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photograph of ocean waves pinned on the opposite wall. In the course
of the zoom the image flickers through different colour filtrations and
switches day to night and positive to negative, highlighting the physical
substance of the projected image. Fragments of narrative are introduced
when a man enters the room and collapses on the floor, but the unwaver-
ing zoom continues on its way to the photograph.Wavelengthbuilds up a
tension between human and mechanical vision, which is never resolved
but is dramatized as its central idea. The film is neither fast enough to
feel like movement nor slow enough to register as stillness, neither event-
ful enough to feel like a story nor uneventful enough to set the viewer free
of narrative.
Forty years on, subsequent generations are still unpacking the
ramifications of the intensive experimentation of the 1960 s and ’ 70 s,
just as many artists continue to look to the equally productive Con-
ceptual art of that period. A significant change is that experimental
cinema has been taken up substantially by contemporary art. It has left
behind the film co-ops and alternative cinemas in which it developed to
move into the gallery. Despite the variety, a certain slowness predomi-
nates in these new practices. We see it in the work of Bill Viola, Douglas
25 Wavelength(MichaelSnow,1967),
frame.