The Hampster Dance

AUG 15 1997 · 12:00

Deidre LaCarte's tiled animated hamsters from the original Hampster Dance, four loops repeating in unison to a sped-up Whistle-Stop sample. Place: http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/7156, then hampsterdance.com Figures: Deidre LaCarte, art student at the University of British Columbia · her sister and a friend, who were in a competition with her to see whose Geocities page would get the most hits Deidre LaCarte, 24, a art student at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, BC, builds a Geocities page in tribute to her pet hamster Hampton Hampster. The page consists of four rows of small animated GIFs of hamsters dancing, each row stepping in a different rhythm, against a tiled background, with a looping 9-second slow-tempo midi sample (Whistle Stop from the 1973 Disney film Robin Hood, played at speed). She uploads it in August 1997. By March 1999 it has six hundred thousand visitors a week. It is, on every dimension a critic might evaluate, ridiculous. It is also one of the first sites whose only purpose is to be enjoyed as a GIF-and-sound assemblage. The page is the joke; there is no further content. Video: Deidre LaCarte's page rendered in period-accurate Netscape 4. Four GIFs, tiled, MIDI auto-playing, the original conditions of the infection.