Final Write up

Jiwon Kim

What is time? It is four dimensional so one can not see or touch it. Thus, it was hard to decide how to connect the Pierce or Deleuze’s theories that we learned in class with a time theory and generate a physical thing. When I heard about this project at first, I suddenly recalled my old memories of my repeated experiences and my habits. So I simply decided to use my final project to investigate a repetition of the time. At that time, I thought it would be fun to unravel the meaning of my old memories and experiences while creating the installation and show how the meaning of my experiences gradually have been changed as time goes by. However, adapting my own memory was too confined, so I failed to find out a good way of presenting my concept. Therefore, my project totally changed after I searched about a time theory more specifically in order to simplify my thinking.

I found a book named “Difference & Repetition” by Deleuze for the time theory. In chapter 2, he talks about a ‘repetition for itself’. I did a lot of research and watched John David Ebert’s channel on youtube to better understand his book. Deleuze writes that when we do or watch the same thing again and again, it just take place in our mind.  In other words, he mentions that the past produces the present and we agree with the present situation because we already went through the past. As time goes by, the image gets more vivid and is burned into our memories. When the repetition keeps going on, the present of a past becomes like a habit.  In the youtube video, the narrator gave an example of the image of sunset to explain the repetition of time and habit. He explained that when I show the image of sunset, everyone recognizes it is sunset unconsciously because we have already seen the sunset in the past. Thus, the past and the present are inherently connected.

Also, Deleuze mentions that “a contraction of the reality (prior thought) refers to the collection of a diffuse ongoing force into the present.” I understood this explanation in this way. He thought every form is based on that contraction. He states that habit is an implicative concept that many pieces of the past experience are all together. Thus, I feel habit is more about experiencing the past and its results. 

After something becomes a habit by repetition, people will know right away what to expect. Same as when the time passes. The image will be more precise and the individual can draw a whole picture of it.

I made an installation for this project. My presentation of the installation shows how an image can be gradually changed from its original meaning and how the image becomes more and more familiar to an individual, much like getting into a habit. This exemplifies Pierce’s theory of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.

When I began, I planned to decentralize and organize the content of my project step by step as Deleuze did for his study. For my installation, I built a clock where the image is placed in the middle. However, the image is completely covered with a lot of clock hands at first. This scene represents the moment when we have never seen the image and don’t know about the information at all.

We all know that we have to do repeatedly to fall into a habit. To show this, first I am going to remove one fourth of the clock hands (12 to 3 o’clock), so only 1/4 image will be shown. Hence, the image is still unclear. Because it is only a part of the image, it will be still hard to guess what the real image looks like. It is paralleled to Firstness. If we use extreme close-up, it’s hard to define the object specifically but only we know the quality of it.

Next, I am going to remove half of the clock hands ,representing more time having passed. In Deleuze’s book, when the more times we repeatedly see the image, the more we know the image will be gradually more distinguishable. It’s similar example of shooting a middle shot (Secondness). The information of the image will be more discovered by using a middle shot.

Finally, I am going to remove all the clock hands one by one and then whole image  will be exposed as if it is taken by long shot(Thirdness).  As more time passes, all the pieces of the past memories will be combined together and create an image. Furthermore, it will last in this in my mind forever and become a habit. This long shot will generate a big scene of the present by gathering all the past relationships to the image. Therefore, next time, people will directly know what the picture will be, even when they only see a quarter of the picture.

In the beginning, the image or action would be unclear and we would remember only parts of it after time passes. However, as more and more time passes image will be more precise and clear.