Toward an Ontology of the Image

Deleuze and the Aura of Simulation

Jon Lindblom
Introduction
Looking at an image as a representation and as something in itself are two very
different things. It is no doubt that the first has held the privileged status in the history
of Western thought because of the well established relationship between subject,
representation and object but behind this familiar position others have always been
concealed. It is the purpose of this text to explain, discuss and illustrate the relevance
of one of these positions the image!in!itself "i.e., as a fully real, material entity#,
which I believe has become even more important in these days of the $crisis of
representation%. I will focus exclusively on the moving images of cinema, but similar
lines of thought may be traced to television, computers and other image!based
mediums.
Walter &enjamin wrote, in his famous essay $'he Work of (rt in the (ge of
)echanical *eproduction%, about the mechanically reproduced images of cinema,
which for him marked the death of the aura in the classical artwork. +inema, because
of its nature as a medium based on a plurality of copies without an original, severely
threatened the position of classical art. (s &enjamin points out in the following
passage, with cinema and the arrival of the moving image, the real loses its aura in
favour of mechanical representations
,-.or the first time and this is the effect of the film man has to operate with
his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. -or aura is tied to his presence/
there can be no replica of it. 'he aura which, on the stage, emanates from
)acbeth cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. 0owever,
the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the
public. +onse1uently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the
aura of the figure he portrays.
2
( similar theory is to be found in the media related work of 3ean &audrillard. 0is
theories of simulation view the moving image as a signifier which destroys the
signified and conse1uently reality itself. 'hus, there is no longer a real and its
representation, but just a hyper!real, a pure simulacrum.
4
&enjamin, and &audrillard in particular, have in many ways correctly diagnosed the
contemporary crisis in representation, but it is the thesis of this work that the problem
1
not is the moving image itself, but rather a misunderstanding of its nature. 'his is
directly related to the image as an image!in!itself, a thesis presented by 0enri
&ergson in his book Matter and Memory, and later expanded by 5illes 6eleu7e,
mainly in Cinema 1: The Movement Image and Cinema 2: The Time Image. 'he first
part of this text will subse1uently give a brief introduction to the thoughts in these
works, which then will be directly contrasted to &enjamin and &audrillard.
The Image as Ontological Concept
&ergson is probably 6eleu7e8s most important predecessor and this becomes very
clear when one studies Cinema 1 and Cinema 2, which are deeply inspired by
&ergson8s Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution, so in order to understand
6eleu7e8s position properly we need first to take a brief look at &ergson.
&ergson8s position in Matter and Memory is uni1ue, since he does not start with the
subject9object dichotomy but with the image. 'he image, for &ergson, is fully real and
embodies an ontological status/ matter is image, the body is image, the brain is
image and memory is image. 'he :elf, according to &ergson, is just an image among
other images, and the brain8s main function is not to store linguistic representations,
but rather to produce virtual memory!images "which are essentially non!linguistic
intensities#, and to receive and transmit movement "images# between the self and the
external world.
4
'he self, although just an image among other images, does, for &ergson, of course
embody certain characteristics which separate it from other images "animals, matter,
etc.#. 'he most important is its ability to delay and choose reaction.
;
'his is precisely
the function of the brain, which he describes as a kind of crystalli7ation in the material
flow, where perceptions are transformed into affections and memory, which later
become actions. -urthermore, so called natural perception is for humans limited to
our own point of view, which once again separates us from the pure material flow,
since we always reduce perception to that which interests us. 'his is &ergson8s
important insight regarding perception perception does not add something to that
which is, but rather subtracts from it. When I perceive, I actually perceive less then
what there is because if I was to perceive everything I would basically be within
matter itself.
<
2
In Creative Evolution, &ergson connects natural perception to cinema. 0e often
used art as illustrations of his ideas for example dance and music in Time and Free
ill
=
but where musical arts give us a deeper understanding of movement and
1ualitative time, the cinema, according to &ergson, does not. &ecause cinema, at its
material plane, embodies the same perceptual illusion as natural perception, since it
projects twenty!four still frames "immobile sections# per second in order to give us an
illusion of movement.
>
'hus, the cinematic image was for &ergson only a dead end.
6eleu7e begins Cinema 1 with a lengthy discussion on &ergsonian ontology and his
relationship to cinema, and he continually emphasi7es that &ergson had a closer
relationship to cinema than he might have reali7ed/ a relationship which 6eleu7e
strengthens throughout Cinema 1 and Cinema 2. -irstly, 6eleu7e disagrees with
&ergson8s thesis concerning the cinematic image and movement. -or movement, as
6eleu7e points out, should not be seen as something external which then is added to
immobile sections but rather as immanent within the images themselves.
?
'hus, for
6eleu7e, the cinematic image is always in motion, as opposed to the photographic
image which is fro7en and composed for space rather than time. :econdly, even
though the cinematic image may be viewed as a series of linear points "any!instants!
whatever# it is, according to 6eleu7e, wrong to view these images as eternal orders
of forms.
