This study investigates the characteristics of time-lapse video through the author's time-lapse works and examines the meaning of time-lapse video technique as an artistic medium. It establishes the methodology and theoretical background to express an...
This study investigates the characteristics of time-lapse video through the author's time-lapse works and examines the meaning of time-lapse video technique as an artistic medium. It establishes the methodology and theoretical background to express and develop the nature of temporality that is expressed through the time-lapse technique, as well as the media characteristics derived from it. This study also aims to explore the characteristics and advantages of time-lapse video media, find room for development of the author's work, and establish a direction.
This research begins with the definition of temporality that has been discussed in philosophy and art and defines the concepts of objective temporality, which never changes, and subjective temporality, which changes relatively. In addition, it looks into how the concept of temporality in art has changed from the emergence of early paintings that captured static time to modern art, analyzes and compares the aspects of temporality that appear in various works derived from that process.
In addition, analysis of various examples of works using time-lapse video techniques allows to divide time-lapse videos largely into three types: acquisition of temporality through compression of non-linear narration, acquisition of formativeness through compression of physical time, and reconstruction of time through compression and editing of frames.
The author’s work “Beholder” symbolizes surveillance cameras and outputs 25 time-lapse video sources simultaneously on a large video output device, achieving simultaneity that was not witnessed in existing time-lapse videos. And this work used a method of randomly outputting video sources on a 5x5 grid through a node-based program called Touch Designer. By doing so, video sources are randomly displayed, so it can always be new from the conceptual perspective.
There are three advantages of the time-lapse video technique that are identified through this work. The first is that the time-lapse technique itself is specialized for temporality. The technique basically creates a video by compressing and editing frames, which makes it differentiated from other media in expressing temporality. Second, it is technology-friendly and digital-friendly. In the author's work, Touch Designer was used to express the randomness of the video sources, and in conjunction with the basic temporality of time-lapse video, formativeness and simultaneity were satisfied. Last but not least, physical temporality can be easily transferred into philosophical temporality. Since time-lapse is basically structured as a collection of photo frames, which are tools for capturing still moments and acquiring physical temporality, using the technique makes it easy to navigate between physical temporality and philosophical temporality. Considering that most art media are limited to either one of them, it’s safe to assume that time-lapse has great potential.
Through this study, the author sets the direction of the work to strengthen the concept of temporality using time-lapse video. It’s expected that this research on the concept of time according to the development of the media and its artistic expression will make it easier to interpret the works of artists who utilize a new type of media. The hope is that this study will help artists and media artists utilize temporality and other characteristics of time-lapse and further develop artistic expression.