P4 Time-Image Research ProjectP4 THEATER · DELEUZE
Actual, virtual & crystal

Actual / virtual

actuel / virtuelactual / virtual

01

Concept definition

The actual is a formed and locatable state. The virtual consists of fully determined and fully real differential relations, singularities, memories, and tendencies. It is not a possible future or a blurred copy of the actual. The virtual is actualized through differenciation: actualization creates a solution rather than making a pre-existing model resemble reality, and the formed actual continues to carry the virtual problem to which it responds.

02

What the concept explains

Actual and virtual are two states of the real rather than a real-fictional opposition. Analysis identifies which memory, difference, or tendency is operative without being actualized, and how an actualization selects from those virtual relations to produce a determinate consequence.

The Crystal-Image: How Actual and Virtual Exchange

Diagrams and film passages

Actual and virtual: how do two modes of the real connect?

Actual and virtual: how do two modes of the real connect?

Atlas conceptual diagram: the virtual is not an unrealized possible world, and a reciprocal relation does not automatically have a crystalline structure.

Open full-size diagram

  1. Actual: the image taking determinate form

    Begin with a body, sound, posture, or event that can be located in the current image. Actual names a determinate state, not a supposedly more trustworthy version of a story.

  2. Virtual: differentiated relations that have effects

    The virtual has real differences and relations without being actualized in the present manner. In a discussion of memory, ask how a preserved past is invoked, searched, and enters the present, rather than only whether an earlier event appears onscreen.

  3. Examine what happens between the two

    The actualization of recollection, the mutual shaping of role and performance, and exchange with a mirror image require distinct explanations. Actual/virtual is the broader pair; the crystal requires the more specific structure of a smallest circuit.

Diagram references

Vertigo

Vertigo (1958)

Candidate reading

The return in green light: how desire manufactures its object

Judy, in a grey suit with blonde hair pinned up, stands frontally in the hotel room against green-lit curtains and wall.

The spectator knows she is Judy while watching Scottie greet her as Madeleine returned; the overlap is first a relation of desire, knowledge, and control.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
01:55:20
Discussion passage
approx. 01:53:45—01:56:50 (01:55:20 still shows Judy after the hair-and-suit makeover against green-lit curtains and wall)

Reviewed passage by passage on the 02:07:27 single-part Bilibili repost with hard Chinese and English subtitles. 01:55:20 is the still anchor and 01:53:45—01:56:50 is the atlas's working boundary. Bilibili's official feature page ep291561 runs 02:07:49, and the repost may trim opening or closing material, so their timelines are not interchangeable.

Watch the still's moment

Watch 01:53:45–01:56:50 and record costume, hair colour, hairstyle, green light, Scottie's reaction, embrace, circular camera movement, and stable overlap separately before judging which term actually changes the relation. The timecode applies only to the 02:07:27 repost BV1ECSHYoEwW; this carrier may trim opening or closing material, so the official feature page, Blu-ray, and other restorations require fresh location.

Still checked: 2026-09-01 · Carrier access checked: 2026-09-01

Image

Judy enters from the direction of the bathroom in a grey suit with her blonde hair pinned up; the curtains and wall are lit green.

Scottie approaches and embraces her as the camera circles the couple. The hotel room briefly overlaps with the earlier stable space before returning to the green room.

Sound

Dialogue recedes; the score expands as Judy appears, Scottie approaches, and the couple embrace.

Relation to the concept

The remembered Madeleine concretely governs Judy's clothing, hairstyle, and posture; this proposes an actual–virtual candidate but does not yet establish a crystal.

Sources and further reading

The Lady from Shanghai

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Atlas discussion reading

One speaker becomes body, reflection, and watched double at the same time.

Bannister's body is repeated as three profiles between vertical mirror seams, with a pair of enlarged eyes layered behind him

One speaker becomes body, reflection, and watched double at the same time.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
01:23:40
Discussion passage
01:23:20–01:24:40

The mirror-hall passage was frame-checked; the anchor precedes the gunfire that terminates the proliferating reflections.

Watch the still's moment

Complete Bilibili carrier; the shot at 单片 01:23:40 was checked frame by frame, and the still and timestamp come from the same public upload.

Still checked: 2026-08-14

Image

Three profiles of Bannister stand side by side while mirror seams split them apart.

Enlarged eyes in the background share a plane with the foreground reflections, removing any stable position of vision.