@
An the contrary, the any!instant!whatever should always be considered
capable of creating something new, which $makes possible another way of looking at
cinema, a way in which it would no longer be just the perfected apparatus of the
oldest illusion ,e.g., Beno8s paradoxes., but, on the contrary, the organ for perfecting
the new reality%.
C
6eleu7e also complements &ergson8s earlier thesis, which may be summari7ed as
image D movement D matter, with what may be formulated as image D movement D
matter D light. &ergson had in Matter and Memory successfully showed that image is
matter, which is in constant movement, but 6eleu7e goes one step further when he
e1uals matter with light.
2E
'his is something &ergson never explicitly mentions, but it
certainly decreases the gap between him and the cinema even further. It also leads
us to 6eleu7e8s radical conclusion concerning the image as an ontological concept
the universe as metacinema.
22
0ere, the cinematic image obviously reaches radically
new heights, just as the concept of the image!in!itself.
(t this point it should be obvious that in this metacinematic universe, cinema itself is
not the creation of images as representations of a transcendental reality, but an
3
activity with its own, uni1ue images "and signs#, as 6eleu7e points out in the
introduction to Cinema 1
'he cinema seems to us to be a composition of images and of signs, that is, a
pre!verbal intelligible content "!ure semiotics#, whilst semiology of a linguistic
inspiration abolishes the image and tends to dispense with the sign. What we
call cinematographic concepts are therefore the types of images and the signs
which correspond to each type.
24
'hus, when 6eleu7e writes his books on cinema he always puts the images first.
'herefore, the books are not about interpretations of narratives or about reducing
images to representations of linguistic categories, but about finding images which are
!urely cinematic/ because 6eleu7e also disagrees with &ergson when it comes to the
relationship between cinema and natural perception. -or 6eleu7e, cinema, because
of montage, is something else than natural perception and it would be a mistake to
reduce cinema to it. :urely, the camera has a point!of!view, just like the image of my
self, but through montage, cinematic images become something more, which
conse1uently should enrich and extend our metacinematic universe.
2;
Simulation and Expressivity
-or &enjamin and &audrillard, cinema threatens to obscure the real world because
of its nature as a medium consisting of copies without an original, and without a
relationship to the real. 'he image drains the aura of the original and severely alters
our relation to reality. &enjamin writes
We define the aura ,F. as the uni1ue phenomenon of a distance, however
close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your
eyes a mountain range on the hori7on or a branch which casts its shadow over
you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch.
2
0e then continues by pointing out that uni1ueness and permanence are as closely
linked to the aura of the real as transitoriness and reproducibility are to the image.
4
(nd in &audrillard, the image has detached itself completely from reality and created
4
a pure hyper!real simulacrum where it no longer is a 1uestion of the real and its
representation because of the fact that the representation is all that remains, which
$is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum not unreal, but a simulacrum,
that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an
uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference%.
;
6eleu7e8s position is of course completely the opposite, because for him there is no
$real% to begin with. What &enjamin and &audrillard refer to as what we might call
$the aura of the real%, which then is obscured by the simulation of images, is for
6eleu7e just an actuali"ation of actual images# through the simulation of virtual
images. 'he 6eleu7ian scholar +lair +olebrook comments on this relationship
between 6eleu7e and &audrillard
(gainst this rigid distinction between the actual and the virtual ,i.e., the real and
simulations. 6eleu7e argues that the real is always actual!virtual. -irst, any
$actual% being is already an image. ,F. (n actual thing is produced only from
virtual possibilities. ,F. It is not just that the actual world is the effect of virtual
potential, each actual thing maintains its own virtual power. What something is
"actually# is also its power to become "virtually#. ,F. We tend to think that we
have an actual world which precedes simulation, but for 6eleu7e there is an
$original% process of simulation. &eings or things emerge from processes of
copying, doubling, imaging and simulation. Gach uni1ue work of art or each
human being is a simulation genes copy and repeat, without deviation, while art
works become singular not by being the world but by transforming it through
images that are at once actual and virtual.
<
We are now able to summari7e the important function of the image!in!itself in
6eleu7ian ontology. :ince he does not begin with the subject, which then encounters
objects through linguistic representations, but rather with the pure intensities of virtual
movements which actuali7e fully formed beings
=
, the image!in!itself serves his
thinking well, because it is matter!light in!itself, in constant movement.
'hus, were cinema for &audrillard and &enjamin is a simulation which challenges
time and space, cinema for 6eleu7e is time and space "movement# in itself.
>
We may
still call it a simulacrum, but an expressive simulacrum of actual9virtual images which
does not destroy the aura of the real, but rather enriches the fundamental nature of
5
simulations. -or &audrillard, modern life is like a film, but for 6eleu7e, as we have
seen, being is metacinema a constant movement of actual and virtual images. I do,
however, still believe that &audrillard8s analyses of contemporary images are
relevant, but for me this is not because of the image itself, but rather because of a
misunderstanding concerning the image as a representation "as I mentioned in the
introduction#. 'his conse1uently makes the image!in!itself a perfect candidate to
replace it.
