Cotton Candy
Overview
Gehr uses a mini-digital recorder to look back on the Machine Age in the form of San Francisco's soon-to-be-shuttered Musee Mecanique. For slightly more than an hour, Cotton Candy documents this venerable collection of coin-operated mechanical toys—including an entire circus—mainly in close-up, isolating particular details as he alternates between ambient and post-dubbed (or no) sound. By treating the Musee's cast of synchronized figures as puppets, the artist is making a show—but is it his or theirs? Gehr's selective take on the arcade renders it all the more spooky. There's a sense in which Cotton Candy is a gloss on the moment in The Rules of the Game when the music-box-collecting viscount unveils his latest and most elaborate acquisition. (It also brings to mind the climax of A.I.: The DV of the future tenderly regards the more human machine of the past.) (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)
Keywords
- california
- san francisco
- mechanical toys
- avant-garde
- san francisco, california
Details
- Status
- Released
- Release date
- April 30, 2002
- Original language
- English
- Spoken languages
- English
- Countries
- United States of America
- Director
- Ernie Gehr
- Budget
- Not recorded
- Revenue
- Not recorded
- IMDb
- tt0319223