as the waves play along with an invisible spine (the workers die)

as the waves play along with an invisible spine (the workers die) is a stroboscopic work that pulsates black and white at approximately 14 Hz. Buried within that field of pulsation is a 90 second algorithmically condensed version of John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick. Huston's minimal close-ups of the doomed sailors flicker as afterimage ghosts as approximately 4Hz in the visually unstable field of alternating black and white frames.

So long as the creature lives

it must carry forth its vertebrae

as the waves play along

with an invisible spine.

Like a child's tender cartilage

Is the century of the newborn earth.

-- Osip Mandelstam, Excerpt from "The Century", 1923

This video is part of a series of short videos that experiment with incorporating alpha wave frequencies into the editing structure.