6
Notes
Introduction
2. &enjamin, Walter, $'he Work of (rt in the (ge of )echanical *eproduction%, in
Illuminations, London Himlico, 2CCC, p. 44;.
4. :imulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It
is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality a hyperreal.
"&audrillard, 3ean, $imulacra and $imulation, )ichigan Iniversity Hress of
)ichigan, 2CC<, p. 2.#
The Image as Ontological Concept
2. Let us consider this last point. 0ere are external images, then my body, and,
lastly, the changes brought about by my body in the surrounding images. I see
plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body they
transmit movement to it. (nd I also see how this body influences external
images it gives back movement to them. "&ergson, 0enri, Matter and
Memory, Jew Kork Bone &ooks, 2CC2, p. 2C.#
4. )y body is, then, in the aggregate of the material world, an image which acts
like other images, receiving and giving back movement, with, perhaps, this
difference only, that my body appears to choose, within certain limits, the
manner in which it shall restore what it receives. "Ibid.#
;. &ergson refers to this very hypothetical kind of perception as $pure
perception%.
<. In his most famous passage concerning music, &ergson writes
)ight it not be said that, even if these notes succeed one another, yet we
perceive them in one another, and that their totality may be compared to a
living being whose parts, although distinct, permeate one another just because
they are so closely connectedL 'he proof is that, if we interrupt the rhythm by
dwelling longer than is right on one note of the tune, it is not its exaggerated
length, as length, which will warn us of our mistake, but the 1ualitative change
thereby caused in the whole of the musical phrase. "&ergson, 0enri, Time and
7
Free ill: %n Essay on the Immediate &ata of Consciousness, Jew Kork
6over, 4EE2, p. 2EE!2E2.#
=. We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are
characteristic of reality, we have only to string them on a becoming, abstract,
uniform and invisible, situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in
order to imitate what there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself.
Herception, intellection, language so proceed in general. Whether we would
think becoming, or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else
than set going a kind of cinematograph inside us. "&ergson, 0enri, Creative
Evolution, Jew Kork +osimo +lassics, 4EE=, p. ;;4.#
>. -irstly, is not the reproduction of the illusion in a certain sense also its
correctionL +an we conclude that the result is artificial because the means are
artificialL +inema proceeds with photogrammes that is, with immobile
sections twenty!four images per second "or eighteen at the outset#. &ut it
has often been noted that what it gives us is not the photogramme it is an
immediate given image, to which movement is not appended or added the
movement on the contrary belongs to the intermediate image as immediate
given. "6eleu7e, 5illes, Cinema 1: The Movement'Image, London +ontinuum,
2C@>, p. 4#
?. Ibid., p. ?.
@. Ibid., p. @.
C. 'he identity of the image and movement stems from the identity of matter and
light. 'he image is movement, just as matter is light. "Ibid., p. >E#
2E. 'he material universe, the plane of immanence, is the machine assemblage of
movement'images. 0ere &ergson is startlingly ahead of his time it is the
universe as cinema in itself, a metacinema. 'his implies a view of the cinema
itself which is totally different from that which &ergson proposed in his explicit
criti1ue. "Ibid., p. =C#
22. Ibid., p. ix
24. ,(bout the camera.. 'his is not a human eye even an improved one. -or,
although the human eye can surmount some of its limitations with the help of
contraptions and instruments, there is one which it cannot surmount, since it is
its own condition of possibility. Its relative immobility as a receptive organ
means that all images vary for a single one, in relation to a privileged image.
8
(nd, if the camera is considered as apparatus for shooting film, it is subject to
the same conditioning limitation. &ut the cinema is not simply the camera it is
montage. (nd if from the point of view of the human eye, montage is
undoubtedly a construction, from the point of view of another eye, it ceases to
be one/ it is the pure vision of a non!human eye, of an eye which would be in
things. "Ibid., p. @2#
0ere, it is also interesting to note how &ergson8s hypothetical concept of $pure
perception% suddenly becomes much more real.
Simulation and Expressivity
2. &enjamin, p. 42>.
4. Ibid., p. 42?.
;. &audrillard, p. >.
<. +olebrook, +laire, (illes &eleu"e, London *outledge, 4EE4, p. C@!CC.
=. :ee for example )anuel 6eLanda8s Intensive $cience and )irtual *hiloso!hy,
London +ontinuum, 4EE4.
>. &enjamin is, however, still positive when it comes to cinema, cinematic time
and its potentialities, as the following passage indicates
&y close!ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar
objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of
the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the
necessities which rule our lives/ on the other hand, it manages to assure us of
an immense and unexpected field of action. Aur taverns and our metropolitan
streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories
appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. 'hen came the film and burst this
prison!world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in
the midst of its far!flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go
travelling. With the close!up, space expands, with slow motion, movement is
extended. 'he enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more
precise what in any case was visible, though unclear it reveals entirely new
structural formations of the subject. ,F. Gvidently a different nature opens
itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye if only because an
9
unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously
explored by man. "&enjamin, p. 44C!4;E#
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