Although Michael Snow’s films are commonly identified with a programmed project, the experience produced by the works points the discrepancy between what knowledge selects and what is being perceived. In both his photographic and cinematographic approaches, the perceptive distortions emboss the complex and ambiguous space of a picture, going beyond the automation of technical devices.

The intensity of a perspective can be produced by the use of optical lenses, the projection of light beams, acoustic resonances, a deep focus, a precise work construction, features that are inherent to Michael Snow’s cinema. Since the strength of the experience generated by his films widens the field of knowledge, these multi-dimensional objects require to be approached through a specific thread.

Two years after Michael Snow’s cinema acquired an international recognition with the award received for Wavelength at the fourth Knokke-le-Zoute Experimental Festival in Belgium, in summer 1969, P. Adams Sitney, the theorist of the New American Cinema, designates some of Snow’s films with the notion of « structural film». His first article, published in Film Culture, gives rise to a debate ; George Maciunas responded with a new definition of the notion of « structure », which is, according to him, linked to a complex construction. In a second text, Sitney specifies the nature of the cinematographic language of configuration. Presented as a predetermined process, the structure aims at expanding the perceptive field of the camera frame. As to Wavelength, it is articulated by oppositions between inside and outside, light and darkness, positive and negative, composing a potential exploration of space and cinematographic properties.

Resisting any linear logic, Michael Snow’s films increase the awareness of realities that coexist simultaneously, since the space of the work is related to the context of the spectator. The working process undergoes varied trans-formations during which the dimensions are stretched by the reversible passages from still to moving images, from plane to relief, from materiality to transparency.