School of Media Culture and Creative Arts

Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of the affect of an artistic experience defines what art does, rather than what it is. The paper negotiates the ways in which Deleuze’s approach to affect may be used as a productive framework for understanding the affect of movement in lumia kinetic sculptures. The specific dilemma here is Deleuze’s exploration of the productive function of art diverges from deconstructive analyses of figuration, while sculptures such as László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator is largely a formalist study of movement.

Deleuze’s examination of Henri Bergson’s critique of modernist productions of movement identify three dominant understandings of movement in Western culture. These three theses of movement provides an opening for negotiating the affect of kinetic sculptures and the movement that they perform. It is through this framework that Moholy-Nagy proposes a fourth movement, that is of modulated movement. Here, unlike figural works, the sculpture does not point towards a potential world, but alludes to the virtual through its actual movements. A multiplicity of movement is thereby produced. These modulated images, according to Moholy-Nagy refer to the virtual form and space occupied by the moving object. Together, past, present and virtual events are folded into the one experience, and what Deleuze might also determine as, a crystalline image.

This paper focuses on Henri Bergson’s approach to Western modes of representing movement in relation to his concept of duration (la dueé). Bergson argued that mechanised representations of movement distort and simplify the integrity of how subjective time is experienced as a continuous duration. By contrast, film photography and painting predominantly isolate instances of time, provide a snapshot of movement and create discontinuous representations of an inherently continuous process. Through Bergson’s perspective of duration, my paper draws from László Moholy-Nagy’s kinetic artwork, the “Light Space Modulator” (1922–1930) to demonstrate that mechanical presentation and representation of movement complicates Bergson’s three theses of movement. I argue that Moholy-Nagy explores mediated motion to create new rhythms of duration and perceptions of the relationship between time and space.

Abstract: This paper addresses auto-destructive artworks by Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York (1960) and Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), to explore a changing consciousness of time in a period of technological transition from modern industrial machines towards the domestication of televisual devices. One effect of these is works is a contribution to a turbulent consciousness of time by orchestrating new perceptions of temporality with mechanical and tele-communicational media. Tinguely’s kineticism is useful for articulating how different technologies can be used to rationalize time in different ways and highlight an incompatibility between the expression of time as an unfolding duration with mechanical media, and the temporal demands of televisual broadcast media.

This study aims at developing an interactive virtual model of the lost architectural heritage of the 8th century Buddhist Monastery of Sompur Mahaviahara in Bengal. This monument at Paharpur drew the attention of the architectural historians of the South Asia from the very discovery of the ruins of the structure at the beginning of the twentieth century because of its unique architectural features and strategic spatio-temporal location. Several attempts have been made so far to recover the memories of this medieval Buddhist Monastery after the amnesia of a millennium. However, the limited amount of archaeological resource, literary evidences and epigraphic records at the disposal of the architectural historians appears as the main thicket. This study is an attempt to generate a an
interactive virtual model of the monument that would accommodate different contesting narratives regarding its architecture. It looks into the history in a more dynamic way and uses virtual reconstruction as flexible tool to reconstruct the lost form of the building. The main idea is to develop a method conserving, retrieving and commemorating the both tangible and intangible aspects of the heritage through the participation of the general public. This model will be used as a virtual museum for continuous and feedback and verification from scholars and aspiring general public and eventually refine the model based on these feedback. This participatory approach of reconstructing will minimize the distance between the people and object of heritage as well as engender a
new way of experiencing, evaluating and appreciating heritage buildings.

The 8th century Buddhist Monastery of Sompur Mahaviahara at Paharpur drew deep attention by the architectural historians of the South Asia from the very discovery of the ruins for its unique architectural features and strategic spatio-temporal location. During the first phase of study, we have developed a preliminary reconstructed 3D model of Sompur Mahaviahara - as `professional interpretation'. But this attempt was hindered due to non-availability of substantial resources. At the same time we have found it almost impossible to depend solely on materials that are available at first hand to demonstrate a continuous narrative of this monument. This leads us to a second phase of study which attempts to collect and investigate `public interpretation' of the same monument. We propose a novel approach of heritage interpretation for general people, opposing the traditional interpretation method. We have developed an interactive web-portal, where active online participants can collaborate and collectively generate a knowledge base of cultural memories. We hope through this participatory approach of reconstruction/interpretation will provide an understanding of public view about this monument and at the same time will generate a popular database which can later support our previous study to get a clearer picture of the past glory of Sompur Mahavihara. As a methodology `heritage interpretation' is first conceptualized; followed by elaboration of professional interpretation. Similar cases have been studied and some new strategies have been picked to develop an online portal.