Sound

Bannister continues shifting blame toward O'Hara; one voice corresponds to several visible bodies.

Relation to the concept

Actual body and virtual reflections remain distinguishable while continually exchanging within the hall; the later shattering is not decoration but the termination of this crystal circuit.

Sources and further reading

Lola Montès

Lola Montès (1955)

Atlas discussion reading

Her life is enclosed in the circus present as a repeatable, chargeable public exhibit.

Lola sits alone at the centre of a dark display platform in crown and jewels while the subtitle states that each question costs twenty-five cents

Her life is enclosed in the circus present as a repeatable, chargeable public exhibit.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
00:07:00
Discussion passage
00:06:40–00:07:20

Frame-checked within the paid-question passage of the circus opening.

Watch the still's moment

Complete Bilibili carrier; the shot at 单片 00:07:00 was checked frame by frame, and the still and timestamp come from the same public upload.

Still checked: 2026-08-14

Image

Lola remains frontally still in an isolated pool of light while the surrounding stage falls into darkness.

Crown, jewels, and centred framing turn the person into an exhibited image.

Sound

The ringmaster directly solicits audience questions and announces a charge of twenty-five cents for each one.

Relation to the concept

The circus present repeatedly recalls and prices Lola's past, making actual performance and virtual life feed one another in a closed circuit.

Sources and further reading

Mirror

Зеркало (1974)

Atlas discussion reading

The boy outside the mirror and the reflected figures share one composition without reducing to one viewing position.

A boy lowers his head before a timber wall while an oval mirror above him contains another group of figures lit within the room

The boy outside the mirror and the reflected figures share one composition without reducing to one viewing position.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
01:25:00
Discussion passage
01:24:40–01:25:20

Frame-checked within the interior mirror passage.

Watch the still's moment

Complete Bilibili carrier; the shot at 单片 01:25:00 was checked frame by frame, and the still and timestamp come from the same public upload.

Still checked: 2026-08-14

Image

The boy's head remains below and outside the mirror; the oval glass inserts another group into the same timber-wall composition.

The bright mirror interior and darker exterior remain visible together without a cut to a separate memory shot.

Sound

Inside and outside the mirror share one continuous interior sound field; the reflected image receives no separate source of sound.

Relation to the concept

This mirror shot establishes only two visible zones within one composition; it does not by itself prove actual–virtual exchange. A crystalline reading still requires the returns of mother/wife, shifts between childhood and adulthood, and the archival passages.

Sources and further reading

Black Swan

Black Swan (2010)

Atlas shot reading

The role arrives before the waking body

Ensemble rehearsal shot from Searchlight's official Black Swan trailer

The opening dream-dance places Nina within the relations of White Swan, dark figure, and metamorphosis before waking inspection and mirror rehearsal appear.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
常见 108 分钟版约 00:00:45—00:03:55
Feature time
常见 108 分钟版约 00:00:45—00:03:55

The three images come from Searchlight's official trailer. Feature locators follow the common 108-minute edition; trailer stills are not presented as frames from the same feature seconds.

Open Searchlight's official trailer

Open the named edition and locate the moment using the still and timecode.

Image

The opening dream-dance places Nina within the relations of White Swan, dark figure, and metamorphosis before waking inspection and mirror rehearsal appear.

Relation to the concept

The dream is not a fictional detour opposed to reality. It acts as a virtual role-script that organizes what the actual body must perform.

Sources and further reading

In the Mood for Love

花樣年華 (2000)

Atlas shot reading

A repeated route accumulates an unspoken relation

Checked night noodle-run frame from In the Mood for Love

An oval window, narrow stairs, crowded tables, and the same music repeatedly organize passing encounters. The route stays the same while pauses and attention between bodies change each time.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
03:14:44
Feature time
00:14:39

The feature occupies 03:00:05–04:38:40 of the Bilibili page. Cards show both feature time after subtracting the three-hour lead-in and carrier-page time.

Open the night noodle-run passage

The still and link retain the film guide's recorded shot locator.

Image

An oval window, narrow stairs, crowded tables, and the same music repeatedly organize passing encounters. The route stays the same while pauses and attention between bodies change each time.

Relation to the concept

Repetition is not merely an editing shortcut that compresses time. It accumulates, inside actual routine, an unrealized relation already exerting pressure.

