see cujo hear cujo

2010-08-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

imagine the big boom!

2010-08-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

Recording sounds

2010-08-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

absence of expected sound

2010-08-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

cinema: the reassociation of sounds and images

2010-08-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

The re-association of sound and images in cinema

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paradoxe de la fiction

2010-08-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

Le paradoxe de la fiction

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voir un chien entendre un chien

2010-08-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Voir un chien, entendre un chien

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Réalismes sonores

2010-08-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

Réalismes

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see a dog hear a dog

2010-08-02T01:50:00.000-07:00

The relation of sound and images has been at the center of theories and criticism of cinema since the appearance of sound films. The debate about the use and role of synch and non-synch sounds has been largely technical and stylistic. But questions about the choice of sounds and of their association with images cannot be limited to the esthetics of cinema, since the question raises issues pertinent for cognitive science too. In the terms of the cognitive sciences, the question could be translated as such: what are the reasons which compel cinema’s spectators to hold together sounds and images that do not come from the same source and cause?

Cinema exploits both perceptual and narrative information in order to guide spectators’ imagination in the construction of multi-modal (audio-visual) objects. Perceptual mechanisms are exploited that induce the perception of different multimodal stimuli as being related. Other perceptual mechanisms induce intermodal illusions. Finally, narrative cues become prescriptions that the spectators are meant to follow, if they want correctly to understand the movie.

The capacity of melding images and sounds in unlikely, creative ways partly depends on spectators’ perceptual mechanisms, and part on the awareness of the fictional and mediated nature of their experience. As a consequence, cinema spectators enjoy the creative association of sounds and images because of the awareness that 'it is just a movie', and not because they fall into an illusion of reality. This is the essence of the 'suspension of disbelief'.