interference pattern
2022 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Ramey Newell, Niccolò Bigagli
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Light. Sound. Matter. Intricate landscapes emerge from multitudinous overlapping waves of film and quantum physics, filmed on location in an ultracold quantum matter lab at Columbia University in New York City.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people would run from a 9-minute physics visualization, but Newell and Bigagli have weaponized the ultracold lab itself as a subject—turning documentary into pure sensory abstraction, which is exactly the kind of "wait, they shot WHAT" move that makes consensus look cowardly.
The film situates itself at the intersection of structural cinema and scientific documentation with remarkable formal precision—each wave interference becomes a deliberate compositional choice, locating the work within a lineage stretching from Brakhage's light studies through contemporary expanded documentary.
The decision to film *inside* the quantum lab rather than around it transforms the entire scale of the piece; suddenly the constraint of what can actually be filmed in that space becomes the film's generative engine, making abstraction feel earned rather than affected.
Reviews
The listener feels captivated into the experimental soundscape that accompanies and complements the use of lights and colors. The film is a meditation on the nature and the potential of waves.