In Deleuze’s Bergsonian conceptual universe the world is constituted by images where “everything reacts on everything else” (Cinema One, p. 61). In this world there is no centre, no particular image that grounds all others. This is a Heraclitean vision of a world defined by the movement of action and reaction, where there are always multiple facets of action and reaction which is the stuff of the world. Consider water on rock. The water as it erodes, the rock as it interrupts, courses the flow of the water. The compounds of the rock and their action and reaction with water, what they then become (the water and the rock), sediment, erosion, pattern, a stone to be skipped by a child over the surface of the river. This is the stuff and nature of the world where actions and reactions happen automatically. The rock doesn’t think its reaction with water. In the language of Cinema One these are ‘determined’ in the sense that they are subject to the laws of nature, the water and rock don’t decide to act in the way they do, they don’t even have the option of ‘acting’ in any intentional sense, as the ways in which these interactions occur are given. 

Within this medley of action and reaction a particular sort of image can arise, one where an interval or gap is introduced between action and reaction, where the relation between certain actions and reactions is no longer automatic or determined. These are what Bergson describes as “living images” (Cinema One, pp. 61-4 passim). Here an orientation towards particular action on the basis of perception is introduced where perception filters and so pays attention to only some things rather than others. Perception then becomes a removal, not an addition, as all the facets of action and reaction happening become framed by the self interest of the perceptual body. For instance, a sunflower ‘notices’ sunlight and bows towards it during the day, I notice the itch on my elbow and scratch it. The sunflower does not notice the wind, and I don’t notice the exchange of gasses in my lungs and my blood stream, let alone those that occur at the cellular level within my muscles and organs. Perception as a ‘taking away’ or a ‘reducing’ of all the actions and reactions that are occurring is then an enframing of the world from the point of view of a living image which becomes a centre that orientates what is noticed and acted upon. This centre is contingent, constituted by the gap between action and reaction, a gap that makes the relation of action to reaction indeterminate, subject to decision, which as Deleuze rather delightfully argues means indecision. Hence, Bergson’s living image becomes a centre of indetermination because the determined relation of action to reaction is now subject to decision, indecision, change, and variability.

When applied to cinema Deleuze arrives at the three large forms of the movement image, which Deleuze labels as the perception image, the action image, and the affect image. In classical cinema this is most simply (and simplistically on my behalf here) realised as the almost canonical sequence of seeing something (a gun), deciding what to do (try to grab it) and seeing the consequences (I failed and it is now pointed at me). Perception, decision, action. More significantly, while all films contain a mix of these three large forms Deleuze argues that one form will dominate in a film where: 

“a film, at least in its most simple characteristics, always has one type of image which is dominant: one can speak of an active, perceptive or affective montage, depending on the predominant type.” (Cinema One, p. 70.)

This provides an impressive heuristic for reconceiving Korsakow films and database cinema as this passage from Bergson’s sensory motor schema into the movement image offers a framework for understanding interactive media that does not reduce the problem to one of narrative, audience or user. Indeed, in this model narrative, where it occurs, arises as a consequence of our relation to the world.