Wax is an adventurous electronic narrative combining pseudohistory, metaphysics, apiary trivia, otherworldly humor, and remarkable video techniques. This speculative fiction is set in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Jacob Maker designs gun sight displays at a flight-simulation facility. In his spare time, he tends hives filled with "Mesopotamian" bees inherited from his grandfather, a beekeeper with a dubious history. Eventually, the bees communicate the presence of a second reality occupied by the spirits of the future. A New York-based artist, David Blair has made extensive use of newer video techniques, producing graphically fluid transitions between the tape's many "realities." Fantastical shifts in imagery are subtly fused through electronic synthesis. This is not a conventional use of special effects, but rather an attempt to fabricate a completely imaginative realm. In Wax, the speculative world of the bees has the same seamless veracity as Jacob Maker's earthbound reality. All planes of existence are equally verified by the overarching context of electronic space. Perhaps Wax points toward the waning of the traditional story.-Steve Seid