Meaning of hyalosign | Babel Free

Definitions

In the context of Gilles Deleuze's film philosophy, particularly in his work Cinema 2: The Time-Image, a specific type of cinematic image that embodies a fusion of the actual and the virtual, often illustrated through motifs like mirrors or crystals. These images disrupt linear temporality, creating a direct presentation of time in film.

Examples

“This is a progress in relation to the opsign : we saw how the crystal (the hyalosign) ensures the correlate of the opsign and the sonsign.”

“According to Deleuze, any shard of a crystal is a hyalo-sign (literally, a 'glass-sign'), which can either go opaque or clear, that is, it can act as transparent glass or as a mirror.”

“In other words, opsigns and sonsigns stymie the seamless flow of actual image to actual image; while the hyalosign links the actual image to a virtual correlate.”

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