Sources and further reading

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Atlas shot reading

The double claims to know the original better

Checked Sammy audition frame from part 8 of Synecdoche, New York

Sammy says he has followed Caden for twenty years and knows his unspoken conduct. ‘Hire me and you will see the real you’ turns observation itself into a qualification for the role.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
00:02:00
Feature time
00:02:00
Carrier part
8

The user-supplied Bilibili page divides the feature across fourteen parts and appends Tom and Jerry padding to each. The atlas captures only checked feature windows and always records both part number and within-part time.

Open Sammy's audition in part 8

The still and link retain the film guide's recorded shot locator.

Image

Sammy says he has followed Caden for twenty years and knows his unspoken conduct. ‘Hire me and you will see the real you’ turns observation itself into a qualification for the role.

Relation to the concept

Once the virtual ‘other Caden’ is actualized by an actor, he does not merely copy the original but acts, desires, and dies in his place. The direction of causality between actual and virtual reverses.

Sources and further reading

Long Day’s Journey into Night

地球最后的夜晚 (2018)

Atlas shot reading

She enters the image first as a voice

Checked opening frame of defocused lights and recollective voice in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Before bodies are clearly assigned, defocused coloured lights, a dark room, and the statement ‘I dreamed of her again’ place an absent person inside the current image.

Open full-size still
Displayed still
00:30:20
Feature time
00:00:12

The user-supplied carrier runs 02:46:55. Unrelated nature/travel padding occupies its first 00:30:08; the target feature is approximately 00:30:08–02:46:55 on the carrier. Carrier time equals feature time plus 00:30:08, and all three jumps are checked on the carrier axis.

Open the feature at its recollective opening

The still and link retain the film guide's recorded shot locator.

Image

Before bodies are clearly assigned, defocused coloured lights, a dark room, and the statement ‘I dreamed of her again’ place an absent person inside the current image.

Sound

The male voice-over takes position before a visible body. Rather than explaining background, it lets the past occupy the soundtrack in a sonic present tense.

Relation to the concept

The virtual is not a fictional other world but a real relation not yet actualized as a present object and already redirecting perception. The search is organized by this absence from its first minute.

Sources and further reading

03

Films and scenes

A worker bends over two adjacent pale plaster bodies, one figure's legs raised and bent upward
01:15:10 · Related, not equivalentPlaster returns an instant of death to the present

Record separately the present revelation of the casts and the instant of death they recall, then test whether that past acts back upon Katherine's present.

Identification poster for Mirror
Candidate reading · 1974Mirror

Memory is not an illustration of absent content but a virtual past that keeps changing the visibility of the present family, voices, and spaces.

IMDb identification poster ↗

Related film readings · 24 films

The Lady from Shanghai · 1947 — In the hall of mirrors, bodies, doubles, deception, and destruction reflect one another, dissolving stable ontological priority and forming a crystal.

Last Year at Marienbad · 1961 — Bifocal structure: Robbe-Grillet organizes incompatible peaks of the present, while Resnais places characters in coexisting sheets of the past.

Je t’aime, je t’aime · 1968 — The time machine throws the protagonist among repeatedly contracting sheets of the past; the former present remains irretrievable.

8½ · 1963 — Reality, memory, fantasy, rehearsal, and the film project crystallize together; the unfinished work is both seed and environment absorbing life.

Lola Montès · 1955 — The circus present rolls a series of virtual pasts inside itself. Flashback becomes a route through the crystal; actual/virtual exchange is the criterion.

The Rules of the Game · 1939 — Theatre and life, masters and servants, roles and reality nest within one another while retaining a fissure through which escape remains possible: the cracked crystal.

Mirror · 1974 · Candidate reading — Memory is not an illustration of absent content but a virtual past that keeps changing the visibility of the present family, voices, and spaces.

Moi, un noir · 1958 — Borrowed names, post-recorded voices, and lived experience rewrite one another. Fiction opens minor speech and collective enunciation.

Black Swan · 2010 — The rehearsal mirror first corrects Nina's body, then reflections hesitate, slip out of phase, and even move before she does. The mirror no longer confirms a whole self; it compresses Nina and Lily, White Swan and Black Swan, into one body. Scratches, feathers, toes, and stage transformation are therefore more than illustrations of subjective hallucination: actual and reflected bodies rewrite one another, filming 'becoming the role' as a circuit that produces the performer in return.

