opsign

Blend of Greek ὄψις (ópsis) + sign

• IPA^(key): /ˈɒpˌsaɪn/

opsign (plural opsigns)

1. (film theory) Particularly in Gilles Deleuze's cinematic philosophy, a pure optical image that exists independently of any immediate action or narrative progression. Deleuze introduced this concept to describe moments in cinema where the visual element stands alone, detached from the traditional cause-and-effect structure of storytelling.

   Coordinate terms: hyalosign, sonsign, chronosign, lectosign, noosign, tactisign

   • 2009 July, Irini Stamatopoulos, “Time as visualized by the cinematic medium”, in offscreen, volume 13, number 7:

     Opsigns and sonsigns are direct presentation of time.

   • 2015 November 10, Marcello Garibbo, “Deleuze’s Philosophy of Cinema: Reflections on Subjectivity, Images, and Visual Artworks”, in THE DARK PRECURSOR International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research: DARE 2015 / Orpheus Institute / Ghent / Belgium / 9-11 November 2015:

     By presenting purely optical and sound situations in which no action is involved, opsigns and sonsigns place time at the centre of the cinematic image.

   • 2025 February 9, Wikipedia contributors, “Cinema 2: The Time-Image”, in English Wikipedia‎^[1], Wikimedia Foundation:

     Thus, instead of what Deleuze had described as perception-images, affection-images, action-images, and mental images (all types of movement-image), there are now “opsigns” and “sonsigns” which resist movement-image differentiation.