barzon on reading
16mm film on video
30 seconds, 2000
A piece commissioned by Maija Martin for her curated video entitled The 100 Greatest Books of All Time for Pleasure Dome's Blueprint Project. Lasting only 30 seconds, it is a clip from a 16mm speed-reading educational film entitled "Barzon on Reading." Consisting of a page of blurred text in which word groupings are flash-revealed, the viewer was originally meant to quickly read the text and learn speed-reading. The film is projected on a 24 FPS projector but was originally intended to be presented at 18 FPS, thereby making the text nearly impossible to read.
Incidentally, if the viewer does manage to catch some of the text, they will find content that speaks directly to "cinema."