Perception-images are the condition for the cinema of the movement-image and the movement-image cineosis. In other words, the differenciation and specification of the perception-image is that which is necessary for the creation of the domains of affect, action and thought; and for the whole panoply of avatars, images and signs that will devolve from these domains and thus constitute the possible coordinates of a cinema of the sensory-motor system. Cinematic perception thus concerns the fundamental organisation of worlds and bodies: the world is composed of matter from which images coalesce, where centres form, and from which a privileged character emerges. This trajectory describes a process from genesis to composition and gives the perception-image its sign series. The genetic sign is gaseous perception, where all images interact with one another without a centre. The coalescence of gaseous perception produces liquid perception, where centres form as environments and characters which the film passes through and by, ever onwards. Finally, there is full composition, solid perception. This most familiar of perception-images refers to the privileging of a cohesive subject with respect to the film-world: a character who is perceived as the fundamental centre, and with whom the perception of the world aligns. In this way, solid molar perception arises from and descends into objective molecular forces, is composed from and decomposes into genetic gaseous perception by way of transitional liquid formations.

The perception-image, accordingly, is constituted by the sign series: solid perception (first sign of full molar composition) ↔ liquid perception (secondary sign of composition) ↔ gaseous perception (sign of genetic forces).

Solid perception

Solid perception creates a ‘central and privileged image’ at the heart of the film (C1: 76). Such a sign is embodied by the main character, a glorious body extracted from the film-world to traverse the full coordinates of the screen. It is central and privileged in that all other filmic images circulate around this body, and all other images (sets, characters, objects) exist for this character and for this character alone. The privileged centre will be in every shot, centripetal and centrifugal forces operate upon this image from hub to periphery; this is the axis from which all other images spiral, to which all other images incurve. Such a cinematic body is a given, constructed through two reciprocal moments of the camera.