Lucky for you, it’s possible to escape this political season’s terrifying reality IRL and tune-in to Rotsztain’s floating worlds online. courtesy the artistĬanadian-born artist and software programmer Jeremy Rotsztain has shown his digital abstractions at New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Montreal’s Festival Nouveau Cinéma. He sent his Kiss GIF to us with the hopes that it might provide some much needed healing after this election is over. (Try not too think too much about the ongoing debate surrounding the public and private sector there). Anyone can check them out online for free, but if you end up buying one you’ll enter into a contract with the artist that requires you to maintain the domain address and public access to the work for the foreseeable future. The Brazilian-Dutch artist cleverly creates public websites that screen waves of colorful gradients on a loop, which I had the pleasure of seeing on view at New York’s Armory Show. It also features some trippy visuals that’ll get you in the groove. His 2011 song Datamosh is excellent satire about GIFs, net art and meme culture. Yung Jake is best known for his emoji portraits of celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Pharrell and Internet-themed rap videos. Since you’ll be glued to the interwebs anyway, here’s a playlist of digital art that will help you go zen, and provide some much needed relief for your mind until next week. But, if you plan to keep things more low key and prefer to stay in (refreshing Twitter and not showering) then I’ve got you covered. There’s plenty going on in the art world calendar if socializing is the way you choose to cope. And if you’re like me, and you simply can’t get into that weekend spirit because you just want it to be Wednesday, November 9 already-all votes cast, ballots counted, done and done-then you need to de-stress my friend. It’s getting hairy out there, amirite? Regarding the impending election, my anxiety levels are hovering around an 11 right now, if I’m being honest.

Screenshot from Yung Jake’s 2011 film Datamosh.

Datamosh videos know your meme