Ben Coonley: Wavelength 3D and a Trick Pony

You probably know Michael Snow's Wavelength, that “one room, one zoom” icon from 1967 that was more eye-opening than cataract surgery. Creating what he called a “time monument,” Snow sliced the units of perception into paper-thin increments, heightening the very granularity of viewed space. Through optical intrusions, differing film stocks, and the occasional disruption of a peopled drama, Wavelength achieved zero-degree acuity in which “Events take time. Events take place” (Snow). Now, with Wavelength 3D (2003, 45 mins), Ben Coonley, a young East Coast media artist, has covered this esteemed warhorse from the structuralist pantheon, nudging it ever so gently into the digital domain. Gone is Hollis Frampton as the Man Who Dies, gone is “Strawberry Fields Forever” as the opening song, but the 45-minute zoom, the flip to negative, the color filtration are all religiously reproduced. Then, too, there is the insertion of an extra dimension, the 3 in 3-D, that ironically intensifies the hokey artificiality of televisual appearance. As a prelude to Wavelength 3D, we include selections from “The Pony Collection,” gags involving the artist and his rockin' talkin' toy companion: Pony Changes Everything (2003, 9:15 mins), The Last Pony (2003, 5:45 mins), and 3D Trick Pony (2002, 5:30 mins).

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