The Morse Code Operator (or The Monkey Wrench) (2006)

• 80%
• 2006
• Ernie Gehr

"One of two new digital works in the all-Gehr program, Morse Code is not only clever; it's unexpectedly funny. Having now spent several years exploring the possibilities of DV, one senses that Gehr has attained a new level of comfort and flexibility with the new medium. The Morse Code Operator is a glitch-turntablist remix of a segment of Griffith's 1911 short The Lonedale Operator, or more accurately, of the National Film Preservation Foundation's DVD of that film. There's something tentative about the piece, but in an exploratory way, as if Gehr were encountering "home video" as something deeply strange, in the manner one might step outside and find an asteroid in the front yard.