Knife/Chair/Hill

In both "The Knife" and "The Chair," Goldstein keeps out the sound which lets us focus in on the visual and the atmosphere of the video. Making these videos silent, makes them seem more meditative on the colors of the light in "The Knife" and of the leaves in "The Chair."
The Knife
The way the knife is laid out is rather unusual because one usually doesn't lay out a knife in a horizontal manner. Because it is horizontal, it looks less menacing, taking away its function of cutting. The colors lighting it up turn this normal item into something more important. To me, the placement reminded me of the replacement of a relic. Goldstein transforms the function of this object into something like a treasure.
The colors tend to change the atmosphere too. I feel more serene when it turns blue and pretty endangered when it turns red. The slow lighting up creates anxiety. Once full, you kind of feel relieved but at the same time you're anticipating a new function for the knife. For example, once the knife turns gold, its function suddenly becomes like money, or a jewel. Then the color goes out and you instantly remember it's just a regular knife.
The Chair
Goldstein chooses another mundane subject in this video. We all use chairs all the time from since we were a baby in baby seat to the rocking chair. This chair actually does remind me of a rocking chair because of how it just sits there. Like a rocking chair on the porch, it just sits there forever letting the leaves pile on it. Rather than falling around the chair, the leaves fall on it too, making it look used and not important like the knife.
The falling leaves seem to symbolize a passage of time. They just keep on falling forever so it feels like time goes on forever. By the end of the video, I lost sense of time because of the falling leaves sequence doesn't end. Though their movement reminds me of autumn, their odd colors (especially the blue) remind me more of confetti. The atmosphere doesn't seem very party-like though.

Gary Hill
From these three works, I could tell he really liked to experiment with the sounds and meaning from language.
In "Meditations," he experimented with language's function: connecting an image and meaning with a sound (i.e. speaker and the word "speaker.") But once he started adding the sand, the meaning becomes lost. The sand buries it. The language becomes less full of meaning and gets reduced to just the sound of a gurgling voice and bouncing sand. I think Gary Hill aimed to show how fragile language can be. If we can't hear something familiar, then the meaning is lost and language becomes useless.
In "Why do Things Get in a Muddle," Hill is still focused on the basic function of language. While language is supposed to clarify ideas, it can also complicate them because of the puns and metaphors we've developed with language. And like how "Come on Petunia" can be regrouped to be "once upon a time," changing the letters around can easily change something's meaning.
In "Incidence of Catostrophe," Hill shows how we've made language physical with books and text. Text becomes our walls, as he shows us in the end. Using himself as a subject this time, he shares how although we make language, language can shape our identity too. In the end, he babbles on as a broken human in his feces. We are useless without language.