The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.

Tag: French

  • Push the button for a sweet treat

    I had grand plans of posting something about Godzilla today, but that will have to wait for these delightful rats. These tiny furry folx learned to associate pushing a little button with getting a sugar treat. As time progressed, though, they ended up just pushing the button for fun.

    The results are about as delightful as you’d expect.

    The project was led by French photographer Augustin Lignier, whose work explores the technography and performativity of photography. I came across the work due to the mighty Kottke, who quotes a New York Times piece where Lignier considers that the rats’ continued button-mashing as a neat analog for our addiction to social media.


    As platforms morph, shrink, converge, collapse all over the internet, one begins to wonder what the web of the imminent future might look like. While I did mention grassroots movements and community-run services like Neocities in my last post, the network effects that platforms like Substack, X, hell, even WordPress right here, can offer, are often more tempting than a cutesy throwback. That is to say nothing of the ease with which said platforms integrate with other services to maximise attention on their users.

    Substack and X are feeling the squeeze of the real world to greater and lesser degrees; the former as a safe space for Nazis, the latter as a haven for AI-generated deepfakes. But where one platform collapses, another will happily take its place, unless we all decide to opt out together.

    The internet of the future will be several interweaved different platforms, modes, nodes, devices, personalities, and communities. In a way it has always been so, but with its sheer ubiquity, the way it layers over and enfolds so many aspects of existence, thinking ‘the internet’ (or even ‘the Internet’, as autocorrect seemed to cling to forever) as a monolith is now a waste of time.

  • It Boy (2013)

    pano1_20-ans-d-ecart-sm

    I have a big soft spot — a cultured gooey centre, if you will — for French farces. Often romantic comedies, though also often full of slapstick and cases of mistaken identity, I’ll watch the lot.

    Unfortunately, this habit is dependent on whatever French films period — let alone any from a specific genre — are imported to Australia (and adequately subtitled, etc.). To this end I’m incredibly reliant on the likes of Hopscotch and Madman.

    Thankfully, Madman saw fit to include the charming little Parisian It Boy in its 2013 catalogue. This light, breezy, highly improbable comedy sees a 21-year-old become infatuated with a much older woman based on a bumpy plane ride. Perfectly reasonable.

    Virginie Efira is delightful in the main role, with excellent support from the rumpled French Matt Smith aka Pierre Niney. The girl called this the French Devil Wears Prada, which I guess is kind of apt. Suitable acting, beautiful location, and perfectly-executed comedy cinematography. A solid and contented three stars. More of this, please, Mr. Madman.