What the Water Said, Nos. 1 3 (1998) dir. David Gatten

The result of a series of cameraless collaborations between the filmmaker, the Atlantic Ocean, and a crab trap. For three days in January and three days in October of 1997, and again, for a day, in August of 1998, lengths of unexposed, undeveloped film were soaked in a crab cage on a South Carolina beach. Both the sound and image are the result of the ensuing oceanic inscriptions written directly into the emulsion of the film as it was buffeted by the salt water, sand, rocks and shells. The film was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art s The American Century, Part II: The Cool