Motion Within Motion: Investigating Digital Video in Light of Substantial Motion

This thesis investigates the surface of digital images to stimulate different ways of seeing and knowing. In tandem with philosophical inquiries, it considers creative approaches to moving image in relation to the world outside the frame. Inspired by the movement between figurative/representative and nonfigurative/nonrepresentative elements in traditional Persian-Islamic arts and philosophy, the thesis responds to a renewed interest in Islamic and Persian philosophy. Amid recent research on intercultural video, materiality of digital media, Western process philosophies and connections between Islamic and new media art, this is the first study of the materiality of digital video at the level of pixels and engages pixels from videos filmed in Iran.

In the context of video and moving image art, it is also the first study of Persian philosopher Mulla Sadrā Shirazi (1571–1641), whose philosophy is brought together with Western process philosophies and the work of film theorists like Gilles Deleuze. Sadrā’s theory of “reality” opens up questions and discussions about technological characteristics of digital video and its representational and figurative qualities, suggesting methods for moving beyond the surface of the image toward new creative potential in relation to the outside world. Sadrā’s concepts of time, motion and reality concerning the becoming of an entity enable a reading of digital video that connects the becoming of minimal parts—pixels—to the outside of the frame. From this perspective, the thesis expands on existing scholarship on moving image and tests the creative potentials beyond figurative/representational aspects deriving from human-centric points of view.

Azadeh Emadi, still image from Motion within Motion, two-channel video installation, 2014.

©(© Azadeh Emadi)