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Snow's Walking Woman out for a stroll.
Snow:
Probably 1963, 1964. I went to New York in 1963.
MacDonald:
In
The Walking Woman Works
you were putting the same figure in place after place, in serial fashion, which has a good deal in common with film. Were you conscious of that connection at the time?
Snow:
Well, in the work itself there was a lot of sequential stuff. There are several pieces that are, say, four or five variations of the same figure. And, yeah, I did think there was something filmic about it. And then in 1964 I made
New York Eye and Ear Control
. I had had the idea for that film in Toronto.
When I first went to New York, I met Ben Park, who worked for one of the television stations I think, though he also produced films in a small way, I guess. I told him my ideas for
New York Eye and Ear Control,
and he said that he'd finance it. So we shot quite a bit of stuff, including a sequence of Marcel Duchamp and Joyce walking across the street, seen through a mask cutout of the Walking Woman. Anyway, Park finally decided against going ahead with the project and kept what I had shot. There wasn't too much enmity there, the film just stopped. Later on, I decided to try to do it myself.
MacDonald: New York Eye and Ear Control
combines your fascination with music and
The Walking Woman Works
. It's as if you were learning how to work with film as a means of getting this other work