"Connected" & connections

Gabriella's artist presentation on Ken Goldberg on 10/29 got me curious about the "Connected" documentary she mentioned he had ties with, so I went out on Netflix and...yes! It's available on streaming. (Not sure if this link will work or not, but here goes.)

So the connection between Goldberg and "Connected" is that his wife, Tiffany Schlain, is the director. She's also responsible for creating the Webby Awards in 1995-6, which honor outstanding websites. The film covers a period of time where the couple is trying to conceive their 2nd child, which is problematic because of Schlain's fertility issues, and father becomes unexpectedly terminally ill during filming.

In another connection for me personally, her father Loenard Schlain, a physician, wrote several books, including Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, which was one of my course texts for the first program I took at Evergreen. Aside from all the time he spent complaining on why it took a doctor to make these connections (instead of artists or quantum physics scientists), it was quite a cool discovery. (I recommend a read.)

There's some interesting things going on in this film in terms of content (which can be weak) and composition (which is where the director excels). Comparing this film to the examples provided in the text (p. 313-316) makes the flaws in "Connected" more readily apparent. This is an entertainment experience, not actually an educational experience (despite its protestations to the contrary).

Anyway, while the film has a linear trajectory, overall the very "busyness" of the frames serves to its detriment. There's a lot of clever reuse of images, but it's as if the director is acknowledging that her audience has almost zero attention span and must be continuously jolted back into life. As an "art" piece, the film succeeds, but as an informative documentary, I don't know that I can recommend it. Simply stating that "everything is connected" over and over again isn't compelling. (It also isn't proof.)

After saying all, for the artistic elements, it's still worth a screening.
(For what it's worth, Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rotten 36% critics/48% general audience rating.)