Thinking time through difference and repetition: duration, memory, perception and the virtual time of media events

"This dissertation examines two ways by which duration can come to be experienced in analog cinema and digital installations: the interstice and the fold. Whereas the interstice is a material fissure that brings about temporal disruptions between shots/images, the fold is the ontological ground upon which the continuous relations between image and mind arise. These two conceptual figures of time are contradictory, asymmetrical and unequal, giving rise to the question: how might duration be examined from two contrasting and contradictory points of view? If interstices present temporal disjunctions, how might temporal continuities also be a valid point of view? The fold introduces a difference by which a different type of thinking might occur about duration: it introduces a rupture in the orientation of thought about the interstice. Each figure is a different node of thinking of the rhizome, making up the multiplicity by which duration can come under scrutiny in media-objectiles. Each is part of the difference that constitutes the whole.

Time is also the method and process by which duration is examined. As method, time is examined through the difference and repetition of the image. Important to the return is the nature of what returns: does the return bring about the same duration, or does it bring difference? Whereas the time-images of cinema give rise to movements between pasts and futures, the digital installations examined give rise to a continual ""now,"" or to presentism. The digital-image as the returning difference to the analog-image presents its ontological difference, producing a different image of time. As process, the lived time of media-events queries the type of duration endured in nonlinear, asynchronous time. Pivoting between pasts and futures, this open and free time of duration gives rise to memories and visions in the experience of media.

The media examples discussed are Claire Denis' s film L'lntrus (2004), Susan Collins's installations Glenlandia, Fenlandia and The Spectroscope (2004-7), Andrei Tarkovsky's film Mirror (1975), Sound Research Laboratories's performance in Barcelona (1991), Granular Synthesis's performances Modell 5 (1997) and POL (1998) and Toni Dove's interactive cinema Spectropia (2008)."