This thesis examines the cycling patterns of simultaneity, or phasing, between two or more repeating images and identifies this as a visual phenomenon in which reoccurrences over time divide between spatial positions. The research that supports this is based upon my studio practice and my experience of works from contemporary art practice that foreground durational and spatial concerns. I refer to Henri Bergson’s theories of spatialised time to examine the means by which we apprehend the spatial presentation of moving images and identify degrees of awareness between the temporal and the spatial.
From my analysis of these I propose that the perception of image phasing results from chance configurations between points in time and positions in space, and argue that the experience of such simultaneities is twofold, that non-resolving patterns of behaviour extend a viewer’s awareness from the moment of apprehension towards possible future configurations. It is the means by which such possibility is perceived that I examine in this thesis.
My contribution to knowledge is offered in a body of studio work, as research into formal and perceptual relationships between repetition, extension, slippage and simultaneity. The research question underpinning this thesis addresses the means by which we might perceive the phenomena of image phasing, and how this might in turn extend opportunities for development within the studio practice.
It is in a combination of analysis of selected studio works and the subsequent text that a response to this question is posited that frames a viewer’s perception of possibility in terms that owe a debt to Bergsonian thinking about the nature of divided time flow as a series points in space. I argue that the experience of image phasing is one of alternating time apportioned as spatial units, and that this spatialisation process is predicated upon an accumulated past that is recognised as a pattern for possible future configurations. Extrapolating from this I claim that we anticipate the future of multiple temporalities in terms of their relative positions in space and that possibility, the potential future states of the experience, is therefore perceived as separate positions rather than parallel successions.
It is at this point that I am able to claim that the studio work and the subsequent text make a contribution to knowledge in the form of an art practice that frames image phasing as an experience that is concurrent with an awareness of possible future configurations.