The action of the film is direct: Holt walks through the tall grasses of a swamp while filming with her Bolex camera, guided only by what she can see through the camera lens and by Smithson's verbal instructions. The viewer experiences the walk from Holt's point of view, seeing through her camera lens and hearing Smithson's spoken directions. Vision is obstructed and perception distorted as they s...

In Underscan, time and the visual image are compressed. A series of photographs of my Aunt Ethel's home in New Bedford, MA had been videotaped, and re-videotaped while being underscanned. (The underscanning device is a structural framework particular only to video; it compresses the picture so that the edges can be seen precisely; it does away with the variation that occurs between monitors in the...

Pine Barrens is concerned with evoking through film a barren wilderness in south-central New Jersey. The camera is always in motion — tracking, pivoting, and walking through the landscape. Though they are never seen in the film, the voices of the local people, the 'Pineys,' are heard relating their feelings about the land, their attitudes about city life, their myths of the area, etc. their voices...

This piece documents the process behind the creation of Holt's major public art installation, Dark Star Park, in Arlington, Virginia. The park, which features giant concrete spheres and pipes, allows the visitor to reconsider the experience of space, earth and sky within an urban context. It also serves as a kind of contemporary Stonehenge: once a year, on August 1 at 9:30 am, the shadows of the o...

Positioned in an elevated vantage point, Holt uses five apertures in a black board set before the camera to slowly reveal a controlled, abstracted view of an urban landscape. Discussing this New York vista with Ted Castle, Holt strategically transforms passive reception into an interactive exchange.

The film explores the environment—manmade and natural—at Rozel Point on the north arm of Great Salt Lake. The film captures wood cabins, an amphibious vehicle, and remnants of oil drilling that have largely disappeared from the site today, but the tar seeps and salt-encrusted pelicans so present in this film remain a constant at the site.