Travelling eye: the elusive digital frame and the elasticity of time in art

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, I will consider my video installations, Hold (2006), An Occulting Light (2007) and Lighter Darker (2008), in which I have developed a language of re-filmed frames and expanded moving image spaces, in the light of Victor Burgin's idea of the ‘remembered film’, Benjamin's ‘unconscious optics’ and Deleuze's work on painting and cinema.These works were constructed from fragments of ‘remembered films’, including The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Mankiewicz 1947) and The Cruel Sea (Frend 1953), combined with footage from actual journeys made to sites of family memory. Using re-filming techniques, alterations to frame rate and speed and experimental editing, I have begun to explore ‘affect’ in the spaces between frames in digital video where the image exceeds the original frame boundaries, oscillating between visible traces inscribed in the newly constructed sequences. My project in this practice-led research is to gain insights into ‘affect’ in relation to our perceptions as artists and spectators of movement and of the traces of time passing in paintings and film works, through the languages of the moving image.