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Samsung to make washing machine into ‘art’ with 66-minute movie showing … a single laundry cycle

Composer Michael Nyman has written music to accompany a movie featuring a Samsung washing machine cycle
Samsung

Doing the laundry is a chore that rarely makes headlines, but Samsung is hoping to change that with a full-length movie that it hopes will get consumers into a lather.

Next week, U.K. cinema-goers will be able to watch "Washing Machine — The Movie," a film of a 66-minute wash cycle, which will be shown in just one continuous shot.

The "slow cinema" piece will be accompanied by music composed by Michael Nyman, who wrote the soundtrack to Oscar-winning movie "The Piano."

Composer Michael Nyman has written music to accompany a movie featuring a Samsung washing machine cycle
Samsung

"In an audacious move, the poetic monotony of the spinning drum and sloshing water are the sole focus of 'Washing Machine'," Samsung said in an online statement. It said its film "turns the everyday drudge of the washing machine cycle into art."

Samsung's research revealed that British adults will watch their laundry going around in the machine for 1,481 hours on average across their lifetimes.

Nyman said he was intrigued by the idea because of the challenge to "offset the mundanity and also enhance the hypnotic appeal."

He also compared the movie to something rather grander. "By coincidence, this new work comes exactly 300 years after the 1717 premiere of another celebrated composition inspired by the flow of water — German-British composer George Frideric Handel's 'Water Music' so in some ways we have come full circle with 'Washing Machine — The Movie'."

The film will be shown at the Cineworld cinema in London's Leicester Square on December 5, and will be available on YouTube on December 6. It follows a three minute and 20 second commercial which filled a whole ad break on British TV's Channel 4 last week, showing a Samsung washing machine in action.

Last month, Ikea revealed YouTube ads showing people doing very little for up to eight minutes, in a series called "Irresistible Pointless TrueView Ads," a dig at the sometimes annoying commercials that appear before videos on the site.