An illustrated study of Michael Snow's "zoom film," which has become a touchstone for art and film studies.

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Legge, Elizabeth

Afterall Books ; Distributed by the MIT Press

Afterall Publishing

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

One work, London, Cambridge, Mass, 2009

One work series, London, England, 2009

Illustrated, 2009-10-09

2011 12 30

lg743467

producers:
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{"edition":"1","isbns":["1846380561","9781846380563"],"last_page":105,"publisher":"Afterall"}

Memory of the World Librarian: Dorothy Porter

Includes bibliographical references.
Mode of access: Internet.

MiU

uc1

In 1966, at the height of minimal art in New York, artist Michael Snow chose not to make another object to be placed in a room but instead spent a year planning a film of a room: Wavelength, a forty-five-minute more or less straight-line zoom from the near to the far wall of a loft space, accompanied by a rising sine wave. In this illustrated study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of virtuosically managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and color, and recession into perspectival depth. At the same time, she points out, it is also austere: the loft space where the action unfolds could be the last clerical outpost of a defunct business. The zoom is punctuated by what Snow laconically called "4 human events": a woman directs two men who carry in a bookcase and place it against the left wall of the room; two women come in and listen to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio; a man briefly appears after protracted crashing and glass-breaking noises, wheels around, and drops dead; a young woman comes into the room and makes a frightened telephone call reporting the dead man ("And he doesn't look drunk, he looks dead."). Wavelength won the grand prize for experimental film at Knokke-le-Zoute in 1967, and it was crucial to critics' efforts to establish a vocabulary for temporal art. It was a "wavelength" that could stand up to the French new wave, and it has has functioned ever since as a touchstone for art and film studies, and as a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played. One Work series Distributed for Afterall Books About the Artist Michael Snow is a Canadian artist, film-maker, and musician.

In this illustrated study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of virtuosically managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and color, and recession into perspectival depth. At the same time, she points out, it is also austere : the loft space where the action unfolds could be the last clerical outpost of a defunct business. The zoom is punctuated by what Snow laconically called "4 human events" : a woman directs two men who carry in a bookcase and place it against the left wall of the room; two women come in and listen to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio; a man briefly appears after protracted crashing and glass-breaking noises, wheels around, and drops dead; a young woman comes into the room and makes a frightened telephone call reporting the dead man ("And he doesn't look drunk, he looks dead.").--Résumé de l'éditeur

In 1966 Michael Snow made the film Wavelength , a masterful exploration of the nature of perception. Throughout the film's forty-five minutes, the camera slowly zooms from one end of a New York City loft space to its far wall, accompanied by the sound of a rising sine wave.
In this critical study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of expertly managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and colour and recession into perspectival depth. Wavelength was crucial to critics' efforts to establish a vocabulary for the experimental film movement emerging at the time, and has functioned ever since as a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played.

2012-02-04