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
