[Frameworks] Michael Snow

[Dave Tetzlaff]

One thing I've come to observe about experimental film is how different
much of the work functions in a broader context that includes the presence
of the maker in one way or another, vs. just a bare screening of the work.
A related observation is that the physical variables of screenings matter a
lot as well.

I note these things as Snow's passing leads me to recall screening
Wavelength for my Experimental Film class. I did this from video, not
celluloid, (yes I'm a heretic) in a nice auditorium with a big screen and a
serious sound system. I didn't think I needed to see it again, and had
other stuff to deal with, so I left the auditorium after starting the
playback. When I returned, I found the students expressing great pain at
having endured the piercing whine of the soundtrack at a very uncomfortable
volume. Had I been there, I would have gotten up and turned down the
volume. But even if the students had known where the control was, they
wouldn't have changed it, as they told me they thought the sound was
SUPPOSED to be irritating. This had never occurred to me, as I my
initiation to wavelength had come from projection on a Pageant in a
classroom, with the soundtrack coming from the smallish speaker of the
projector, which, combined with the projector noise, was more meditative
than assaulting.

I regretted possibly accidentally allowing the students to develop a false
and negative impression if Snow, but maybe the semiotic 'openness' of
screening variables is just part of an artform (especially the "structural"
variant) that tries (among other things) to get down to fundamental
properties of the medium, and Snow would have been amused by the anecdote.
I began to look for humor in Snow once I learned that he did the narration
for 'nostalgia' and Frampton played the guy whose death the camera in
Wavelength ignores, again a perspective an audience is unlikely to get on a
'naive' initial viewing... Of course, for all I know he might have been
greatly annoyed by my faux pax.

I kinda like not knowing, actually.
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