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12017-06-26T08:08:45-07:00DB Bauerc9516e5940ccf2a8cf1cc86feba649225eb6e879196151This animation is based on the short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury. It follows the day of an automated house as it goes about its daily chores. Despite the "intelligence" of the house it is unaware that the family that it so dutifully looks after are no longer there.
Apologies for sound and image quality. Having some difficulty with compression and uploading.plain2017-06-26T08:08:45-07:00DB Bauerc9516e5940ccf2a8cf1cc86feba649225eb6e879
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12017-06-26T08:01:46-07:00there will come soft rains...5plain2018-02-03T22:35:12-08:00Is this what it feels like to be Mrs. McClellan? Is there a chance of showers?
Mrs. McClellan is an absent character in a chapter of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (a cautionary tale), "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950). While the human characters are no longer present, the smart house lives on. Eerily, it continues to serve the absent humans, laying out food, reading poems, and providing hourly reminders of the lives no longer lived within the house. It is a hauntingly beautiful depiction of technological ambivalence and anxiety, the agency of non-human agents, and a space in which humans and non-humans lived together, albeit one in which (as usual) the non-humans serve the humans.
Several artists have based their works on this story. Particularly notable works include: