The 1920s had sound and the spoken word enter the filmic imagery as a direct component. The recorded image and sound had became a synchrinized interplay rounding the fictional mimicry of the “real” life experience. Today, modern digital technology again favors the separate production of the visual and acoustic dimension in the filmmaking process, opening an experimental field for the mixing of spaces and temporalities testing aesthetic and social ambiguities of perception.
This paper aims at exploring the cinematic imaginary space produced by the interplay of image and sound in connection to physical urban environments. The combination of these components and dimensions (re)creates the material reality and expands the boundaries of the filmic experience. Analyzing experimental works by sound and media artists, such as Janet Cardiff or Oliver Hangl, within the framework of spatial theory and phenomenology, we discuss the role of the senses in the conception of cinematic space.

Organizer: NECS  European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and the University of Udine