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Reconsidering the substance of digital video from a Sadrian perspective

Emadi, A. (2020) Reconsidering the substance of digital video from a Sadrian perspective. Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, 53(1), pp. 75-80. (doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_01602)

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Abstract

The digitisation process is debated as video’s deficiency, where pixels are conceived as isolated fragments without an existential link to the source image. This article explores the ontology of digital-video through Mulla Sadrā’s (1571–1641) theory of Substantial Motion. Sadrā, a Persian-Islamic existentialist, proposed that substance (material/visible and immaterial/invisible) undergoes an internal change. Through imperceptible internal change, intimate connections exist between the smallest parts and the One, visible and invisible. We can think of these dynamic connections in terms of pixels and frames. From the view of Sadrā’s substance, pixels are explored as open to change. The apparent weaknesses of digital materiality become potentials towards understanding its existence in time.

Item Type:	Articles (Editorial)
Additional Information:	The article reflects its base in artistic practices, media theory and philosophical inquiry while it intersects a wide range of related fields from film studies to new media, French Philosophy, and Islamic Philosophy with an interdisciplinary approach. It connects Persian philosophies of, such as materiality and immateriality, to the digital moving image. It adds to the existing knowledge concerned with how we differentiate between the analogue and the digital, beyond technological grounds.
Keywords:	Mulla Sadra, Gille Deleuze, Process philosophy, Pixel, Film materiality, Digital video, Perception, Real, indexicality.
Status:	Published
Refereed:	Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:	Emadi, Dr Azadeh
Authors:	Emadi, A.
College/School:	College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
Journal Name:	Leonardo: Art Science and Technology
Publisher:	MIT Press
ISSN:	0024-094X
ISSN (Online):	1530-9282
Published Online:	24 January 2018
Copyright Holders:	Copyright © 2017 The MIT Press
First Published:	First published in Leonardo: Art Science and Technology 53(1): 75-80
Publisher Policy:	Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy
Related URLs:	Publisher

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References

1. Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition (Amesterdam, Netherland: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. p. 110). 2. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). 3. John Belton, ‘If Film Is Dead, What Is Cinema?’, Screen Vol 55, No4. (Oxford University Press, 2014). See Supplementary Material-Appendix for theorists’ examples. 4. Christian Jambet, The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mulla Sadrā, Fort, trans. (Brooklyn, New York: Zone Books, 2006, p.353); Mulla Sadrā Shirazi, On the Hermeneutics of the Light-Verse of the QurÅn (Tafsir- Al- Nur), Peervani Trans (London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (ICAS), 2004, p.130). 5. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Tomlinson and Habberjaw Trans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, pp. 1-7). Also see Laura U. Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). 6. Deleuze [5] p. 7. 7. Deleuze [5] p.12. 8. Deleuze [5] p.16. 9. Albeit indirectly, see Deleuze [5] p.16 10. Deleuze [5] p.9. 11. Jambet [4] p. 306. 12. Sajad Rizvi, Mulla Sadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (London: Routledge, 2009, p. 28). 13. Jambet [4] p. 97 and Sadrā [4]. 14. Ibrahim Kalin, ‘Between Physics and Metaphysics: Mulla Sadrā on Nature and Motion’, Islam &Science Vol 1, (Center for Islam & Science, 2003); Rizvi [12]. 15. Laura U. Marks, Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 16. Mary Ann Doane, (2007). ‘The indexical and the concept of medium specificity’. differences, Vol 18(1): 128 -152, (Durham, Duke University Press, 2007, p. 130). 17. D. N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 119). 18. Doane [16] p. 131. 19. Sean Cubitt, The Cinema Effect (London: MIT Press, 2004, p. 33). 20. Cubitt [19] pp. 32-33. 21. Deleuze [2] p. 79. 22. Deleuze [2] pp. 81-82. 23. Cubitt [19] p. 33. 24. Alexander R. Galloway, ‘PIXEL’. In The object reader, Candlin and Guins Eds, pp. 499-502, (London: Routledge, 2009, p. 499). 25. Dictionary, O. E, Oxford English Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 26. Cubitt [19] p. 33. 27. Jambet [4] p. 193. 28. Ibid 29. Azadeh Emadi, ‘Pixelated view: investigating the pixel in light of Substantial Motion’. In Cleland, K., Fisher, L. & Harley, R. (Eds.) (Sydney: Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art, ISEA2013, 2013). 30. Deleuze [2] p. 79. 31. Deleuze [2] pp. 35-36. 32. Jambet [4] p. 217. 33. Ibid. 34. Jambet [4] p. 200. 35. Jambet [4] p. 119. 36. This attribution disregards the underlying process of formation and reformation, in which motion gives form and un-forms both the whole and its parts. Yet the mind assigns actual and stable forms to the whole. Rizvi [12] p. 128. 37. Jambet [4] p. 198.

Deposit and Record Details

ID Code:	152153
Depositing User:	Dr Azadeh Emadi
Datestamp:	23 Nov 2017 09:09
Last Modified:	25 May 2022 10:55
Date of acceptance:	16 September 2017
Date of first online publication:	24 January 2018
Date Deposited:	22 November 2017
Data Availability Statement:	No