Rethinking Bergson's and Deleuze's Theories of Movement

Abstract

Abstract Following Henri Bergson's third thesis of movement in Creative Evolution, Gilles Deleuze devotes a large section of Cinema I to applying the concept of the mobile section and the open whole to the narrative of analog cinema. By adopting a material ontological perspective and taking the disciplines of art-making into consideration, this article criticizes Deleuze's approach and proposes to rethink Bergson's and Deleuze's theories of movement in both analog cinema and digital moving images. In response to its main question, can analog and digital moving images constitute the open whole, this article examines the material degradation of film in the analog, investigates the phenomenon of morphing in the digital, and pays special attention to the real-time creation as well as the voyeuristic authorship of digital artworks.