Time, Touch, and Tactile Resistance: Film in the Age of Digital and AI Image Generation

Abstract

This essay explores whether photochemical film is truly making a comeback in an era dominated by digital workflows and rapidly advancing AI image generation. Instead of solely focusing on market share, the essay compares film, digital, and AI across three key dimensions: their treatment of time, their connection to the body, and their modes of control. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's distinction between the movement-image and the time-image, the essay argues that film's grain, scratches, and mechanical imperfections disrupt smooth sensory-motor flow, creating spaces where time becomes directly perceivable. Jennifer Barker's concept of the "tactile eye" and Shane Denson's theory of discorrelated images further illustrate how photochemical images engage viewers on multiple levels, including the skin, muscles, and viscera. In contrast, digital optimization and AI prediction increasingly bypass embodied perception in favor of computational abstraction. A comparative analysis of three Manhattan skyline images—a Kodak Gold 200 negative, an iPhone RAW file, and a DALL•E-generated skyline—highlights these differences in terms of texture, depth, and the uncanny cleanliness of AI's prediction-image. While film may not regain its industrial dominance, it is emerging as a privileged medium of tactile resistance. It offers a space where time leaves its mark, where images remain partially uncontrollable, and where viewers can still sense their own existence transcending the realm of data within a feedback loop.