Synecdoche, New York · 2008 — Caden copies New York inside a warehouse and assigns actors to copy friends, strangers, and himself. Each double demands more rooms, rehearsals, and doubles of doubles. The stage no longer abbreviates life; it expands like a crystalline seed into an environment that reabsorbs marriage, ageing, and death. Sammy first makes a profession of watching Caden and later assumes his role, showing that a copy is not a static image: it changes how the original can next live until neither person nor set retains an outside to which it can return.

In the Mood for Love · 2000 — Su goes for noodles and Chow waits on stairs and corridors; the same music returns similar routes while distance, glance, and hesitation quietly change. When they act out how their spouses began the affair or how a confrontation might unfold, a scene often reveals only midway that it is rehearsal. The unactualized conversation thus determines what they can still say in actual life. The cavity at Angkor Wat preserves not a completed romance but a relation already becoming memory as it occurs and still continuing to act.

Mulholland Drive · 2001 — Identity, performance, and memory rewrite one another. Criterion: an actual/virtual circuit.

Tropical Malady · 2004 — The film’s rupture produces a new perceptual regime among love, legend, human-animal becoming, and forest, testing the postwar European model in return.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn · 2003 — Theatre space, spectral spectators, waiting, and cinematic memory deprive action of its object; this relation provides the time-image criterion.

Long Day’s Journey into Night · 2018 — Criterion: whether dream repairs action or opens an indiscernible actual/virtual circuit.

Vertigo · 1958 — Cinema 1, pp. 204–205 both supplies a general criterion for Hitchcock's inclusion of spectator response within a director–film–spectator relation and directly explains Vertigo through variations in the Same's relations to the dead woman, husband, and detective; it does not analyze the atlas's three chosen passages shot by shot. Rushton, pp. 53–57, gives a more specific chain: Elster's commission scripts Scottie's viewing through the absent Carlotta; Judy's unsent letter confirms the deception for the spectator before Scottie; the remaking of Judy then unfolds inside that knowledge gap. Three atlas scene records bind commission, confession, and green-lit remaking to the 02:07:27 repost timeline. A boundary is equally important: Rushton p. 124 explicitly classifies the dolly zoom as the affection-image par excellence, so it cannot serve by itself as positive relation-image evidence. The green light's actual–virtual reading likewise remains a candidate pending evidence of a reciprocal circuit.

Persona · 1966 — The close-up progressively withdraws the face’s functions of individuation, social role, and communication. Composite half-faces, the twice-told story of motherhood, and burning film detach affect from private psychology and expose the face’s terror before emptiness.

Nostalghia · 1983 — Misty Italy, a waterlogged house, and a Russian home embedded in ruins let exile’s past enter the present. Andrei crosses the empty pool three times with a candle; each bodily failure increases the shot’s temporal pressure, turning belief into persistence without guarantee.

Céline and Julie Go Boating · 1974 — A Paris chase loosens ordinary action; sweets then send the women into a repeatedly staged house story. They move from spectators and doubles to participants who rewrite the plot and rescue the child; bodies, play, and repetition fabricate another route through reality.

Ugetsu · 1953 — Misty lake, back rooms, fields, and garden extend space through adjacent fragments rather than a total viewpoint. Overflow from the bath leads to fields and then to a meal months later. One line of the universe passes through the seductive ghost and returns to the dead wife's presence, joining living, dead, and social oppression.

Readings in the same thematic group

Late Spring · 1949 — The vase still life intervenes between the daughter’s smile and tears, placing change within time’s unchanging form.

Solaris · 1972 — Memory acquires an actual body on Solaris, forming a circuit with the virtual past. Evidence: a brief adjacent example in Cinema 2.

Enter the Void · 2009 — City, memory, body, and possible futures interweave; viewing proceeds by reading relations among image strata.

Journey to Italy · 1954 — Katherine is struck by unfolding landscapes and visual clichés, discovering something beyond what she can personally bear. She no longer resolves what she sees through action but becomes a seer.

04

Criteria

Identify the unactualized yet already operative relations, memories, or tendencies that constrain the shot, then show how they differentiate into this actual composition, performance, sound, or narrative form. Merely imagining a possible future does not pass the test.

05

Distinctions and counterexamples

A digital image, fantasy, dream, reflection, or informative flashback does not automatically demonstrate the virtual. Nor must every actual-virtual relation already satisfy the crystal's reciprocal exchange and indiscernibility.

