Studies in Visual Arts and Communication: an international journal Vol 5, No 2 (2018) on-line ISSN 2393 - 1221 * Leeds School of Architecture [on research leave] 1 From Perception to Recollection: a spatio-temporal mediated interaction George Themistokleous* Abstract This paper will consider how a media installation called the diplorasis, aims at rethinking understandings of the body in space and time. Through the diplorasis there is an attempt to reconsider the scientific view on the human eyes in relation to art historical accounts of the representational image and to revise these from the perspective of philosophical texts on the image and its relation to an embodied and a disembodied perception (Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty). Through this mediated visuality, the prosthetic body becomes re-articulated via a re-framing of the relations between perception and recollection. Keywords: visual media, body and space-time, digital stereoscope, media installation, time-image Introduction This article begins by re-considering linear perspectival representation and the divide this assumes between body and space, in comparison to alternative modes such as stereoscopic representation, where this distinction is absent. In Hubert Damisch’s A Theory of /Cloud/ (2002), the cloud, due to its very nature of being a ‘body without a surface’ (2002: 127), provides a useful prompt to re-think another element that poses a problem to the perspectival model, the human body. We need to posit here that the human body is a ‘body without a surface’, and as Deleuze and Guattari have suggested, a ‘body without organs’ 1 (this will be explained later). The boundary between body and space can be re-thought by questioning the solidity of the body itself, as it changes in its increasing interaction with a technological ‘prosthetic’ interface. The prosthetic re-defines not only the limit and the singularity of the body, but also its duration. The diplorasis 2 , my own media installation, explores 1 See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, ‘6. November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?’ in Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Continuum, 2004 [1980]), 149-166. 2 The diplorasis has been published in various platforms and presented in exhibitions. For visual material on the diplorasis visit http://www.para-sight.org/installations-devices/4589953031. The list of publications on the diplorasis includes: Themistokleous, George. 2019. ‘Digitally Stitching Stereoscopic Vision.’ In: Ewing, S. and Troiani, I., eds. Visual Methodologies in Architectural Research. Bristol: Intellect (forthcoming); Themistokleous, George. 2019. ‘Embodiment, Utopia and the Digitized Image.’ The Site Magazine vol. 39 (forthcoming); an-other understanding of the body, the prosthetic body as we interpret it today. Diplorasis derives from the Greek diplo and orasi, and is translated as doubled sight. The understanding of the cognitive functioning of this “other” body begins by re- considering the notion of duration through the diplorasis and in relation to the understanding of duration by Henri Bergson in Matter and Memory (first published in 1896) and by Gilles Deleuze in Bergsonism (first published in 1968). The diplorasis attempts to re-think how a stereoscopic vision and a cinematic vision might be re-configured and synthesized via digital technologies. The stereoscopic images projected in the diplorasis depict the observer’s own body digitally stitched and looped backwards. In other words, the participant perceives oneself in three-dimensions and walking backwards. As the projected body stills revolve, they become digitally misaligned and manipulated. As a Themistokleous, George. 2018. E-topia: Utopia after the Mediated Body. Open Library of Humanities, 4(2), pp. 1-27; Themistokleous, George. 2017. ‘Autoscopic Space.’ IDEA JOURNAL, November, 76-87; Themistokleous, George. 2017. ‘Mediating the Interval.’ Image Temporality: The Relation of Time, Space and Reception of Visual Media, Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS). Edited by Lars C. Grabbe, Patrick Rupert-Kruse and Norbert M. Schmitz. Darmstadt: Büchner- Verlag. 156-179.; Themistokleous, George. 2016. ‘Image as Virtual Construction.’ Inter- fotografía y arquitectura / inter- photography and architecture. Edited by Rubén A. Alcolea and Jorge Tárrago Mingo. Pamblona: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Navarra. 190-99; Themistokleous, George. 2016. ‘Diplorasis: The Other Side of Vision.’ Acadia 2016 Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines: Projects Catalog of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture. Edited by Kathy Velikov, Sandra Manninger and Matias Del Campo. Acadia Publishing Company. 146 – 151.