The desert contains a multiplicity of meanings. To some, it is monotonous in its planes of vision, cruel in its vacancy; to others, it is a tumult of brittle textures, teeming with subtle disclosures. Through its aridity of sensation, the desert seems an opaque landscape, reflecting meaning back into the eye of the beholder. In Doug Hall's Through the Room, a form of psychological oblivion is evoked by the stark positioning of an apparitional man in a desert waste. Banished from the seat of civilization, seen here as a highly formal room, the man finds himself in a boundless plain, unconfined, but not necessarily free. Uncertainty and disorientation are Bill Viola's quarry as he stalks the Tunisian Sahara in Chott el-Djerid. Mirages and heat distortions, or "hallucinations of the landscape," as Viola calls them, are formed by optical properties, as well as a breakdown of visual information. Through this spectral terrain new perceptions are sought that will transform a physical presence into an emotional state. Richard Long is famous for walks in which he alters the landscape along his path, creating uncanny, geometric sculptures. In Stones and Flies, filmmaker Philip Haas follows the artist through the Sahara as he scrapes spiraling circles in this sun-baked moonscape. The simplicity of Long's method is thoroughly confounded by the elegance of forms he fashions from scrub and stone. It is the artist's particular genius that he can see such rich possibilities in such a desolate place. Steve Seid