Few avant garde filmmakers have deconstructed the possibilities of camera movement as succinctly as Michael Snow. The nearly imperceptible movement across the space of Wavelength (1967) illustrated the filmic compromises that are used to condense time and space to create a more digestible cinematic experience, succinctly capturing the universal truth that action is happening all around us despite our limited powers of perception telling us otherwise. The pendulum movements of Snow’s <---> (Back and Forth, 1969) gave us more easily perceived camera motion, but the paralyzed movements were isolated to a singular horizontal plane as it panned back and forth across a finite space, showing the ever shifting context of spaces through the impositions of the people that occupy them. With Breakfast (Table Top Dolly, 1976) Snow illustrates the way in which the artist’s will is imposed upon the subject of their camera, essentially destroying the spaces it tries to passively capture, a phenomenon that scientists commonly refer to as the “observer effect”. Passive exploration of a space is simply not possible, as the mere act of selecting a subject is already limiting the possibilities of what can be captured. The artist carries a lifetime of experiences and collected prejudices that dictate what can be explored and with what tools of exploration, but their limitations are different from our own and we are able to formulate new ideas that may be in diametric opposition of the artist’s original intent.