Achronologies, Materiality and Mechanics of Time in Optical Moving Image Systems

Within the fields of animation, media archaeology and film, much attention is placed on the image and the viewer. This article will broaden this focus to explore the moving image as a form of time in an expanded context of animation which triangulates the device with the image and viewer. The devices discussed form part of optical image system artworks that the author has researched and developed. These devices project moving images of light and have diverse historical and opto-mechanical underpinnings. The systems present their own form of optically generated time, not of minutes and hours, but of movement and light, which the author terms time-light. The article explores how revealing the mechanism generating the moving image can establish a new ontology for the device by critically engaging the viewer in how time is constructed, mediated and experienced. Being both ‘object’ and a ‘subjective experience’, time is deeply connected to our human and post-human relationship with technology. The subjective experience of the moving image in conjunction with its decloaked device can therefore make explicit our techno–human relationship with time.