Canadian artist Michael Snow interrupted his promising career as a jazz musician In the early 1960s, in
order to direct his interests fully on other artistic ventures. Soon later he came up with his first experi-
mental movies which are still some of the most interesting positions in avantgarde filmmaking.
Not coincidentally, parallel to the film pieces he began around 1970 to work around sound recordings.
These less known pieces are a consequent continuation of the experiments with recording on an
acoustic level. They are above all a scrutiny of the mediumspecific means of recording which apparently
guarantee the authenticity of a work. Snow`s filmic and acoustic pieces challenge this anticipated authen-
ticity of a technical recording in every detail. They evoke and yet again destabilize every production of
meaning by means of irrationalities, repetitions or simply by using the duration of time. Those medial
effects converge with the recipient`s activity of reception, so that the process of reception itself emerges
as an unknown factor open for discourse.