Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees
(1992)
85 mins | Drama, Experimental | 21 August 1992
The film contains voice-over narration by David Blair as his character, “Jacob Maker.”
According to the Aug 1992 Mondo 2000 review, filmmaker David Blair spent roughly six years developing Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, using money from various grants and contributions. The project combines computer-generated images, real and simulated archive footage, and video shot on locations in Kansas and at Alamogordo, Trinity Site, and restricted areas of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Images of the mushroom cloud were captured when the U.S. Air Force detonated a small chemical explosive in honor of the anniversary of the first nuclear bomb test at White Sands Missile Range. Footage was assembled on the Montage Picture Processor, a “non-linear” video editing system that allowed Blair to work on as many as six video segments simultaneously.
Due to the project’s untraditional format, Blair was forced to develop his own distribution strategy that appealed to both the film and the art video communities. According to an exhibitor release, the world premiere took place at a private screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on 19 Sep 1991, followed by a theatrical run in Jan 1992 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto, Canada. The film was broadcast on German television on 21 Oct 1991, as part of the weekly program, Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, and continued to be screened across Europe and North America, and at various film and video festivals, throughout 1992. A two-week engagement at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City beginning 21 Aug 1992 earned largely positive reviews. By blowing up the video ...
The film contains voice-over narration by David Blair as his character, “Jacob Maker.”
According to the Aug 1992 Mondo 2000 review, filmmaker David Blair spent roughly six years developing Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, using money from various grants and contributions. The project combines computer-generated images, real and simulated archive footage, and video shot on locations in Kansas and at Alamogordo, Trinity Site, and restricted areas of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Images of the mushroom cloud were captured when the U.S. Air Force detonated a small chemical explosive in honor of the anniversary of the first nuclear bomb test at White Sands Missile Range. Footage was assembled on the Montage Picture Processor, a “non-linear” video editing system that allowed Blair to work on as many as six video segments simultaneously.
Due to the project’s untraditional format, Blair was forced to develop his own distribution strategy that appealed to both the film and the art video communities. According to an exhibitor release, the world premiere took place at a private screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on 19 Sep 1991, followed by a theatrical run in Jan 1992 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto, Canada. The film was broadcast on German television on 21 Oct 1991, as part of the weekly program, Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, and continued to be screened across Europe and North America, and at various film and video festivals, throughout 1992. A two-week engagement at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City beginning 21 Aug 1992 earned largely positive reviews. By blowing up the video to 16mm film, the 19 Feb 1993 Chicago Tribune review admitted that Blair diminished the visual quality of the picture for the opportunity to expose mainstream audiences to “an emerging new art form” in electronic media.
After gaining a sizeable “cult” following, a 24 May 1993 NYT news article stated that Wax became the first movie transmitted over the Internet. On 22 May 1993, Blair broadcast a black and white, digitized version of the picture from a production studio in New York City at a greatly reduced rate of just two frames per second. Despite minor technical difficulties, the 6 Feb 1995 Var reported that the broadcast was repeated in Aug 1994. While the online film was modified to allow viewers the chance to insert their own text, audio, and video, Blair continued to push for a more “interactive” experience by creating and selling a 3D virtual reality version on CD-ROM, which enabled users to travel through the story in real time.
End credits state: “Digital video effects made possible through a loan of the Impact Image Transform Device from Microtime, Special thanks to Jim Burger”; “Stock footage: National Archives; NASA; U.S. Army/WSMR; International Bee Research Association; Society for Psychical Research”; “Simulation stock footage courtesy of Link Corporation General Electric”; “Special thanks: Carl Showler/IBRA; Mr. Geddes/Kensington Science Museum; Norman Reynolds, Doug Pitt, Ray Herbert/NBTV; Christian Blake; James Grauerholz; Richard Kershenbaum; Shelly Miller; Father Bessarion; Dr. Clyde Tombaugh; Dr. Daniel Fry; Lt. Col. Chapla, Lt. Col. Willey, Capt. Carter/U.S. Army Headquarters; Jim Eckles, Bill Gross/White Sand Missile Range; Bob Crisman/Carlsbad Caverns; Don Harper/White Sands National Monument; Ellen Mitchum/International Space Hall of Fame; Ray Melton/NASA, White Sands Test Facility; Frank Hegwar, Richard Mann/Sacramento Peak Observatory; Noe Villareal/Malpais State Park; National Atomic Museum; Satellite Inn; Dr. Detlev Bronk; The New York Public Library, Research Division; Susan Cooper/Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory; John Wilfrey, Paul Redfern/Link; Mark Resch, Phil Getto, George Kyriazis, JP Bourdes, Ian House/RPI Arts, Dept., and the RDRC; Rike Anders; Gustav Hamos; Astrid Heibach; Penelope Wehrli; Werner Zein; Alan Moore; Sian Evans; Peter Fend/OECD; Ricahard Nowogrodzski; Tom Passero; Joe Weiss; Ann Stone, Stanley Grossman, Dennis Franklin, Paul Achlietner, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts; Irit Batsry; Joyce McKee; Marshall Reese; Amy Taubin; Sherry Miller Hocking; Steven Malkus; Alan Siegal; Alex Hahn; Nancy Schaekel; Bruce Tovsky; Carol Fleishman; Sara Hornbacher; Margot Lovejoy; Richard Kusack; The Abushady Family; John and Constance Blair”; “This production had received support from the following organizations: Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, a program of ZDF, Channel 2, German Public Television; The New York State Council on the Arts; The Jerome Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The American Film Institute in association with the NEA; The Checkerboard Foundation; The New York Foundation for the Arts; Experimental Television Center Harvestworks, iEar Studios, RPI; F/VA&sortType=sortByExactMatch'>F/VA Image Processing Studio, Women’s Interart Center”; and, “Additional support from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.”
