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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00754
- Thesis Title
- SOMATIC MONTAGE: SUPRA-DIMENSIONAL COMPOSITION IN CINEMA AND THE ARTS
- Author
- Clea Theresa von Chamier-Waite
- E-mail
- cleawaite AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Ph.D.
- Year
- 2019
- Number of Pages
- 346
- University
- University of Southern California
- Thesis Supervisor
- Prof. Scott Fisher
- Supervisor e-mail
- sfisher AT cinema.usc.edu
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Prof. Perry Hoberman, Dr. Andreas Kratky, Prof. Christine Panushka, Dr. Holly Willis
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- MEDIA ARTS AND PRACTICE, School of Cinematic Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Clea von Chamier-Waite
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, German, French
- URL where full thesis can be found
- drive.google.com/open?id=1xp76VfGxM2fm5DjKVA33444NgpvMICwd
- Keywords
- immersive cinema; embodiment; experimental cinema; video art; video installation; cinematic montage; virtual reality, V.R.; augmented reality; A.R.; giant screen; fulldome; 360° cinema; immersion; spacetime; tesseract; hypercube; hyperspace; supra-dimens
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- 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.