Computer Chess

Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, currently playing at Film Forum, is an odd case. Even a movie like the classic Women in the Dunes posits an atmosphere that is somewhat engaging—in that case due to the existential inundation it so wonderfully describes. Let’s take horrifying movies like The Silence of the Lambs or The Shining or the crème de la crème of frightening movies When a Stranger Calls. As troubled as these landscapes are, they are places that you could imagine yourself trapped in. Computer Chess does for artificial intelligence what Boogie Nights did for porn. The film introduces a cast of nerds as devoid of intelligence, as Boogie Nights  produced porn stars lacking in eroticism. The setting of the movie is a l980 computer chess convention and the drab black and white in which the film is shot is a kind of computerized chess board in brownout. Stasi and Tsar 3 are two of the chess programs and there’s an iconoclastic character named Michael Papageorge (Myles Paige) who walks around in a three piece double knit suit that one of the characters in Saturday Night Fever might have worn to work Monday morning. Papageorge floats between the convention and a group of Esalen type spiritualists who follow an African guru. Bujalski’s film is beyond parody. The assortment of geeks and seekers rolling huge anachronistic consoles around their hotels rooms has all the makings of parody, but Computer Chess is really metaparody, if such a thing can be said to exist. We’re in Todd Solondz land in this parody of parody that turns simple comedy on its head. The problem is that despite all its brilliant concepts, it's difficult to watch. The world of the film is quirkily repellant; you don’t want to be there. The score accompanying the final credits recalls another 80’s icon Tiny Tim. If you like Tiny Tim, you’ll probably love Computer Chess.

Expo I: Dark Optimism

Photograph of Olafur Eliasson’s “Your Waste of Time” by Hallie Cohen

A group named ProBio makes the following declaration as part of Expo I: New York at P.S. I: “Some scientists and thinkers have speculated that in the near future with the advancement of applied  bioscience humankind may no long be subject to Darwinian natural selection. In its place would be a world of horizontal gene flows between people and other forms of natural and unnatural life—a world driven by self actualization in which genes become open sourced, biology becomes software and the distinctions between living organisms, information, objections and products become irrevocably confused.” As you walk into the ProBio room at Expo,  an artist named Dis has created I Feel Robot mints which chase you around the floor, like overly friendly pets. The collective and magazine Triple Canopy has subtitled the show “dark optimism,” for the way it attempts to deal with what the curators term “the sociopolitical and economic instability of the early 21^st Century.” Triple Canopy has also organized fifty days of lectures under the title, “Speculations,” which will deal with the environmental issues raised buy Expo I.  One of the pieces in the show is Olafur Eliasson’s “Your Waste of Time.” In the work a part of a glacier is restored in an ice cold chamber. On a recent sweltering hot afternoon, the experience was a little like the famous Twilight Zone, “The Midnight Sun,” where a character hallucinates that the earth is falling out of orbit into the sun when in fact it’s going in the opposite direction. Which way is the earth headed is one of the questions that the Expo I would probably like to answer.

The Absence of Presence

George Carlin in l969

Have you ever had the feeling that someone is not really there? It could be them or you. Either the person in question is quite distant and removed because they are thinking of someone or something else or you are having one of those out of body experiences in which you experience both yourself and others as strangers. This last is almost like amnesia but not quite. Verfremndungseffekt is a term for alienation in the theater coined by Brecht, but it can happen in real life. You know exactly who you and they are. You are simply experiencing one degree of separation, as if you were hovering like a doppleganger right outside the confines of personality. This condition, which we might term, “the absence of presence,” is becoming an increasingly common affect disorder that had been camouflaged by more globalized feelings of alienation (experienced, for example, by baby boomers against the military industrial complex in the 60’s). Ask anybody if they haven’t experienced it at one time or another. George Carlin humorously commented “I’ve adopted a new lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence.” Human beings are social animals and alienation is a social phenomenon, what the sociologist Emile Durkheim described as “anomie,” while “the absence of presence” is a syndrome that has the earmarks of a neuropsych disorder. What is the cure? Followers of Zen or the recovery movement talk about living in the now. “You only have today,” they will tell you and alas, this may be the best and only known analgesic, capable of lessening the disturbing feeling of apartness that comes to those who suffer from “the absence of presence.”

Cuba Si, Google No

“The International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency for information and communications technology, puts the number of broadband subscriptions in Cuba at 0.04 per 100 inhabitants, or about one in 2,500. That is considered lower than in Haiti and Sudan, two places that are not considered the least bit tech friendly,” wrote Victoria Burnett in a Times piece, “Salons or Not, Cyberspace Is Still a Distant Place for Most Cubans,” (NYT, 7/9/13). Everyone has had their Casablanca fantasy. If you are a guy, you're Rick Blaine, the hardened ex-pat. If you’re a gal you’re Ilsa Lund, the beautiful femme fatale, torn between devotion to the cause and passion for the man she loves. If you’re transgender you’re a mixture of the two. The problem is that the fantasy is always broken up by an e-mail coming through on your iphone, even if you’re in Casablanca itself. It’s you’re dentist reminding you about your upcoming prophylactic treatment, your wife wondering where you are and why you haven’t returned to the hotel or actually your internet provider asking you to complete a brief survey about a new app. What better place to have your Casablanca moment than in Havana where there are not likely to be a lot of WiFi hot spots or even decent cell phone reception to put you back in texting purgatory! And they’ll be no problem finding anyone of a number of broken down, but moody cafes that fit the bill. Even though it’s become a bit of a tourist spot, there’s La Bodeguita del Medio where Hemingway hung out, for starters. One of the problems of modern life is that you can’t escape it. Everywhere is exactly the same. No matter the destination, you’ll inevitably suffer from Bill Murray’s predicament in Groundhog Day. If you think you’re suffering from déjà vu, you’re definitely right since you’ve already seen whatever it is you’re looking at: Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald’s, KFC, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter. They’re everywhere. Remember back forty years ago when you went to Europe and really felt like you were going somewhere, when it was difficult and expensive to call home and when you trekked to American Express to get your mail. If you’re looking for that far away feeling, the sense that you have really gone somewhere rather than traveling  the moebius strip of modern life, Cuba still fits the bill and it’s probably a helluva a lot safer than Haiti or the Sudan.

Weiner Spitzel to Join Strauss-Kahn?

Berezniki City Administration Building

Calling all discredited occupiers of public office! A Times piece reported “Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, has given Mr. Strauss-Kahn a position on the board of a banking subsidiary, the Russian Regional Development Bank.” (“Strauss-Kahn Re-emerges in Finance, in Russia,” NYT, 7/15/13) Rather than running for mayor and comptroller of New York City, Andrew Weiner and Eliot Spitzer should consider joining Mr. Stauss-Kahn by applying to Rosneft. According to the Times, “Russian government-owned businesses and many in the private sector have for years recruited Western business and political figures for seats on their boards, positions that often pay lavishly.” If you look at the bottom line Weiner Spitzel (as Weiner and Spitzer have been termed) could profit from joining the board of the Russian Regional Development Bank and they’d be a natural interface with the other new Westerner to join, Strauss-Kahn, due to their history of shared interests. From there the natural segue would be to a position in electoral office—maybe not in New York Municipal government but in Russia. For instance Berezniki, a one-time base of operations for the Russian potash billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, which sports one of the biggest sinkholes in the world, would surely be a place where Weiner Spitzel could employ their talents. And when it comes to reputation, after presiding over a sinkhole, the only direction is up.