so far (by July 2017) in the Odia language. More about this toolkit are summarized in this quick video.

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How to make your vocals clear and loud in Audacity from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

Make your vocals pop up using Audacity by following a couple of simple steps. Audacity is an open source digital audio editor. You will also learn why those settings explained in this video are important.

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How to make vocals pop up in Audacity (in Odia) from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

This quick video explains how you can use Audacity, an open source digital audio editor, to make the vocals in your audio recording clear and crisp by following a couple of simple steps. Watch the video to also learn why those settings explained in this video is important.

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https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/dhojatalo

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https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/ronopa

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I'm building a project for learning a script. To start with I've taken my native language Odia. Here are the first two characters "o" (ଅ) and "a" ଆ. Would love to hear your inputs to better it. Please share them at bit.ly/learnodiafeedback All of you who share your valuable inputs will be attributed in the final video page, and will receive a downloadable video as a keepsake. I will be releasing the final video in a @creativecommons #CCBYSA 4.0 license.

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永 (Yong, meaning "forever" or "permanence") is the first character one would learn while learning Chinese calligraphy. I'm not sure if it's philosophical or not, but there are eight strokes that makes the whole character. Thank you so much @chang_elisa for igniting my curiosity. I don't know how long I will take to learn this beautiful but complex script but let's say it's a good beginning of a long journey. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yong

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"ಗಿಲಿಕೆ" (Gilike): Rattle bell toy, Channapatna, Karnataka, India from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

This rattle bell toy from the little town of Channapatna, Karnataka, India is known as "ಗಿಲಿಕೆ" (Gilike) in the Kannada language. Channapatna toys are lightweight, painted in bright colors, and are known for their shiny appearance. Most of them are made in lathe machines that give them a very clean shape.

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Learn how to read, write & speak in Odia (Oriya): Part 1 from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

Odia (Oriya) is a South Asian language primarily spoken in modern day India. It is one of the 6 classical Indian languages with a history of more than 5,000 years. This primer teaches you the Odia alphabet with native pronunciations. Please note that the long vowels are pronounced the same way short ones are pronounced. Also, "sha" is pronounced as "sa".

Thanks to all those gave feedback while this tutorial was being designed, especially: Sambit Mohapatra, Amir Aharoni, Erin McLaughlin, Alessia Mazzarella, Sam Walton, Kris Cheng, Piotr Konieczny, Nasir Khan Saikat, Ravishankar Ayyakkannu, Subhransu Panda and Tito Dutta.

Directed, music & produced by Subhashish Panigrahi. Released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Help us caption & translate this video!

amara.org/v/FZBT/

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Palm leaf toy tiger from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

This is one fun toy from my home state Odisha. To make this, dried and pressed palm leaves are painted and cut into shapes like the head and limbs of a tiger, and tied with each other with threads. A bamboo stick that is attached to the tiger's body makes the spine. The real tiger dance starts when you hold that stick in between your palms and roll it back and forth.

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Wikimania 2016: Training workshop "Understanding Copyright" from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

Understanding Copyright was a workshop that was originally proposed by Wikipedian User:Jim Carter, and conducted by Frederico Morando (Creative Commons, Italy) and myself at Wikimania 2016, in Esino Lario, Italy on June 26, 2016. Abstract: https://goo.gl/synBSh Blog post: https://goo.gl/oebtVu

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Bolang gu: Chinese toy pellet drum from Subhashish Panigrahi on Vimeo.

Beating of Chinese rattle/pellet drum Bolang gu (拨浪鼓) [also known as Tao (鼗; pinyin: táo) or taogu (鼗鼓)]. This is a toy instrument that was purchased from a shop at Chinatown, Vancouver during March 2017.

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ମୋ ଛାଇ ଆଲୁଅର ଓଡ଼ିଆ! #utkaladibasa #ଓଡ଼ିଶାଦିବସ #OdishaDibasa

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https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/door

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https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/jhirijhiri

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https://soundcloud.com/psubhashish/ghontoghanta-holographicbeat-created-in-software-instrument