The character of "Zoltan Abbasid" is shown only in archive footage and not portrayed by an actor in the production.
WAX, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees
Wax: Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees
In 1914, James “Hive” Maker, a member of the Supernormal Film Society, travels to Antarctica in attempt to photograph spirits of the dead. In the summer of 1916, James returns to his home outside London, England, and purchases a stock of supernatural bees from Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, James’s half-sister, Ella Spiralum, develops a prototype of a television and marries her brother’s bee provider, Zoltan Abbasid, who moves to the U.S. and eventually dies under mysterious circumstances. Several decades later, James’s grandson, Jacob Maker, lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he works to build a virtual-reality flight simulator for the U.S. military. Disillusioned by his job, Jacob spends his spare time tending his grandfather’s Mesopotamian bees. One day at the hive, Jacob falls unconscious. The bees drill a hole in his head to implant a small hexagonal television receiver in his brain, which enables him to travel backward and forward in time while investigating his family history. Quickly becoming obsessed by his otherworldly experiences, Jacob leaves work and travels to a nearby missile test facility and the bees’ underground desert lair. There, the insects commune with the dead, including the widow of Zoltan Abbasid, who reveals that Zoltan was murdered by the bees. Leaving reality behind, Jacob is reborn as an “X” shape, which represents the crosshairs of the computerized targeting system he has developed for the military. He travels back to the summer of 1917, when a rivalry had developed between James “Hive” Maker and Zoltan. While reviewing his grandfather’s work, Jacob discovers that the bees are the embodiment of the future dead, who have returned to the present world to seek revenge on those responsible for their deaths. To ...
In 1914, James “Hive” Maker, a member of the Supernormal Film Society, travels to Antarctica in attempt to photograph spirits of the dead. In the summer of 1916, James returns to his home outside London, England, and purchases a stock of supernatural bees from Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, James’s half-sister, Ella Spiralum, develops a prototype of a television and marries her brother’s bee provider, Zoltan Abbasid, who moves to the U.S. and eventually dies under mysterious circumstances. Several decades later, James’s grandson, Jacob Maker, lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he works to build a virtual-reality flight simulator for the U.S. military. Disillusioned by his job, Jacob spends his spare time tending his grandfather’s Mesopotamian bees. One day at the hive, Jacob falls unconscious. The bees drill a hole in his head to implant a small hexagonal television receiver in his brain, which enables him to travel backward and forward in time while investigating his family history. Quickly becoming obsessed by his otherworldly experiences, Jacob leaves work and travels to a nearby missile test facility and the bees’ underground desert lair. There, the insects commune with the dead, including the widow of Zoltan Abbasid, who reveals that Zoltan was murdered by the bees. Leaving reality behind, Jacob is reborn as an “X” shape, which represents the crosshairs of the computerized targeting system he has developed for the military. He travels back to the summer of 1917, when a rivalry had developed between James “Hive” Maker and Zoltan. While reviewing his grandfather’s work, Jacob discovers that the bees are the embodiment of the future dead, who have returned to the present world to seek revenge on those responsible for their deaths. To obtain a new body, Jacob must kill Zoltan’s murderers, and transforms into a bomb that was deployed during the Gulf War in Iraq, the former site of Mesopotamia. Afterward, Jacob permanently changes into the form of two “X” shapes fused with the spirits of Zoltan and the two Iraqi soldiers who died in the blast. Looking down on Alamogordo, Jacob finds that his actions have drastically altered his family tree, as James “Hive” Maker’s new descendants lead happy lives continuing their grandfather’s research.
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