Fast- and Stop- frame, and Real- time: video's comment on matters of observation of perception considered through drawing
(2022)
author(s): Mike Croft, Safa Tharib
published in: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
The exposition is a presentation of work in progress, also involving reflective commentary, by two collaborators in a research project titled 'The Observation of Perception: considered through drawing', hosted by i2ADS Research Unit of the Fine Art Faculty of Porto University. The collaborators, a digital visual artist and an analogue-focused fine artist, are respectively involved in the research through visual story-telling and video, and drawing and its audio-visual recording. In the present circumstances, each of the works is considered through its video element specifically in relation to several manifestations of time. In the digital visual artist's case, time is formatted through and as fast-frame and stop-frame, and in the fine artist's case, real-time and a psychoanalytical inflection on real, often appearing in the literature capitalised as Real. The first author, who provides the written reflection, is the fine artist, while substantial visual work, a published paper, and some critical intervention is provided by the digital visual artist as a second author. The first author takes as a directive, aspects of the second author's paper, and reflectively critiques both his and his research collaborator's time-based work in their video manifestations. Theoretical references are to the digital visual artist collaborator Safa Tharib, the philosopher Henri Bergson and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The exposition ends with a question that emerges from the commentary, as to the applicability of the indexical signifier to consideration of digital as well as analogue practice.