Three visual concepts of time

Abstract

This talk proposes three visual concepts through which time becomes legible in images and visual systems: lapsus, evolution, and perspective. Lapsus names time as threshold: in the “black box” of underground travel, continuity is experienced as punctuated intervals, and duration becomes countable as stops, delays, and decisions—logics encoded in schematic transit maps and diagrams. Evolution reframes progress against calendar-driven “style-time,” showing how a stable form-class can endure while absorbing incremental change; Volkswagen’s Beetle campaign makes this temporality persuasive through restraint, serial consistency, and visual demonstrations of compatibility across years. Perspective treats viewpoint as a temporal stance: from the frozen “now” of the Renaissance ideal city to the elastic, scanning-driven perception in Kim Jung Gi’s dynamic sketching, perspective links the time of making, the time of training, and the time of beholding. Across these cases, the lecture argues that images do not merely represent time; they organize it—by shaping how we move, anticipate, compare, and inhabit visual worlds.