What is Time-Form

This is a guide for working with a visual art form using a digital time-based medium. This chapter will provide an overview of the necessary theories; processes, concepts and most important the “elements,” needed to create expressive visual artworks through the technologies associated with this visual art form. It will examine in some detail how people can effectively visually communicate and express our artistic ideas and intentions through a digitally time-based medium. We have reached a point in time-based visual art where the tools and technology have matured enough to allow us to focus our attention more on process and concept rather than specific hardware or software tools. Please understand that more than a theorist, the author is a practitioner of the art form that he will discuss in the following pages. As such, at times, the author will be using his own empirical experience to support arguments in combination with or in place of the opinions of others. The ideas this chapter would like to address are rather complex and there is not enough space in a single chapter to put them forth in their entirety. Therefore, by necessity the atuhor will have to be brief, somewhat simplified, and a bit reductive. Nonetheless, he hopes it provides a basic understanding of the concepts and principles for creating visual art with a digital time-based medium.