Alex Ressel

"Wavelength can be aligned with the tactic of unusually prolonged, redundant or repetitive attention that effectively blurred the boundaries between heightened acuity and absolute ignoring on the part of the viewer." p14

λ is a condensed version of Michael Snow's WVLNT (2003), which itself is a condensed version of Michael Snow's Wavelength (1967). People complained about the time (45mins) the original film took, so Snow cut the film into 3 equal sections of 15mins and merged them together, so each track was visible amongst the others.

I cut WVLNT into 10 equal 1min 30sec sections and superimposed them on top of one another "creating the effect of rooms telescoped within the room." p15 The audio track is a sped up version of that from WVLNT, with the sine-wave's pitch starting from 50Hz and increasing to 12,000Hz, the same frequencies as Wavelength, but over a much shorter duration.

This is intended to be useful for avant-garde film/artists' moving image courses saving time in seminars.

"The zoom is a kind of scale marking our experience of time as one of both loss and accumulation." p21

"Like Zeno's arrow, Wavelength's zoom can work as a metaphor for any number of things: perceptual processes, chronological measurement, directional movement, light of sight, teleological history, or narrative of any kind. At the time of its making and ever since, Wavelength has functioned as a kind of allegorical structure par excellence, situated within any number of scientific, philosophical, sociological and popular culture narratives. in 1967 Snow wrote that Wavelength had originated as a summation of 'everything that I've thought about, everything', but wryly concluded that in fact 'it doesn't really mean anything' p22

All quotes from Elizabeth Legge 'Wavelength - Michael Snow' Afterall Books, London 2009