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Jenny Odell, Polly Returns (2019)

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Stewarded Collection: a2p, Fall 2019
full screen
Medium

Video

Edition

Edition of 10

Created

2019

Issued

04 October 2019 on Bitmark, asset c1d70dc786c5…

Provenance

Re-minted on Ethereum in 2025 as a2p-v1: 11 of 11 editions (contract)

Stewarded Collection
Released by

a2p

Blockchain

ethereum (migrated from Bitmark)

While in residence at the Internet Archive, I came across Polly Gone, a 1988 computer animation by Shelley Lake (who was then the technical director of Digital Productions, a prominent 3D animation studio). In the video, a female robot -- whose severe, mechanistic design was inspired by Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet -- zips around a futuristic dome house doing various domestic chores, all while a horror movie soundtrack with synthesized beats plays in the background. When I interviewed Lake about the video, she said simply, "I thought it would be funny to juxtapose a cold mechanical female robot performing a familiar mundane set of chores. It just seemed utterly ridiculous." I then attempted to address both the "utterly ridiculous" and the horror of the digital sublime in a modern day version: Here, Polly returns in 2017 to find herself awash in a sea of listicle titles that steadily increase by number. My soundtrack is based on Shelley Lake's soundtrack, which in turn was inspired by the soundtrack from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Nn8JltYrI

Editions, as the exchange left them on the Bitmark chain

  • AP Tom Galle
  • 1/10 Everest Pipkin
  • 2/10 Kim Asendorf
  • 3/10 Sarah Rara
  • 4/10 Ursula Endlicher
  • 5/10 Jenny Odell
  • 6/10 Jenny Odell
  • 7/10 hiroyuki nisougi
  • 8/10 Jeremy Bailey
  • 9/10 Faith Holland
  • 10/10 Aaron Whitney Bjork