Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and frames
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface: a Deleuzian cineosis
- PART ONE UNFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section I First Introduction – Two Regimes of Images
- Section II Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
- 1 Perception-images
- 2 Affection-images
- 3 Impulse-images (the nascent action-image)
- 4 Action-images (small form, action → situation)
- 5 Action-images (large form, situation → action)
- 6 Attraction-images (first reflection-image; sixth mental-image)
- 7 Inversion-images (second reflection-image; fifth mental-image)
- 8 Discourse-images (third reflection-image; fourth mental-image)
- 9 Dream-images (third mental-image)
- 10 Recollection-images (second mental-image)
- 11 Relation-images (first mental-image)
- 12 Opsigns and sonsigns
- 13 Hyalosigns
- 14 Chronosigns
- 15 Noosigns
- 16 Lectosigns
- Afterword to Part One: the unfolded cineosis
- PART TWO ENFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section III Third Introduction – Cinematographics (1995–2015)
- Select Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
13 - Hyalosigns
from Section II - Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and frames
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface: a Deleuzian cineosis
- PART ONE UNFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section I First Introduction – Two Regimes of Images
- Section II Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
- 1 Perception-images
- 2 Affection-images
- 3 Impulse-images (the nascent action-image)
- 4 Action-images (small form, action → situation)
- 5 Action-images (large form, situation → action)
- 6 Attraction-images (first reflection-image; sixth mental-image)
- 7 Inversion-images (second reflection-image; fifth mental-image)
- 8 Discourse-images (third reflection-image; fourth mental-image)
- 9 Dream-images (third mental-image)
- 10 Recollection-images (second mental-image)
- 11 Relation-images (first mental-image)
- 12 Opsigns and sonsigns
- 13 Hyalosigns
- 14 Chronosigns
- 15 Noosigns
- 16 Lectosigns
- Afterword to Part One: the unfolded cineosis
- PART TWO ENFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section III Third Introduction – Cinematographics (1995–2015)
- Select Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
The hyalosign – ‘[t]he crystal-image, or crystalline description’ – is the first of the time-images (C2: 69). Opsigns and sonsigns are pure actual optical and sound situations, the de-differentiated image on-screen, visual and sonic fragments in a state of zeroness. This is to say, opsigns and sonsigns are immediately hyalosigns. For if ‘the actual [image] is cut off from its motor linkages’, there is – for Deleuze – a simultaneous relinkage; this relinkage is the ‘coalescence of an actual image and its virtual image’ (C2: 127). In other words, opsigns and sonsigns stymie the seamless flow of actual image to actual image; while the hyalosign links the actual image to a virtual correlate. In this way, opsigns and sonsigns ‘are nothing other than slivers of crystal-images’ (C2: 69). Opsigns and sonsigns – through their very constitution – must become hyalosigns; an actual must relink to the virtual if delinked from other actuals. Accordingly, the hyalosign is the ‘description’ of an image on-screen – a fragment, now – the ‘most restricted circuit of the actual image and its virtual’ (C1: 69). This actual and virtual of the hyalosign has three aspects: a description of the immediate image, a description of an image that is passing into the past, and a description of an image coming from the future. Each of these descriptions – the in itself, the passing and the becoming – concerns the temporal dimensions of an actual with its virtual: an exchange of actual and virtual, the virtual sustaining the disconnection between actuals. Deleuze writes: ‘there is no virtual which does not become actual in relation to an actual, the latter becoming virtual through the same relation’ (C2: 69). The in itself, the passing and the becoming of description are the three exchanges of the hyalosign: ‘making presents pass, replacing one by the next while going towards the future, but also preserving all the past, dropping it into an obscure depth’ (C2: 87). Describing the hyalosign through such temporal coordinates allows Deleuze to designate the structure and genesis of signs of the image: both their general condition (which will in turn inspire the coordinates of chronosigns and noosigns) and their specific attributes (as crystal-images).
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- Information
- Deleuze's Cinema BooksThree Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images, pp. 145 - 150Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016