Neurofilmology

Cinema, evoluzione, neuroscienze. Un’estetica naturalizzata del film

27 Nov , 2022 Books,Empathy,Neurofilmology

In che modo la scienza può contribuire ad arricchire l’analisi dell’esperienza della visione di un film? Fino a che punto è possibile spingersi nella cooperazione tra le discipline umanistiche e le scienze naturali e sociali? Quali sono i vantaggi e i rischi di tale interazione? Come reagire e rispondere allo scetticismo che aleggia attorno a questa proposta? Fra ardite manovre teoriche e approfondite analisi di film classici e contemporanei, Cinema, evoluzione, neuroscienze cerca coraggiosamente di rispondere a queste domande e delinea un nuovo modo di concepire il coinvolgimento dello spettatore cinematografico. Se vedere un film è sperimentare la vita in una forma più intensa, questo libro dimostra come un’estetica naturalizzata del cinema possa aiutarci a comprendere il desiderio di abitare i mondi della finzione e della narrazione audiovisiva a partire dallo studio della nostra natura umana.

Murray Smith, Cinema, evoluzione, neuroscienze. Un’estetica naturalizzata del film
Prefazione e cura di Adriano D’Aloia
Dino …

Neurofilmology of the Moving Image. Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema

19 Dec , 2021 Books,Neurofilmology

A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void… Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator’s sense of equilibrium. The ‘tensive motifs’ of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drif treflect our fears and dreams and offer embodiedforms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of ‘Neurofilmology’—an interdisciplinary method that puts Filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.

Neurofilmology of the Moving Image. Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema
Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam …

Embodied time at the movies

2 Oct , 2019 Neurofilmology,Temporality

As we exit a movie theatre after watching a film, we frequently have the impression that time flew or dragged by, or even that a single scene seemed to pass slower or faster than it actually did. Time perception at the cinema depends on a complex combination of several factors, both objective and subjective… But despite the complexity and apparent impenetrability of the matter, a research team of filmogists and psychologists led by Ruggero Eugeni (and of which I am part together with Stefania Balzarotti and Federica Cavaletti) conducted an empirical study on how film editing and type of the character’s actions affect the spectators’ time perception.

We called it #SEEM_IT “Subjective Experience and Estimation of Moving-Image Time” and a chapter included in a visionary book on The Extended Theory of Cognitive Creativity edited by Antonino Pennisi and Alessandra Falzone now presents and discusses the findings within the theoretical framework …

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

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Art, Medium and Moving Images Colloquium @ Groningen

17 Sep , 2019 Conferences,Dancing,Neurofilmology

On 19 September at Marie Lokezaal (Harmonie building), University of Groningen, as part of the Colloquium of the theme group ‘Art, Medium and Moving Images’, Dr Ariano D’Aloia of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” will give a guest lecture titled “En… action! A neurofilmological analysis of Spike Jonze’s short films”.

In this lecture he adopts an enactive approach to the human experience in order to discuss the interaction between body and space through the mediation of technology and how this interaction is central in the analysis and interpretation of the contemporary film and audiovisual media experience.

Enactivism is an emerging perspective in cognitive science that promotes the idea that perception and action are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition. 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 …

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.

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Embodied (and nice) Time at NECS2018

28 Jun , 2018 Neurofilmology,Temporality

Professor Ed Tan is one of the leading scholar in the psychology of the film experience (his works on emotions and movies are milestones of the cognitive approach in film studies). Today at the NECS2018 conference in Amsterdam he generously served as a respondent to our panel on the Subjective Experience and Estimation of Moving Image Time (SEEM_IT), delivered with Ruggero Eugeni and Federica Cavaletti. Our research will benefit from his insightful comments and generous suggestions!…

Occhi, cuore, stomaco, cervello

12 Mar , 2018 Film theories,Neurofilmology

In una magica e insolita sera d’inverno siciliano, gli studiosi e gli studenti che hanno preso parte al convegno “La cultura visuale nel XXI secolo” ottimamente organizzato da Andrea Rabbito all’Università degli Studi di Enna, hanno assistito a un reading tratto dal volume Teorie del cinema. Il dibattito contemporaneo, martedì 27 febbraio al caffè letterario Al Kenisa di Enna alta. Le voci di alcuni degli autori tradotti nel volume — Vivian Sochack, Patricia Pisters, Antonio Damasio, Murray Smith, Uri Hasson, Friedrich Kittler, Giuliana Bruno — sono state interpretate da Elisa Di Dio e Filippa Ilardo, accompagnate sullo schermo da alcune sequenze cinematografiche: l’apertura di Lezioni di piano di Jane Campion, la scena cruciale di Michael Clayton di Tony Gilroy, la doccia cult di Psycho di Hitch, la cruenta amputazione di 127 ore di Danny Boyle, alcuni minuti de Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo del nostro Sergio Leone, l’ipnotico …

