Welcome to the Dollhouse

Science fiction is the link between popular culture and modernity. Through it we can engage in fantasies that allow us to imagine ourselves in situations that seem too radical to realistically adopt but offer desirable alternatives to everyday life, at least in small, manageable doses.

Perhaps the most popular of these alternatives are the myriad approaches to artificial life in film, television, and other media. The Jetsons lived in a ubiquitously computed house, which was managed by a robot housekeeper. Likewise, Small Wonder offered a convenient alternative to both hiring a housekeeper and raising a real child. These relationships erase class and social hierarchies, removing things like animosity, disgruntled workmanship, and feelings in general.

Of course, the threat of takeover by these artificially intelligent companions has also been considered. Film classics like Metropolis and Bladerunner offer complex stories that mix elements of the future, the government, and the Underground with trust being a common theme of exploration. (Can we trust machines? Can human-machines be considered beings simply because they were designed in the likeness of humans? Is it unethical to kill one, for example?)

Manga/film combo Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix created additional blur to the distinction between human and machine, suggesting a soul is present in these manufactured objects, capable of feeling and constructing thoughts beyond logical computation. With these and many other varieties, it seems that every possibility has been entertained. What more can we add to the fictional amplified human?

Not much, but luckily the fun isn't over. Dollhouse, a Joss Whedon creation that debuted on Fox this season, gives the human-machine a new setting, operation, and mode of technological function, and leaves viewers with entertaining fodder for surveying the postmodern condition. It combines the ass-kicking vitality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, clever dialogue, and just enough bite to maintain a sense of humor, despite the heavy theme of human-as-vessel and all of the other areas mentioned above.

Last week marked the season's finale, but all episodes are viewable on Hulu.com and Fox.com.

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Shared Spaces

Today, my latest curatorial project, an online exhibition that features the work of six artists, launched.

Shared Spaces is on view through May 6, 2009 at No Commercial Value, an online exhibition space created and managed by Amir Husak and Prem Sooriyakumar.

Shared Spaces
Curated by Natasha Chuk
On view at No Commercial Value
April 22 through May 6, 2009

Blu
Burak Arikan
Char Davies
Erin Gleeson
Melissa Grey
Yasmine Soiffer

Shared Spaces, presents work by six artists who investigate the expanse of human experiences by considering the boundlessness and overlap of real and imaginary thresholds through media. These artists unite curiosity and fantasy with captured and mediated realities, confronting material and immaterial networks of space.

The imagination knows no boundaries in the private sphere: conflicts can be disabled, scientific mysteries entertained, and time collapsed. Sensations are heightened, space is fabricated, and memory is restored through the discoveries afforded by media technologies. In this public sphere, these conceptual designs invite guests to consider a different way of considering time, memory, personal space, public space, and the relationships that bridge these concepts, valuing the realization of impossibility over reality.

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NoCommercialValue.org is a showcase of six original works and hyperlinks curated by a variety of international contributors. Featuring artists,journalists, activists, photographers, social scientists, writers, filmmakers and musicians who want to share their creative perspective on the world. NoCommercialValue.org provides a space between user generated content and a traditional art gallery. Moving away from the widespread and often convoluted format of present-day media sharing sites, our objective is to provide a "clutter-free" platform for content that can challenge, entertain, provoke, and inform.

The New York Times: I.B.M. Said to Be Near Deal for Sun at Lower Price

(Hostile Takeover of Moon Could Be Next)

Paik on My Mind

Perhaps the most striking component of The Third Mind exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim is titled Buddhism and the Neo-Avant-Garde, showcasing some of the most influential work of Nam June Paik, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Allen Ginsberg.

I single out Paik, in particular, for exploring the many dimensions of process, duration, nonintention, and even the fullness of absence. The latter is most relevant in the work Zen for Film, a live projection of an empty film leader from 1964.

Zen for Film, also viewable on YouTube, is a fluxus film that introduces an emphasis on visual (spatial and aural) rhythms produced through film projection, creating content out of emptiness, and foregrounding light and the rectangular object that lightly flickers on a wall, over convention and expectation. It dethrones the medium and pursues the technology. This is oddly prescient, given our current trend toward creating with data instead of objects.

It's hard to imagine some of the performance artworks of his fluxus days: documentary photographs of these events don't translate the complexity of his work. Eventually this would lead to the birth of video art and the increasing importance of experimenting with TVs and video projections, a Duchampian gesture that would change film and video forever.

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Short on a Sweet Deal

Bailout is a new wine from Crushpad out in San Francisco.
Am/Mex bought a bottle last week because we believe in the wine and because of a unique sales pitch that grabbed us by the grapes. They're letting short sellers like ourselves bet that the Dow will go to hell in the next 6 months, and if it does, we get a rebate on the cost of the wine. Here's the rub... on the day we bought our bottle of Bailout, the Dow closed at 7936.75. For every 100 points the Dow falls between last week's purchase date and August 14, 2009 -- when it is bottled -- Crushpad will send us $2. That may not sound like a lot but wait... in these dire times who would bet on the Dow? This gives us a chance to balance our 401K losses with a gain on a nice bottle of wine. Am/Mex will drink to those small victories. We'll keep you posted on how it all turns out.

Sparks Plug

I once declined the offer to replace my second-generation iPod when its motherboard was damaged and instead asked for whatever surgical requirements were necessary to restore it. To the genius's chagrin, I preferred my tattered and now outdated mp3 player to the newer model he waved in his hand, complete with video capabilities and double the storage capacity.

This affinity we have for media and the technologies that animate them is the subject of Sparks, a smart web-based serial by Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson about humans and their sometimes irrational relationship to technology.

There's a Sara Sparks in all of us: a twinkle of emotion and a connection we feel toward our personal gadgets. We spend so much time with them that they really do become extensions of our bodies, helping us remember phone numbers and birthdays, storing our favorite songs so the ride on the subway doesn't feel so long, and facilitating our work tasks, to name a few. We buy them expensive protective cases, take them on vacations, and, I don't do this, but some people name them.

Sparks is a perfect balance of McLuhanesque humor and contemplation in a well-written, accessible form. At just three episodes into the series, I look forward to the course that our heroine technologist will take in the episodes that follow. A posthumous digital McLuhan cameo would be a fitting next move.

You can also subscribe and take the series with you (if your generation of gadget allows).

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Follow Those Videos

As The New York Times reported today, Mr. Kim of Kim's Video -- former home of over 55,000 titles -- conducted a scrupulous search for the perfect inheritor of a film and media collection that had been steadily growing since 1987. He settled on a proposal made on behalf of Salemi, a Sicilian town founded sometime around the fourth century B.C.

For those of us who had the patience to thumb through the vast collection of rare films and music, saying good-bye to Kim's Video suddenly feels pretty good. This covetable collection's successor is a small town that, after a history of crushing blows, is undergoing a unique and impressive change by allowing "prominent artists and intellectuals to assume control of the government". Art critics, photographers, performance artists, and others are taking command of the town, and turning it into an artists-run mecca.

We can only imagine the possibilities: Italian sensibility and cinema have always been a good combination. Add to that a restored 17th-century Jesuit college as this collection's base, a glass of Limoncello, and a planned relationship with the Venice Biennale to make Salemi the perfect destination spot. On the other hand, tourism is only one way of savoring its creative by-products. In an effort to appeal to outsiders and promote the development of this town-in-progress, Salemi houses are available for purchase for one Euro. There are some stipulations to this too-good-to-be-true offer, but it makes nomads like us strongly consider a relocation plan.

Tutto va bene!

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