Sonic space and echoes of the flesh: textual and phenomenal readings of Gravity

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    This essay argues that the cinematic experience for audiences be reconsidered as a cinesomatic experience. Theorists such as Vivian Sobchack (1992; 2000; 2005) and Jennifer Barker (2009) have done much to conceptualise and theorise a sensory, embodied experience of cinema. These scholars, mainly drawing from either a Merleau- Pontian phenomenology or a Spinozist/Deleuzian theory of affect, have led the wave of new writings probing the ways in which audience engagement with film is corporeal. Their work explores cinema in terms of visual and haptic engagements, congruous with a broader move in scholarship towards the sensorial. However, despite the growth of embodied film theory in recent years, there is an even greater need to take the sensorial model of cinema spectatorship to film sound. This essay addresses cinema sound in specifically corporeal terms, demonstrating how audience experiences of film sound can be reconsidered as cinesomatic. By drawing a textual and phenomenological reading of the sound design in Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), this essay aims to reveal new insights into the materially rich experience of a film’s soundtrack and demonstrate how a multiplicity of ‘narratives’ converge during and beyond the cinema encounter.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)119-139
    Number of pages21
    JournalMusic, Sound and the Moving Image
    Volume14
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Keywords

    • Soundtracks
    • Phenomenology
    • sound studies
    • Film studies
    • Embodiment

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