Nella cucina della teoria del cinema

13 Feb , 2018 Film theories,Neurofilmology

Nella sua Postfazione a Teorie del cinema. Il dibattito contemporaneo (Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2017, 408pp.), Francesco Casetti usa un’immagine molto efficace per descrivere l’evoluzione storica e lo stato attuale delle teorie del cinema: una gustosissima torta a quattro strati. Quattro strati – “teorie”, teorie classiche, Grand-Theory, post-theory – che, per quanto distesi uno sopra l’altro, non sono da intendere come fasi diacroniche di una sostituzione progressiva, bensì come sedimentazioni sincronicamente presenti e attive. Gustare una fetta di torta oggi significa prendere tutt’e quattro le farciture assieme (magari distinguendo e apprezzando i diversi sapori). Il problema è capire se questa torta composita è una prelibatezza che segna la nuova vita della teoria del cinema oppure un “mappazzone” che ne decreta fatalmente il declino. Se pensiamo a cosa è accaduto a partire dalla metà degli anni Novanta (quando cioè la post-theory ha cominciato a essere lo strato più richiesto della torta) …

Perception, Performativity and Cognitive Sciences

13 Jan , 2017 Neurofilmology,Temporality

The aim of this research project Perception, Performativity and Cognitive Sciences, founded by the Italian Government (PRIN 2015), is to focus on (and test) the hypothesis that performativity is not a property confined to certain specific human skills, or to certain specific acts of language, nor an accidental enrichment due to creative intelligence. Instead, the executive and motor component of cognitive behavior should be considered an intrinsic part of the physiological functioning of the mind and as endowed with self-generative power. It is thought to have evolutionarily developed in close correlation with processes of natural selection leading, in the human animal, on the one hand, to the species specificity of articulate speech and, on the other, to embodied simulation as a model of perception. In this perspective, cognition is considered a mediated form of action rather than a relationship between inner thought and behavior occurring in the outside world. …

Neurofilmology. Audiovisual Studies and the Challenge of Neuroscience

18 Jun , 2015 Journal Issues,Neurofilmology

Cinéma & Cie. International Film Studies Journal No. 22-23/2014
edited by Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni

Over the last two decades, discoveries made in the field of cognitive neuroscience have begun to permeate the humanities and social sciences. In the context of this intersection, Neurofilmology is a research program that arises at the encounter between two models of viewer: the viewer-as-mind (deriving from a cognitive/analytical approach) and the viewer-as-body (typical of the phenomenological/continental approach). Accordingly, Neurofilmology focuses on the viewer-as-organism, by investigating with both empirical and speculative epistemological tools the subject of audiovisual experience, postulated as embodied, embedded, enacted, extended, emerging, affective, and relational.

The special issue 22/23 of Cinéma & Cie, edited by Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni, focuses on major conceptual and epistemological arguments arising from the dialogue between audiovisual studies and neurosciences developed over the last twenty years. In fact, the contributors …

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 …

Neurofilmology

18 Jul , 2013 Call for papers,Empathy,Neurofilmology

Neurofilmology. Film studies and the challenge of neuroscience

Cinéma&Cie. International Film Studies Journal
Special Issue no. 22/23
Edited by Adriano D’Aloia and Ruggero Eugeni

Call for Essays [pdf]

Over the last two decades, discoveries made in the field of cognitive neuroscience have begun to permeate the humanities and social sciences. In particular, the philosophical and psychological implications of the function of so-called ‘visuomotor neurons’ have caused a breakthrough in the understanding of the mind-body relation and of phenomena such as human consciousness, empathy, intersubjectivity, affect, and aesthetic response to works of art. This special issue of Cinéma&Cie aims to evaluate, from a multidisciplinary and critical perspective, both the relevance of the neurological approach for the psychology and the aesthetics of the film experience and, more generally, the epistemological consequences of this approach in the humanities.

The fundamental (and controversial) insight behind neuroscientific findings is that the complex processes of the …