Cinema as Touch
Reading: "Cinema as Skin and Touch"Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener.
Lately, I've been giving a lot of thought to the relation between our bodies and contemporary reading practices. I'm referring to both how our physical bodies are conditioned by digital reading platforms and how our haptic sense and inform/contribute to the reading process. In Film Theory, Elsaesser and Hagener's chapter in "Cinema as Skin and Touch" was relevant to both the general questions above and the specific mechanics of my current project: Penumbra. Particularly relevant to hybrid, touch-screen cinema is Elsaesser and Hagener's positioning of skin as a prominent (and increasing) method of reading cinema. Skin is an apparatus that "understands cinema also as a haptic experience." The argument she outlines has interesting implications. Though, I would argue that skin's property of "continuous perception" isn't necessarily activated at all moments of engaging with cinema. I would be curious to see further evidence in support of this point. Although, it seemed like a poetic throw-away, I feel like it is key to maintaining the power of her argument. Further, it seems to activate at specific triggers. Instead, specific triggers for activating one's haptic awareness seems more in-line with the examples she gives. I recognize that her argument is constructing a shift from the primacy of ocullarcentrism to a mode that re-enables the body in the viewing process; however, she doesn't acknowledge that the body is often triggered by visual response. In other words, viewing is often the gateway to our embodied reactions to cinema. It is needed for skin to activate. Vision and embodiment work in concert for a total experience of cinema. On pgs.118-119 I'm interested in Sobchack's notion of "a position of sympathy vis-a-vis the other". This is particularly relevant to me as an artist. In Penumbra, we are hoping that readers will resonate with the protagonist through a type of sympathetic reading of the external and internal world of the character. The reader is situated in the protagonist's mind, reading the world through them by employing haptic touch-screen gestures. Ideally, knowledge of one's embodiment would function as a condition of empathy with the Other.
Lately, I've been giving a lot of thought to the relation between our bodies and contemporary reading practices. I'm referring to both how our physical bodies are conditioned by digital reading platforms and how our haptic sense and inform/contribute to the reading process. In Film Theory, Elsaesser and Hagener's chapter in "Cinema as Skin and Touch" was relevant to both the general questions above and the specific mechanics of my current project: Penumbra. Particularly relevant to hybrid, touch-screen cinema is Elsaesser and Hagener's positioning of skin as a prominent (and increasing) method of reading cinema. Skin is an apparatus that "understands cinema also as a haptic experience." The argument she outlines has interesting implications. Though, I would argue that skin's property of "continuous perception" isn't necessarily activated at all moments of engaging with cinema. I would be curious to see further evidence in support of this point. Although, it seemed like a poetic throw-away, I feel like it is key to maintaining the power of her argument. Further, it seems to activate at specific triggers. Instead, specific triggers for activating one's haptic awareness seems more in-line with the examples she gives. I recognize that her argument is constructing a shift from the primacy of ocullarcentrism to a mode that re-enables the body in the viewing process; however, she doesn't acknowledge that the body is often triggered by visual response. In other words, viewing is often the gateway to our embodied reactions to cinema. It is needed for skin to activate. Vision and embodiment work in concert for a total experience of cinema. On pgs.118-119 I'm interested in Sobchack's notion of "a position of sympathy vis-a-vis the other". This is particularly relevant to me as an artist. In Penumbra, we are hoping that readers will resonate with the protagonist through a type of sympathetic reading of the external and internal world of the character. The reader is situated in the protagonist's mind, reading the world through them by employing haptic touch-screen gestures. Ideally, knowledge of one's embodiment would function as a condition of empathy with the Other.
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