July 2008

A family member was looking at old episodes of the 1960s Irwin Allen TV series Lost in Space and this inspired me to do the same, now that many can be found on the interweb.
I had vague but fond childhood memories of one called "My Friend, Mr. Nobody" and found it beguiling now, in spite of some Plan 9 cheesiness. (Spoilers for non-boomers)
It's a "Penny episode" (Penny is the Robinson middle child) which tended to be the more wistful and emotional ones, but rare, as the series gradually developed around the Will-Dr. Smith-Robot comedy act.
Rebuffed by Mom, who is helping oldest child Judy style her hair with some atomic contraption, and rebuffed by Dad, Don, and Will, who are busy being boys drilling for uranium, Penny wanders off into a glade with a bubbling spring and a cave. A male voice in the cave echoes her words and gradually learns speech from her.
Penny can't see the speaker and calls him "Mr. Nobody." He tells her he has existed for millions of years but does not know who he is.
The Robinson family humors her about the discovery, believing she has an imaginary friend.
Creepy stowaway Dr. Smith strings her along when he realizes she is bringing back diamonds from the cavern (gifts to her from her pal, who drops them from the ceiling). Smith hatches a plot to blast open the cave. Penny is inadvertently knocked unconscious and Mr. Nobody, believing her dead, comes to full roaring life as an Antimatter Being with the power to control wind and lightning. In the middle of a devastating attack on the Robinson spaceship, Penny revives and tells Mr. Nobody to desist.
At this point Mr. Nobody reaches his maturity and self-awareness and lifts off the planet in a beautiful, hypnotizing stellar cloud.
The moral of the story is "trust Penny." She is the only character in this episode with any heart or sense of the miraculous. Mom is overmedicated-seeming (poor June Lockhart had almost no lines), Judy a cipher, Don dumb enough to be manipulated by the Doc in his diamond scheme, Dad a distracted tinkerer, Will a condescending know-it-all who mocks Penny and observes that all women are weird. (Although he does make her a necklace because he feels bad that she's "pouting.")
Yet it is Penny who befriends the elemental being living under their noses, patiently teaches him speech, and helps him grow into full, mind-boggling consciousness. Her capacity for Platonic love and environmental awareness in the midst of a family of mindless consumers and earth-scorchers gives her near-mythic stature (predating the forest treks of Hayao Miyazaki's shojo -priestess Nausicaa by almost 20 years). Played by the sympathetic child actor Angela Cartwright she is a sweet, unerringly polite Everygirl who has a clue but can't get anyone to listen to her. She is the secret heart of the Robinson mission and the series. (So secret I only just realized it.)

This blog would have more respect for the Rhizome.org chatboard denizens* if they said this:

1. There are two generations, or camps, of artists on the Net.
2. Ours puts a premium on building from scratch and understanding what's under the hood, so to speak.
3. We are interested in conceptual art and how it applies to networks and the underlying architecture of software.
4. We don't understand what you are doing, but it seems trivial--calling a pre-packaged blog your art platform and linking to commercial media products and calling them readymades. Or posting art on your blog and calling it Net Art.
5. We get that Marcin Ramocki, Olia Lialina, and others have said there is more to it than that, but frankly we are at a loss to "get" the art. Their arguments are facile and sophistic because [refute arguments].
6. We don't give a crap if someone calls your art Version 2 of what we are doing, we are the originators.

But that's not what they said, instead it was:

1. We are upset that someone is calling your art Version 2 of what we are doing, since we are the originators and it makes you sound better.
2. We don't understand what you are doing. It seems trivial--calling a pre-packaged blog your art platform and linking to commercial media products and calling them readymades. Or posting art on your blog and calling it Net Art. Can you please explain it? Oh, that's your explanation, well, that doesn't convince us, sorry.
4. We get that Marcin Ramocki, Olia Lialina, and others have said that there is more to it than that, and those are very fine arguments. Nevertheless, they do not convince us.
5. Although neither you nor your spokespersons have explained what you are doing to our satisfaction, we are quite confident that it is exactly what we are doing and there is no need for a new version.

What a mess.

*changed from less neutral word

This blog recently participated in a seance and asked the late Theodor Adorno some questions:

TM: Which version of the Mariah Carey green screen video do you like better, Oliver Laric's* or Caspar Stracke's?

TA: They are both rather terrible. Art that relies on the simplistic device of subtracting information with digital tools isn't really art at all, is it? No, strike that, Joe McKay's UFOs made from partially erased street lamps were quite poignant, so it can be done in the right hands.

TM: But if you had to choose, which would it be, Laric or Stracke?

TA: Laric's video, I suppose, because it allows you to ogle this magnifique sexy woman with no surrounding distractions, other than the fact that she is hovering somewhat clumsily in a green monochrome. Whereas with the Stracke you are forced to look at the horrible actor who plays the computer nerd "rocking out" and such and the femme fatale is reduced to a green silhouette.

TM: What did you think of the Mariah Carey video when "net artists" were just linking to it as a found object?

TA: Bad, bad. Carey's producers reached out to the nerd demographic and the nerds took the bait. We are still doing it with this interview.

TM: Thank you for your time, sir.

*Update, 2011: The Rhizome link has been changed to http://rhizome.org/editorial/2008/jun/30/go-ahead-touch-her/