Common confusion: Virtual/actual is not a distinction between false and true or between possibility and realization, and not every memory, reflection, or imagined role is already a crystal. A crystal additionally requires the actual and virtual to form a smallest reciprocal circuit and attain objective indiscernibility.

06

Texts and sources

Cinema 2, ch. 4, pp. 68–97 (Minnesota 1989); Matter and Memory, chs. 2–3; Bergsonism, ch. 3 and ch. 5; Difference and Repetition, ch. 4, pp. 168–221

  1. 01
    Matter and Memory

    Foundational for the universe of images, perception, bodily interval, pure past, memory cone, and actual/virtual relations.

    View source and edition →
  2. 02
    Bergsonism

    Shows how Deleuze selectively reconstructs duration, memory, multiplicity, and virtuality.

    View source and edition →
  3. 03
    Difference and Repetition

    Key bridge for the syntheses of time, actual/virtual, repetition, and image of thought; the nine-cell mapping is a later interpretation.

    View source and edition →
  4. 04
    Cinema 2: The Time-Image

    Authoritative source for the standard translation, translators, ISBN, and publication date.

    View source and edition →
07

Research disagreements

D2

Replacement or coexistence?

The time-image reverses the subordination of time to movement; both regimes persist and can shift locally within one film.

D4

Taxonomy or generator?

Fixed labels invite mere example-hunting; an open taxonomy requires new concepts to transform existing relations and explain across cases.

D7

How do we use Deleuze precisely?

Test four layers: sensory-motor relation, actual/virtual circuit, audio-visual connection, and regime of truth.

See all debates
08

Where contemporary images push this concept

Public identification image for The Beast: branch or replayed risk?

Counterexample against conceptual overreachCandidate reading · versioned passage review pending

The Beast: branch or replayed risk?

Affective purification turns memory and fear into calculable risk and therefore supplies a counterexample. Futures listed by a probabilistic model belong to the possible-real relation, not the virtual-actual; verification should ask whether one past is actualised differently across eras rather than count branches.

Scope and limits If the supposed branching is only thematic correspondence among three eras and does not show a virtual problematic field being differentially actualised in each period, it should be described as parallel narration or risk simulation rather than actual–virtual differentiation.

  • BFI: The Beast reviewScholarly/institutional review · film facts and countertestA review is secondary interpretation; it does not replace shots or a director interview.
  • Pisters: The Neuro-Image guide and author pageScholarly monograph · author page and local PDFAuthor description and book synopsis are not independent film facts; concept pages must be checked against the published edition.
Public identification image for UKI: how does a game engine enter bodily control and electronic waste?

Counterexample against conceptual overreachCandidate reading · specific installation or screening edition pending

UKI: how does a game engine enter bodily control and electronic waste?

Game-engine images, live bodies, biomaterial, and electronic waste are all actualised media materials; their coexistence does not establish the virtual. The countertest requires naming a relation that remains unactualised yet effective and showing how a specific edition brings it into the present image.

Scope and limits If the 2019 project, film edition, and installation merely share a premise without generative exchange among image layers, they must remain distinct work facts; the rhetoric of infection must not conceal edition differences.

  • UKI: Shu Lea Cheang press kitArtist/project press kit · edition materialProject material is author/production self-description; edition, exhibition, and operability must be logged separately.
  • ICA: UKI film edition pageInstitutional film page · 2023 film editionThe project has continued since 2019; do not merge its project, film, and installation editions.
  • Matthew Fuller: Third Nature on UKIPeer-reviewed article · techno-ecology and viral assemblageFuller’s Third Nature is his concept, not a Deleuze term; UKI project and film editions must be separated.
Public identification image for After Yang: memory is not one life-line

Testing the concept against a new mechanismCandidate reading · versioned passage review pending

After Yang: memory is not one life-line

The repair interface juxtaposes a failed body with memory fragments that still act, forcing actual–virtual analysis to confront ownership. The real efficacy of a virtual past is not equivalent to data access, and the person able to read it does not thereby own that life.

Scope and limits If analysis calls stored data the virtual while ignoring compression, selection, permission, and absence, it reduces a philosophical distinction to file state; the case should then be discussed as a machine archive, not as the virtual.

09

Concepts to distinguish

Compare them