PhD by project
Royal College of Art
2008 - 2012
TACTILE MEMORY
Inviting the Body into the Experience of Film
Summary
I aim to identify, in theory and practice, approaches to film making which bridge the spatial and temporal distance between cinematic experience and the lived, embodied experience stored in the viewer’s memories. Specifically, I intended to explore how tactility might connect filmmaker and viewer, memory and film.
Key words: touch, memory, haptic image, moving image, embodiment
Research Abstract
After working with Softimage 3D animation software, as a maker I found the absence of physical contact with the computer-generated object frustrating. The inaccessibility of CG imagery to touch also leads to an absence of embodied memory or history in a CG object, because touch (human or other) literally helps to imprint time. This absence of embodied memory is passed onto the viewer. To capture and communicate embodied memory through touch while using the expressive vocabulary of film has become an intellectual and practical challenge for me. While it might seem paradoxical, because film cannot employ touch directly, certain filmmakers (eg Švankmajer, Tarkovsky) have achieved it. Through investigation of specific films, and via verification/exploration in my practice, I shall identify the approaches required for tactile, embodied expression in film.
Research Project Core research questions
1. What are the unique qualities of the sense of touch and how can they be communicated through the expressive vocabulary of an audio-visual medium?
2. What is the relationship between tactile perception and embodied memory?
3.How can touch be consciously employed as the bridging device between the empathetic, mediated experience of the moving image and the fully embodied, living experience stored in the viewer’s subjective, sensual memory?
My research will generate original insights, in theory and practice, into the evocation of embodied memory through audio-visual expression. By accessing this memory, I aim to ground the viewer, deepening her experience and understanding, inviting her entire body to participate in the cinematic encounter.
My Approaches
1. Cinematographic Theory by pioneering academics Laura U Marks (Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media) and Jennifer M Barker (The Tactile Eye), and close analysis of films (e.g. Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure) have informed my understanding of the tactile in cinema. I now plan to establish a framework for the haptic image, derived from both cinematography and the kinaesthetic empathy between the bodies of the viewer and the film. This will focus on the effects of particular uses of the camera as a tool (e.g. zooms, pans, tracking, focus, etc.) as well the effect of editing, mise en scene and sound. I am also studying Bachelard and Tarkovsky, because of their direct concern with memory and how it is communicated.
2. Interdisciplinary Workshops I am developing practical approaches to exploration of the tactile and its relationship to visual imagery, sound, and memory through tactile drawing workshops, encouraging participants to explore connections between memory, scale and visual/tactile modes of perception. I have developed these workshops through visits to controlled environments
(eg. the Hamburg exhibition Dialogue in the Dark). Outcomes include drawings, texts and photographs. I have also drawn from the methodologies of tactile artists (Rosalyn Driscoll, Bonnie Kemske); neurologists (Mark Lythgoe, Beau Lotto) and material scientists (Mark Miodownik). Additionally, through Tactile Arts peer group Art in Touch, which I set up in 2009, I will encourage dialogues across disciplines, screenings, group exhibitions and seminars.
3. Film Making - My own practice is a form of research, self-reflectively exploring tactile aspects of the audio-visual; not only in my studio work, resulting in short films, but also in making them available to the public for constructive response, through gallery installations and screenings.
Research Outcomes
A film exploring the shaping familial/personal narratives of (a Central European) childhood, which will test my findings concerned with touch and its relationship to memory and embodied experience. I am specifically interested in drawing insights from the way the film is presented: a gallery installation will allow viewers to encounter objects present/touched in the film. The written thesis will provide critical context and its own rigorous conceptual vocabulary which, by engaging with the tactile possibilities of the moving image, will be valuable to filmmakers concerned with heightening this quality in their work.