The Frenzy of the Audible: Voice, Image, and the Quest for Representation (original) (raw)

Another Voice: Towards an Aesthetics of the Voice in Cinema

The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2022

This paper proposes a model to understand the voice in cinema, constructed via psychoanalysis and classical cinematic sound theory. The voice as an object (as it is for psychoanalysis) supposes a hole in the Other, an object that slips meaning. Kaufman and Johnson's 2015 film Anomalisa is commented on along these lines. This movie renders visible the way the cinematic language sutures the subject (a character in the film) and the Other (the diegetic reality).

The Absent Presence of Voice in Contemporary Artists Film

2012

This paper will analyse the potential of voice to be a signifier of narrative and an immersive instrument within contemporary artists film and their construction, utilising my own practice by screening the digital film Spitfire Beach (2010) as a case study. The work of other contemporary artists will be discussed in relation to voice forms and their relationship with film whereby an absent presence is established. When voice conveys language as it does via the storytelling in the discussed work, it also creates an unseen objective identity within the films whereby the voiceover becomes informer and watcher of events as they unfold. Each of my film works uses a systematic process of narrative construction, involving found lists of words taken from Internet searches. These lists of words are used to multiply associations that suggest stories, reveal themes of nostalgia, journeys and disasters, which are then recorded by voiceover artists.

Sound in documentaries as a tool of expression instead of representation

ACTIO Journal of Technology in Design, Film Arts and Visual Communication

The concept of reality in the context of documentaries has always been a focus of controversy, with manipulation of captured material during the filmmaking process being disallowed or labelled inauthentic. Nonetheless, some documentaries have approached the filmmaking process in an experimental way and are using a different approach to represent reality. At the same time, sound in documentaries is still usually misunderstood as a medium in which manipulation, processing – or even more radically – the creation from scratch, is not encouraged or not properly understood. This article proposes to portray the production of sound in films as a collaborative process that enables the director to think of sound as an element of expression – a tool with which to describe reality from another perspective, capable of creating possibilities for the sound director to translate emotions and feelings into sonorities due to the versatility of human sound perception. The usage of sound should take ri...

Theory-Poetics and Audio-Visual Essays; New directions of Cinema Culture

Self Published, 2020

This essay argues for a movement to converge theoretical communication with poetic communication. The difference is that one mode has a feedback loop while the other does not (communication theory). The inquiry looks at the advent of contemporary cinema practices in Audio-Visual essays as one site grappling with hybrid theoretical/poetic texts.

Beyond Tautology? Audio-Visual Film Criticism

2016

A consideration of emergent audiovisual forms of film criticism which accompanies a video essay on Andrea Arnold's film FISH TANK (UK, 2009) and psychoanalytic theorist W.R. Bion's 1959 work on the "Container-Contained" [in"Attacks on Linking". Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.13761232.0040.113.

Toward a New Truth in Sound: Expanding the Boundaries of Direct Cinema

Since the emergence of Direct Cinema in the late 1950's, documentary films have presupposed a more accurate “claim of truth” over their subject matter. Advancements in portable recording technology after World War II allowed documentarians to dissolve the line between subject and object using un-obtrusive camera and sound recording techniques, often regarded as the “fly on the wall” style. From the Arriflex 35 and Nagra III audio recorder to the advent of the GoPro, direct cinema has evolved in concordance with the capabilities of new technology. Direct cinema's attempt to display “reality” through a strict code of aesthetics not only relies on the visual “outside observer” model, but must also take into account an accurate representation of sound and soundscape. What role then does sound play in constructing reality where verbal narration and non- diegetic music is absent? The latest ethnographic film of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, Leviathan (2012) will be examined as the forefront of the new direct cinema style. This immersive film provides a heightened sense of reality remarkably without the aid of traditional sound design. Since the idea of film-truth is debatable, can artistic integrity outweigh the actuality of events, or is the concept of truth supplanted by a more visceral, experiential understanding through stimulating new camera techniques and rich soundscapes?

CINEMA STUDIES: PERSPECTIVES ON SOUND

Revista Língua & Literatura, 2021

The article focuses on cinema studies. The objective is to present a model for cinema sound analysis. The proposed problem is the extraction of cinematic sound elements, as well as their functionality. Methodologically, in the first section, we presented introductory perspectives on cinema´s sound. Sequentially, in the second section, we presented the discursive idea of sound, with emphasis on voice, music, and noise, aiming to show a way to understand sound language. With the deductive method, the article is conceptual and realized through linguisticdiscursive analysis of sound. KEYWORDS: Cinema. Media Studies. Sound Studies. Music. Soundtrack.