Gary Hill

His work clearly has an emphasis on speech, enunciation, and words in general. "Meditations" was very interesting.. the way the words were gradually muffled, and then reduced to a whisper as more sand was sprinkled on top of the speaker was a curious thing to watch. I predicted that the speech would become more rumbly and distorted as more sand was added, but instead the speech overcame the rumbly sounds and instead became clearer, but quieter. The voice gradually became buried in sand, in what seemed to be an attempt to drown it out. It made me think about trying to cover up an idea, or a thought. The voice coming from the speaker could represent one's mind or conscience, repeatedly trying to convey a concept, but unsuccessfully due to the ceaseless gradual burial in sand - or one trying to put the thought in the back of one's mind. "Incidence of Catastrophe" contained an interesting juxtaposition at the beginning of watery waves and text, showing parallels between them in their shape and form. Then the clips seem to get a little random, alternating between scenes of trees, humans, and text. I got lost and no longer saw too many clear connections. In "Why Do Things Get in a Muddle?", the voice at the beginning sounded creepy and Voldemort-like, which went perfectly with the creepy music. After showing an Alice-in-Wonderland type-scene of a room, a dialogue begins between a father and daughter as the viewer sees the top of a desk. They discuss other people "muddling" things up, in a very scripted fashion, sounding very unnatural. They discuss the meaning of the word in both denotation and connotation. Later in the video as their conversation moves on, the voices get distorted and creepy and I can't quite understand what they are saying anymore.