Enaction

CFP: (Re-)mediating the Unconscious

9 Oct , 2023 Call for papers,Enaction,Virtual Reality

Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism
CFP: Volume 30 (2023)

Edited by Maria Poulaki (Aristotle University) & Adriano D’Aloia (University of Bergamo)

Deadline for abstract proposals: November 15, 2023

Screen media and notably cinema have been linked, in theory as well as in the cultural imagination, with non-conscious and preconscious states, as well as with shifts in consciousness. From the early association of cinema with hypnosis, to the 1950s debate over “subliminal messages” contained in advertising, film and other media, the way media can attune to what rests beneath the level of conscious awareness remains an area of intense popular as well as theoretical fascination. The scholarly study of cinema has addressed and cultivated the relation between the medium and the unconscious – from Benjamin’s association of film with the “optical unconscious” in the 1930s, to the sweeping influence of psychoanalysis on film theory in the 1970s, connecting cinema with …

Narrative Architectures: Bodies, Spaces, Technologies in Contemporary Media Experience

19 Dec , 2021 Enaction,Journal Issues

Imago. Studi di cinema e media No. 22/2020
edited by Enrico Carocci and Adriano D’Aloia

In which aspects and to what extent can one regard as “narrative” the spatial experience provided by a museum route, a urban building, a multimedia interactive environment, or an immersive videogame? Under which conditions may spatiality be constitutive of a narratively organized interactive experience? What are the relationships between a represented pictorial space and a designed material space, when their narrative roles are taken into account? And what are the socio-cultural or political implications of the mediated interactions between individuals and environments?

Taken together, the possible answers to such questions allow us to grasp some specific features of contemporary media experience, which is broadly characterized by a special emphasis on the articulations between bodily interactions, spatial constructs, and technological innervations. At the same time, the distinctive features of contemporary media experience – irrespective of whether …

Enactive Media @NECS2021

8 Jun , 2021 Conferences,Enaction

The NECS 2021 Conference
Transitions: Moving Images and Bodies
Università degli Studi di Palermo
10 June 2021

Pre-constituted panels proposal “ENACTIVE MEDIA”

Proponents: Enrico Carocci, Adriano D’Aloia and Francesco Parisi

The double pre-constituted panel aims to apply the emerging neo-cognitive approach of Enactivism to the field of media studies in order to explore the epistemological transition from a disembodied to an organism-environment imbricated and technologically-extended media experience.

Enactivism is a theoretical paradigm grounded on a phenomenological, pragmatist, and ecological approach to cognition and experience. It is based on the fundamental ideas that cognition emerges from the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment (systematicity) and that perception is a kind of activity (performativity). Accordingly, Enactivism comprises a constellation of concepts that can be applied to and renew the study of the media experience and the mediatization of life as one of the main challenging …

Enactive Screens. The Moving-Body and the Moving-Image

15 Oct , 2020 Conferences,Enaction

On October 21, 2020 I will deliver a talk at the Cinema & Media Studies (online) Colloquium of the University of Philadelphia. In the talk “Enactive Screens. The Moving-Body and the Moving-Image” I will critically discuss the relevance of an enactive approach to human cognition for film and media studies. Rooted in J.J. Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception and in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, enactivism is an emerging perspective in cognitive science that promotes the idea that perception and action are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition and that the latter emerges from the coupling of an organism with its environment. According to enactivists, “cognition depends on an experience that derives from having a body, with its various sensory-motor capacities [that] are themselves part of a wider biological, psychological, and cultural context” (Varela, Thompson, Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 1991). Since the interaction between an organism and its environment through the …

Viralità mediale. Immaginario e realtà al tempo del virus

6 Apr , 2020 Conferences,Enaction

Un virus letale si diffonde su scala globale costringendo i governi ad adottare drastiche misure di contenimento del contagio. Le scuole, le fabbriche, i musei vengono chiusi, banditi gli incontri tra le persone, limitata la libertà di circolazione. Le città si trasformano in deserti urbani, mentre gli ospedali sono al collasso. Gli abitanti del pianeta si rintanano nelle proprie case, in attesa di un vaccino che salvi l’umanità… Non è un nuovo episodio della serie tv Black Mirror, specchio distopico di un futuro lacerato dal dominio delle tecnologie sull’umano. È la realtà, è il presente. La finzione letteraria, cinematografia e televisiva ha sempre immaginato scenari apocalittici – anche per esorcizzarne preventivamente il dramma – ma il Coronavirus ha spinto la realtà ben al di là della sua prefigurazione. Ai tempi della viralità della Rete, la pandemia è anche infodemia, la verità è fake, il contagio è algoritmo, la realazione …

Il fotospazio

29 Oct , 2019 Enaction,Photography

The photospace is a physical and social territory generated by the behaviour of passersby that come across a photographic act in public urban spaces. Adopting an enactive approach to the media experience, the article analyses the results of a field research focused on the practice of everyday photography with digital devices in the city of Milan. As the outcome of an interaction between the body and the environment through the mediation of technology, the photospace challenges both classic proxemics and dramaturgy.

Leggi l’articolo in open access su RSF – Rivista di Studi di Fotografia n. 9/2019 »

…

Mediating Material Engagement

1 Oct , 2019 Conferences,Enaction

The best conference ever (on Mediating Material Engagement. Technology, Narrativity, Performance) has just ended in Messina after three days of intense debate on trasformations of media landscape and our plastic relationship with technologies in the light of Material Engagement Theory with Lambros Malafouris, Mauro Carbone, Michele Cometa and many other distinguished scholars in cognitive science, philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics, semiotics, performance and media studies embracing Enaction.

Even the students strike on global climate crisis we have bumped into this morning seemed integral part of the conference and of a broader rethinking of the interaction between our body and the environment (which is the heart of enaction).

And eventually I crossed the Strait of Messina by ferry and visually and bodily understood that it is not at a separation between strips of land, but a natural and spiritual link (that cannot be replaced by a physical bridge in any way).

Many thanks …

Lecturing in Groningen

26 Sep , 2019 Enaction,Immersion,Neurofilmology,Teaching

Leaving a vibrant Groningen after three intense and exciting days teaching a new theory of film and media experience and sharing ideas with the brilliant and demanding students of the international film studies program at Rijksuniversiteit. Many thanks to the Film and Media Studies research group (including Annie van den Oever, Annelies van Noortwijk, Julian Hanich and Miklos Kiss) for hosting my lecture in the Art, Medium and Moving Images Colloquim. I am especially grateful to Julian Hanich for the invitation, organization, insightful feedbacks, and friendship. #enactivemedia #neurofilmology

…

Un approccio enattivo all’esperienza mediale

6 Jun , 2019 Enaction,Film theories,Neurofilmology,Teaching

Mercoledì 5 giugno 2019 nell’ambito dei seminari del dottorato di ricerca in Architettura, Disegno industriale e Beni culturali dell’Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” terrò una lezione sul tema Corpo, tecnologia, spazio. Un approccio inattivo all’esperienza mediale.

…