Introduction
This chapter introduces the historical importance of the image, provides a methodological framework for studying moving images, lays out the two major problems the book aims to overcome, describes the limitations of the book, and offers its plan of organization. As such, it redefines the image as fundamentally mobile and thus proposes to investigate all images as mobile images. It argues for a new materialist aesthetics distinct from representational and constructivist theories. That is, the image is not a copy nor a movement relative to an object or subject; it is not even a copy of a copy without an original. All these structures have to be accounted for, starting from the historical mobility of the image, and not from any metaphysical or ontological position. Therefore, the book is an attempt to develop a theory and a history of the logic and structure of the moving image.