“Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a French chemist who gave the first accurate scientific explanation of the mysteries of fire. He also provided the law of conservation of matter which states that matter can be neither created or destroyed.n His work and this film are situated between modern chemistry and alchemy. The film stages a drama of abstraction and theoretical realism. Everyday life seen photo-chemically and musically. The film is a materialist projected-image conversion of matter.”To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror (Michael Snow, 1991)
Mar
6
chemistry
Shot from below through a glass pane, a man pushes a sulphur-yellow substance around.
Chemistry: Dimitri Mendeleev presented his version of the periodic table on this date in 1869. He claimed to have had a dream in which he envisioned a table in which all the chemical elements were arranged according to their atomic weight (via).
– Michael Snow, via
The film stock was chemically altered, giving it an dreamlike quality.