Michael Zryd is associate professor of cinema and media studies in the School of Art, Media, Performance, and Design at York University

Hapax Legomena is Hollis Frampton's great serial work. The seven films of the series work independently, but function within the series to designate several arcs: the history of visual media (moving from still photography through the written script, film, video, animation/pixilation, and television to the dynamic frame); the parameters of sound and film (the series alternates silence and sound-spoken voice, sound montage, nonsync sound-on-tape, and electronic synthesizer); and finally, what Frampton describes as “oblique autobiography,” from the stories told over burning photographs in (nostalgia) to his bodily rhythms inscribed in the vibrations of the hand-held camera of Special Effects.