Somatic montage: supra-dimensional composition in cinema and the arts

This dissertation initiates a new cinematic language specific to immersive cinema—somatic montage. A language specific to immersive cinema is an area of cinema theory neglected up until now. Immersive and hyper-cinemas, because of their formal multivalency, occupy a post-cinematic critical space between film and media theory, art history, and art-science-technology. Somatic montage describes a conceptual approach to composing narrative structures in cinematic forms that occupy three and higher dimensions of space-time, examining the roles of proprioceptions, memory, and synaesthesia in experiencing a work of art. We propose a new montage syntax specific to immersive cinema that addresses cinema as a supra-dimensional, embodied construct. The four-dimensional tesseract provides a useful model-metaphor of a somatic montage for addressing concepts of space-time, spatial and temporal ambiguity, the faceting of perspective via multiple viewpoints or screens, and the subjective participation of the viewer in an unfolding narrative. ❧ The concept of somatic montage developed here begins with the impact on the arts of the turn of the 20th-century discoveries of hyperspace, non-Euclidean geometry, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics that established Modernism. We follow with a brief spatial history of montage from linear-temporal cinematic montage, multi-layered spatial montage in two dimensions, assemblage in three dimensions, and finally somatic montage, a montage in (4:n)-dimensions. Advances in neuroscience demonstrating the embodied, somatosensory conceptualization of multiple dimensions of information in the mind are brought to bear on developing a polysensory language for perceiving and composing supra-dimensional cinema. ❧ We demonstrate the relevance of somatic montage in contemporary and historical art forms, including giant screen and “hypercinemas,” video art, multi-projection media installations, panoramas, experimental film, stereoscopy, holography, and the frameless, immersive cinema formats of fulldome, 360° cinema, and virtual and augmented reality. A detailed analysis of the media installation “Ice-Time,” the praxis portion of this dissertation, concludes this research. “Ice-Time” is an immersive, multi-channel audiovisual installation whose formal structure exemplifies embodied, supra-dimensional cinema composition while demonstrating the significance of interdisciplinary art-science research.本论文首创了一种专为沉浸式电影打造的全新电影语言——躯体蒙太奇（somatic montage）。这种专为沉浸式电影设计的语言，是迄今尚未得到电影理论界充分关注的研究领域。沉浸式影院与超电影（hyper-cinemas）凭借其形式多元性，坐落于电影与媒介理论、艺术史以及艺术-科学-技术交叉领域之间的后电影批评空间之中。躯体蒙太奇阐述了一种用于构建占据三维及更高维时空的电影叙事结构的概念性方法，探讨了本体感觉（proprioceptions）、记忆与联觉（synaesthesia）在艺术作品体验中的作用。我们提出了一种专为沉浸式电影设计的全新蒙太奇句法，将电影视为一种超维度的具身建构。四维超立方体（four-dimensional tesseract）为阐释躯体蒙太奇提供了极具实用性的模型隐喻，可用于解读时空概念、时空模糊性、多视点/多屏幕带来的视角切面，以及观众在叙事展开过程中的主观参与。❧ 本文所提出的躯体蒙太奇概念，肇始于20世纪之交的超空间、非欧几何、相对论与量子力学发现对艺术界的影响——这些发现奠定了现代主义的基础。随后本文将简要梳理蒙太奇的空间演进史：从线性时序性电影蒙太奇，到二维多层空间蒙太奇、三维聚合式蒙太奇，最终落脚于(4:n)维的躯体蒙太奇。神经科学领域的进展揭示了人类心智中对多维度信息的具身体感概念化机制，这一成果为构建用于感知与创作超维度电影的多感官语言提供了支撑。❧ 我们论证了躯体蒙太奇在当代与历史艺术形态中的适用性，涵盖巨幕影院与"超电影"、视频艺术、多投影媒介装置、全景影像、实验电影、立体成像（stereoscopy）、全息影像，以及球幕（fulldome）、360°电影、虚拟现实（virtual reality）与增强现实（augmented reality）等无框沉浸式电影格式。本研究的收尾部分将对作为论文实践创作环节的媒介装置作品《冰与时（Ice-Time）》展开详尽分析。《冰与时》是一件沉浸式多通道视听装置，其形式结构堪称具身超维度电影创作的典范，同时彰显了跨学科艺术-科学研究的重要价值。