Sun­day, after the race, L. and I dropped by the Smithsonian’s Hir­sh­horn Museum and checked out their exhibit “The Cin­ema Effect: Illu­sion, Real­ity, and the Mov­ing Image.” The qual­ity of the pieces was all over the place. But the unmis­tak­able whirring of a large film pro­jec­tor (heard from an adjoin­ing room) led me to my favorite piece: Rod­ney Graham’s “Rheinmetall/Victoria 8.” In a room by itself, on a plat­form, a giant 1961-vintage 35 mm film pro­jec­tor (the Vic­to­ria 8), equipped with a clever auto­matic loop­ing device for its 10 min­utes of film, clat­tered away effort­lessly. It was pro­ject­ing a film of an even older type­writer (the Rhein­metall) being dusted with snow. The pro­jected black-and-white image was pow­er­ful, bright, and gor­geously contrasty—standing in sharp con­trast to neigh­bor­ing exhibits with lack­lus­ter dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion. But despite the com­pelling yet inan­i­mate sub­ject of the film, I found myself drawn like a mag­net to the pro­jec­tor. The intense glow from its lam­p­house seemed reluc­tant to be con­strained by its enclo­sure, spilling out of every crack like sun­light through the walls of a dark barn. The film spool­ing out of the infi­nite loop plat­ter moved swiftly and smoothly. It was beau­ti­ful mechan­i­cal har­mony, and great art.