Spatial montage: mediating non-linear experience of time

This PhD by practice presents a theoretical and methodological exploration of what Lev Manovich has termed spatial montage. In essence spatial montage may be understood in opposition to traditional, temporal montage (the ‘film cut’ of narrative cinema) as a durational work involving “a number of images, potentially of different sizes and proportions, appearing on the screen at the same time” (Manovich 2001, p.322). Spatial montage is defined as a hypermediated representational strategy, in which multiple images (both still and moving) are placed in adjacency and/or overlapping within a post-perspectival frame. This thesis defines a conceptual background to the accompanying artefacts, providing a theoretical framework (for the operations of spatial montage and its constituent parts – the photographic and filmic image) through which the temporal identities of digital spatial montage are determined. It is argued that spatial montage does not only produce representations of time but rather constitutes a subjective, non-linear experience of time, in which time’s multiple planes, perspectives and positions are perceived simultaneously rather than in sequentiality.