Light Bulb and Time
Director: Priyank Gothwal
Duration: 00:02:00; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 319.024; Saturation: 0.027; Lightness: 0.217; Volume: 0.091; Cuts per Minute: 0.496
Summary: “Every conception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated” - Giorgio Agamben
This is a work in progress. The video only depicts a point of departure. I intend to explore the idea of "universal history" and its relationship to time. By analysing the discourse of time across universal history, from Greek civilisation to the fall of the Berlin Wall via the Western Renaissance, I want to achieve a simple visualisation of time through a light bulb, depicting the aspect of continuity or discontinuity in the order of time.
Following the course of universal history, I will explore how a light bulb can demonstrate Greek idea of instantaneous time, where time is thought through the changing states of things; the stoic idea of "kairos,” which disrupts the chronological order by correlating time with ethical actions; Augustine’s concept of divine time, which perceives time with a subjective viewpoint of the soul and reorganises it as a line by dividing it into the components of the past, present, and future; the monastic order of time, which is seen as discipline in the service of god and divided into canonical hours during the middle ages; the period of “Historia magistra vitae” (history as the guide) during the Renaissance; the time of progression and futurity during the scientific and French revolutions; the time of productivity and time-discipline in the service of surplus during the industrial revolution; the phenomenological and existential time of world wars; and finally, the time of eternal present after the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of history. The aim is to deconstruct the course of universal history and explicate the conceptualisation of time that it inherently embeds and foregrounds as a natural order of the universe.
I believe a light bulb is a medium that can produce a simple and flexible visual depiction of the various concepts and contexts of time. It is a medium that can be stretched and expanded in order to develop content and a controlled capacity to transmit light—an elusive and dispersed substance—that can symbolise the all-encompassing nature of time.
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how do you make one perceive time? i am thinking of tarkovsky films that change the sense of time for you.
I am wondering if the kind of bulb will be something important? The filament in the first filament bulb is made of carbon, and carbon testing is the marker of measure of time, and also has historical readings. It might become a rich speculative ground to then trace back and forth in all directions.
Instead of bulb there possibilty of candle
What do we get if we place the light bulb very low in the sense very near to the floor and try to read the history through different mediums in a standing position? In that way one cannot see the history and the reading of history aspect is not visible.
I am wondering if it can be a mulitplicity of bulbs rather than a mass produced bulb. Since its an industrially produced commodity, it will always have certain contexts assigned to it. Maybe thinking bulbs beyond the object ‘bulb’, let say a 3-d model of a bulb and many other media where one can think of the bulb; might allow for a richer speculative ground to then think of notions of time, that might be different from our corporeal ideas of time. w
meaasuring tme and electricity. Both flows from one point to another point that gives us opportunity to measure it.
To look at bulb as the marker in history that has changed the perception of time. We can now see at night and can commodify on it. To draw this history as well in the work.
And to think of the bulb not just illuminating space, located in space but located in time as well. live.
Universal history vs Global History, Vertical vs horizontal/interconnectivity.
Classical music/temporal.
Ashok - Every body/object has time and it radiates it.
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thinking around the juxtaposition of the bulb with moths and the reader with listeners playing out. The reader throws fluctuating light like the filament of the bulb
Bill Brown: Thing Theory
The multiplicity of the medium (Bulb and more), to sort of
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Is the bulb a witness to the imposition of western universal of time, as a the illuminator of the world, as the driving force to take the world into future, create civilisation, the torch bearer of knowledge, light as information?
Even as a thought experiment, abstracting light from the bulb might help? Sun, fire, oil, electricity, and their inconsistent natures be allowed to enter the experiment to 'illuminate' something. And then information in the creases, in the invisible and hidden spaces, they might tell more about time?
Kurt Hentschlaeger- artist who tried to attain complete darkness (Puneet in fd gathering)
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Electrification of Paris. Check details of the book
Filamentary aspects of time
“Every conception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated” - Giorgio Agamben
I intend to explore the idea of "universal history" and its relationship to time. By analysing the discourse of time across universal history, from Greek civilisation to the fall of the Berlin Wall via the Western Renaissance, I want to achieve a simple visualisation of time through a light bulb, depicting the aspect of continuity or discontinuity in the order of time.
Following the course of universal history, I will explore how a light bulb can demonstrate Greek idea of instantaneous time, where time is thought through the changing states of things; the stoic idea of "kairos,” which disrupts the chronological order by correlating time with ethical actions; Augustine’s concept of divine time, which perceives time with a subjective viewpoint of the soul and reorganises it as a line by dividing it into the components of the past, present, and future; the monastic order of time, which is seen as discipline in the service of god and divided into canonical hours during the middle ages; the period of “Historia magistra vitae” (history as the guide) during the Renaissance; the time of progression and futurity during the scientific and French revolutions; the time of productivity and time-discipline in the service of surplus during the industrial revolution; the phenomenological and existential time of world wars; and finally, the time of eternal present after the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of history. The aim is to deconstruct the course of universal history and explicate the conceptualisation of time that it inherently embeds and foregrounds as a natural order of the universe.
I believe a light bulb is a medium that can produce a simple and flexible visual depiction of the various concepts and contexts of time. It is a medium that can be stretched and expanded in order to develop content and a controlled capacity to transmit light—an elusive and dispersed substance—that can symbolise the all-encompassing nature of time.
What is significance of moths and their attraction to the light bulb in relation time?
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multiplicity of the light objects. Bulb as a knots of subjectivity. Using bulbs as a ground for conversations, dialogues, narrations.
Relation between time and light. The bulb as an interface, which emits light through electricity. The bulb as a narrator about the infrastructural apparatus of electric signals. Signals that carrry information. To imagine thus a narration of time through electric signals that the bulb transmits.
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