The Material Qualities of the Moving Image and the Painterly Gesture

Abstract

This thesis examines how qualities of process errors in the moving image might be adapted and applied aesthetically in ways analogous to painterly gesture. In recent history, materialist film-makers, signal process artists and glitch artists have foregrounded these artefacts of process as a means to promote anti-illusionism in art. To achieve this, residual artefacts of faulty equipment became the work of art, independent of the original image, and without consideration for how such process artefacts might interact with the original content of the moving image. This thesis and the accompanying body of work argues that the material immediacy of the artefact can be retained whilst simultaneously complementing an original subject. In doing so, the work is a collaboration between artist and process resulting in the transformation of the artefact into a seemingly material gesture. Working in this mode opens up a space to properly explore the aesthetic potential of decay in the moving image.