The automaton in all of us: GIFs, cinemagraphs and the films of Martin Arnold

The work of the experimental film-maker, Martin Arnold, has been described as part structural film, part rap, and part seizure or stutter. Using an optical printer to manipulate 16mm films, Arnold plays with the movement and timing of a film to create an effect like that of a DJ scratching a record: the motion of the film seems to seize, to convulse in repetitive patterns of time. This article focuses on the first and last of a trio of Arnold’s experimental films that include Pièce Toucheé (1989), Passage à l’acte (1993), and Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998). The perverse motions studies that Arnold creates are generated through footage taken from Hollywood and detourned to reveal another set of meanings that appear beneath the surface of the original narrative. Arnold’s films belong both to experimental film and to new media and they reveal something about a distinctive pattern of time: a tightening temporal loop that is characteristic of both new media and global capitalism, both of which exhibit a temporality that serves to manage the status quo and to deny real change. This article will trace out the connections between Arnold’s films and certain digital moving images, such as the gif and cinemagraph, in order to better understand the small temporal loop, which expresses something important and unique about the temporality of our time.