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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Call for Papers - The Five Senses of Cinema
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2003-10-01
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2003-10-01
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Cinéma & Cie
XI Udine International Film Studies Conference Udine
2003/10/01
Udine International Film Studies Conference
2036-461X
3
en
Call for Papers - The Five Senses of Cinema
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19242/17084
3
THE FIVE SENSES OF CINEMA
XI International Film Studies Conference
Udine/Gorizia, March 17-20, 2004




  One of the most evident effects of increasing activation of the senses in cinematic rep-
resentation is a more solid and efficient realism of the portrayed world.
  Today we can go back to Bazin and his thoughts on total cinema, while aiming in an
entirely different direction. We can for instance, consider not only the realistic effects
(or hyperreal effects) that multisensory stimulation has on representation, but also the
realistic effects (or hyperreal effects) that this kind of stimulation induces in the spec-
tator experience. What happens when the five senses of cinema are activated?
  Examination of the audio-visual dimension can thus start from this framework. As
such, sound comes under a different light in respect to the traditional focus on increas-
ing realism in cinematic representation. The search for visual effects to complete the
representation (3-D, Cinemascope, etc.) could in turn be subjected to a similar shift. In
line with this perspective, the Conference will reserve space for a “closed” number of
papers on the audio-visual dimension, in an attempt to broaden investigation to other
levels of perception.

  History of cinema has witnessed constant attempts to force screen boundaries, in
order to transform its flat, bounded surface into a tangible, perceivable, practical, and
potentially unbounded space. The belief that film alone is unable to render the speci-
ficity of early film screenings – which were built around the simultaneous presence of
multiple arts and media and on multisensory stimulation of spectators – has by now
been clearly established. Equally well-established are studies investigating the path-
ways and development of the original ideas of multimedia and multisensoriality. These
ideas represented a strategic and recurring field of research for the avant-garde as well
as for other movements that, through the years, have continually reopened the dis-
course and progressed in their intentions.

  A central component in this field of studies and experimentation clearly consists in
technology. Every step of the technological evolution has apparently been challenged
by a sort of immanent idea of cinema, of synaesthetic and multisensory cinema, that
has asserted itself in the imaginary when it was unable to do so in the industrial and
technological sphere. Moreover, this idea has successfully challenged the assimilation
time of the cultural community, often anticipating or accelerating it. Furthermore, the
technological challenge has often represented a necessity, as seen in the attempts to
hold back the diffusion of television through the attraction of well known systems,
such as Cinerama, Cinemascope, and 3-D, as well as lesser known ones such as
AromoRama and Smell-O-Vision.

CINEMA & Cie, no. 3, Fall 2003                                                         ­129
XI INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDIES CONFERENCE

  Today, a crucial challenge lies in informatics; a sort of new electronic vanguard tests
out (on grounds often common to video-art) sophisticated ways of involving and stim-
ulating the spectator’s senses.
  Today, technology seems to create – with entirely new effectiveness – the conditions
for interactive fruition (through a multisensory interface or physical environment),
resulting in critical and active re-thinking and re-positioning of the agent-spectator. In
addition to these new possibilities for a vocation that has belonged to many vanguard
movements, the employment of technologies aims towards an immersion that is both
ecstatic and static.
  Bewilderment and critical stimulation of spectators coexist in the sphere of contem-
porary technology, but imply very different levels of involvement/distancing. And if
the sensory involvement/distancing linked to sight and sound is a crucial matter – com-
plicated but already widely discussed – the involvement of non-audiovisual senses in
the experience of cinema fruition has yet to be questioned. The XI International Film
Studies Conference is dedicated to the study of forms and technologies that activate the
“other” senses of cinema – touch, taste, and smell.
  Among the “other” senses of cinema, taste obviously represents a borderline case, a
sort of uncharted frontier rather than a concretely conceived of or practiced possibility;
nonetheless, we would like to consider it in order to achieve a full mapping of the issues
that relate to involvement of spectator senses in the cinema.
  Here are some possible topics:

  - As is traditional for the Conference, special focus is placed on early cinema. Is it pos-
sible to record experiments, projects, and discourses around the idea of a cinema of
touch, smell, and taste?
  - A privileged field of research is that of utopia and dead ends. Is it possible to reflect
on the history and course of a multisensory and synaesthetic cinema that has been left
at the imaginary planning level, without ever becoming actual?
  - Another field is the institutional and industrial sphere. Within this framework,
what are the hypotheses and what the actualisations? What relationship is held with
the utopian sphere? In vanguard and industrial experimentation, spectator positioning
plays a strategic role. We can imagine that involvement of the spectator’s “other” sens-
es lies along a line that ranges from maximum interactivity and criticism to maximum
absorption and annulment of critical distance. What other hypotheses of spectator
positioning exist?
  - The cinema’s push to seek out a “surplus” realism in the spectator experience cannot
neglect the role played by technological equipment. Starting with the use of technolo-
gies designed specially for movie theatres, and through the use of artificial perception
organs, thanks to technologies capable of simulating the sensations directed towards
consumers’ sensory apparatus – the cinema has built synaesthetic relations of both a
single media and a multimedia nature. How does the essence of the cinematographic
work change in respect to this intent?
  - Starting from pursuit of a hyperreal dimension in the cinematic experience, “other”
fruition styles exist that have led the cinema to a system based on
entertainment/amusement complexes, somehow recovering the original presence of
the cinema within places devoted to attractions. Involvement of the “other” senses
seems to constitute a tool through which the cinema is regaining possession of its high-

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                                                                  THE FIVE SENSES OF CINEMA

ly spectacular origins: from Odorama to the “dynamic cinema” experiences, spectators
get involved with all their senses. Such forms of involvement seem to pave the way for
a fruition of cinema bearing the characteristics of diversification that translate the
shopping-centre model into the cultural field, stimulating integration of the film event
with the consumption and merchandising of commodities. As a result, particular atten-
tion must be paid to the investigation of consumer rituals, with specific reference to the
details of the environment, which constitutes a complex background that makes the
choice, usage, and sharing of a product significant to the subject.
  - In the theoretical field, we can suppose that activation of the “other” senses in the
sensory apparatus has played an important role in the elaboration of “sensorial” defini-
tions of the cinema and its spectator, indicating either touch, smell, or taste as specific
and characteristic components of cinematic fruition. What possible definitions can be
proposed in this sense?

  Two sessions of the Conference have been set aside for reports on the achievements of
the research projects conducted by the operative units in the Italian Universities Project
on Technologies of Italian cinema.

  International Film Studies Conference
  Dipartimento di Storia e Tutela dei Beni Culturali
  Palazzo Antonini
  Via T. Petracco, 8
  I-33100 Udine (Italy)
  fax: ++39/0432/556644 – ++39/0432/556789
  e-mail: udineconference@libero.it
  website: www.uniud.it/udineconference/




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