Grasping

La vertigine e il volo. L’esperienza filmica fra estetica e neuroscienze cognitive

7 Jan , 2014 Books,Empathy,Falling,Grasping,Gravity,Neurofilmology

Dalla camminata in precario equilibrio di un funambolo alla passeggiata spaziale di un astronauta sospeso nello spazio siderale, questo libro offre un vertiginoso percorso nelle forme con cui il cinema contemporaneo continua a coinvolgere lo spettatore intensificando le sue percezioni e le sue emozioni. Per la prima volta nell’ambito degli studi sull’esperienza filmica, il paradigma della cognizione incorporata e il concetto di simulazione incarnata vengono adottati per descrivere la relazione dello spettatore con i personaggi e con i mondi della finzione cinematografica, in un serrato dialogo fra teorie del cinema, estetica e neuroscienze cognitive. Acrobazia, caduta, impatto, capovolgimento, deriva sono le cinque tappe di questa esplorazione, quasi un unico movimento che si origina nella capacità del film di stimolare la corporeità dello spettatore e precipita verso il senso più profondo e umano dell’atto di partecipare empaticamente alle vicende del personaggio.

La vertigine e il volo. L’esperienza …

Grasping the grasp

13 Jul , 2013 Grasping

I am attending the Film-Philosophy Conference 2013: Beyond Film, hosted by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (Universiteit van Amsterdam) and the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. My paper Canonical cinema. Affordance and Embodied Simulation in the Film Experience aims to evaluate the relevance of the notion of affordance in the neurophenomenological approach to the film experience, with a particular focus on the role of so-called visuomotor neurons. In what sense the film spectator grasps the filmic objects by experiencing the characters’ physical and psychic activity? As grasping the filmic objects, I mean both – literally – the spectator’s simulation of the character’s physical action executed in order to grasp an object in the fictional environment and – figuratively – the spectator’s immediate, prereflexive, empathetic understanding of the meaning of the film characters’ actions, intentions and emotions via a kind of simulation rooted in the body. My idea is …

The intangible ground

23 Nov , 2012 Grasping,Gravity

Tangibility is a key factor in our contemporary relationship with media – it is also the thematic focus of a special section in issue #2 of NECSUS – European Journal of Media Studies. In my essay The intangible ground: A neurophenomenology of the film experience I argue that the activity of ‘visuomotor neurons’ can be thought of as the very core process of film ‘viewing’ as an experience of tangibility. By tangibility, I mean the spectator’s opportunity to touch and grasp the objects that are touched and grasped by the character; and, in a more general sense, her/his impression of being grounded on a supporting surface, as the characters are. In order to explore such grasping and grounding, I propose a counterintuitive approach – i.e., to analyse what happens when tactile sensoriality is not fully applicable and gravity is not valid in the fictional environment, such as …