tom moody

Netflix WI: The Canon

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Reading through some of the other essays in the Pool journal now.
Glad to see someone else questioning whether Netflix recommendation algorithms are the bee's knees. Eugene Kotlyarenko writes:

In the Netflix viewing model, one supposedly knows exactly which available films are related to the films they’ve already seen and enjoyed. This results in a conservative viewing environment where one tends to stick close to the sources of pleasure. And in fact, in a certain way this strategy immediately sets up viewers for dissatisfaction. Direct comparison to high-rated personal favorites psychologically primes viewers for a higher expectation set, than they would have if they were approaching a film with general knowledge but not direct comparison. This practice invariably results in higher rates of disappointment from the viewer, since it is nearly impossible for successive movies to consistently top previous favorites. Quizzically, the algorithm also functions to create comical hybrid genres that purportedly describe a viewer’s taste. The idea of having one’s viewing habits boiled down to “Tortured-Genius Dramas based on real life,” “Critically-Acclaimed Family Friendly Animation,” and “Cerebral Gay & Lesbian Dramas” can certainly make one question not only the entire prospect of being a serious film viewer, but may lead to some existential soul-searching.

Kotlyarenko's consideration of what Netflix streaming will do to the film canon is well worth a read. He's a bit hard on TV--the films absorbed by the Cahiers du Cinema crowd back in the day were mostly Hollywood schlock, no less saddled by convention and economic expectation, where the risks and artistry took place in spite of the system. This is also true for the TV we value: Monty Python, Outer Limits, Star Trek TOS and TNG, Lost Seasons 1-2, Trailer Park Boys, etc.

Kotlyarenko argues that canons depend on what's available for viewing (repertory cinema, VHS, DVD) and predicts that Netflix will be that next available thing. Let's take him one ghastly step further and imagine that because the studio, eh, fascists will only license the best films for short periods of time, the canon that will emerge will be films that never leave the catalog. Future scholars and young filmmakers will thus have their inspiration and values shaped by Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker, Blue Crush, Breakin' 2, and the complete works of Steven Seagal.

The Stubborn Dream of Everyday Virtuality

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...is an essay I wrote for the Pool journal [Internet Archive], for its July issue. Please give it a look. Opening paragraphs:

In an interview in the early 2000s, Steven Lisberger, director of the first Tron movie (1982), talked about his goals for the film. Artists, he believed, could bring inspiring life to new technologies that might still be dry, baffling, and insular to the general public. With Tron, he sought to bestow a new kind of mythological identity on the circuit boards and spreadsheets of the emerging computer industry, and largely succeeded: the film introduced visions of cyberspace that have endured. Its data-mazes and menacing walls of security encryption laid the foundations for the 3D networks of global interconnection described in William Gibson’s book Neuromancer, published two years later, and its fully -fleshed out avatars (with or without motherboard spandex) have become a virtual reality staple.

Lisberger complained in the same interview that the Web had not fulfilled its promise, lamenting that it had, by the turn of the Millennium, become a dispiriting place of porn and gossip. Few could argue with that, but what might have disappointed him more was that the Web didn’t look like Tron. Humanlike avatars zoomed through pure geometry and clinked glasses in virtual cafes in films such as The Matrix, while actual people, sitting at actual computers, engaged in a form of mass, high speed letter writing. Ten years later, we’re still typing away while our uploaded selves frolic only in cable TV science fiction shows.

The image accompanying the essay (slightly enhanced) comes from Duncan Alexander's tour of Alpha World [dead link].

Thanks to ARTINFO for the shout about the essay.

Update, January 2021: The "Pool" journal, inactive for many years, finally seems to have given up the ghost. The Internet Archive saved a copy of my essay.

Shoutback to Rick Silva

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...who is interviewed about his Antlers WiFi animations in the magazine Beautiful/Decay.

The article is reblogged by the Huffington Post, which gives it the front page teaser headline "Temporary Trances," based on a line from this blog Silva quoted. Not too shabby but of course a HuffPo commenter chimes in to say "No Trance..." Got that, Silva? Stop sapping our attention with these seductive abstractions, we have pages to surf! The Net is not Ibiza.

Included in the post are some of Silva's wilderness techno psychedelia animations from his blog Antlers WiFi.