gies, for new algorithms and ideas. For the film director David Fincher, it was
“the most terrific sandbox, where I could try anything.”Special effects compa-
nies are aware of this perception and have offered some of their new toys for
music video directors to try out, as was the case when Gondry made the video
forLike a Rolling Stone.Although the attraction of new technologies, ef-
fects and algorithms will stay with us, there are also reasons to expect that the
technologies supporting mutable temporalities may become less foregrounded
as they increasingly become standard equipment in editing suits. With these
medial resources firmly embedded in the algorithms of applicable software, as
well as in visions about what the medium is capable of and what visual lan-
guages can convey, we can expect new works in this field to become less tech-
nologically driven and more free to explore artistic visions without becoming a
vehicle of display for the new technological device. Thus, the artistic vision may
stand out stronger, and not risk being reduced to a mere consequence of a new
special effects tool. This means that the urgent charge of exploring new algo-
rithms and technological solutions, offering works that carry their technological
fingerprints–likeStreet Spirit, Like a Rolling StoneandThe Rise and Fall
- may give way to works that take the human predicament of subjective tempo-
ral experience even more seriously, as a field that warrants interrogation.
With contemporary life being increasingly networked and mediated, where
we can conduct exchanges across various time zones with several friends simul-
taneously–one caught in a hurried morning, another enjoying the relaxation of
a night approaching bed-time, where virtual and real presence increasingly
comes to feel really real no matter whether we can physically touch each other
or not–there are contemporary temporal and existential experiences to be inter-
rogated and articulated. The prevalent practice of walking about with our own
soundscapes in our headsets, cut off from the sounds of our immediate sur-
roundings, can also bring alternate temporalities into our lives, and disconnect
us from the temporalities of the world physically surrounding us.
Music videos have been important as sites for interrogating hybrid temporal
experiences and forms of mutable temporalities–supported by the music itself
as a temporal art. But may such issues also become increasingly interrogated in
other formats and genre? Could we not expect various forms of mutable tempo-
rality to make a greater impact in cinema too? The realism of storytelling, as
well as the pervasiveness of dialogue between characters we see speaking, can
be counted among the factors holding back such a development. However, in-
terestingly, a film like Christopher Nolan’sInception() has a plot that
lends itself to the relativization of time, and may be considered a major effort,
afterThe Matrix, to warp time and to articulate not only aspatially impossible
image, but also atemporally impossible image, where hybrid temporalities seem to
inhabit the same space. The modernism of Alain Resnais certainly provided
180 Arild Fetveit