Login | Register

The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema

Title:

The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema

Jordan, Randolph (2010) The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema. PhD thesis, Concordia University.

[thumbnail of Jordan_PhD_F2010.pdf]
Preview
Text (application/pdf)
Jordan_PhD_F2010.pdf - Accepted Version
2MB

Abstract

This dissertation examines a set of films that deal with narrative issues of ecology using innovative formal approaches to sound/image relationships. The guiding concept for these analyses is "schizophonia": a term coined by R. Murray Schafer to refer to the split between sound and source by electroacoustical transmission, an aspect of modern soundscapes that Schafer ties to increasing alienation of the people that live within schizophonic environments. Although problematic in its implied anti-technological bias, I argue that the term schizophonia can be used as an analytical tool for addressing how sound in film can evoke ecological issues pertaining to alienation. I re-cast the “split” between sound and source to the technical division between sound and image inherent to sound cinema. This technical split, although conventionally obscured, informs the ideologies that govern approaches to synchronization. Thus I address sound/image relationships in film by way of acknowledging their separation, a strategy that I refer to as audiovisual ecology.

I argue that schizophonia is best understood as the subjective experience of mediation, and I develop the idea of environmental engagement as the awareness of mediation that allows for the synchronization between interior psychological experience and the external world. My chosen films present characters in various stages of achieving this environmental synchronization, developing themes of alienation and engagement through reflexive approaches to audiovisual synchronization that foreground the mediation at work between sound and image. The films under discussion are: Jacques Tati’s PLAY TIME (1967); Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER (1979); Peter Mettler’s PICTURE OF LIGHT (1994); Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003) and LAST DAYS (2005); and the films of Sogo Ishii (1976-2005). In my analyses I bring the field of soundscape research to bear on film sound theory, exposing productive points of intersection through which established terms in film studies are enriched through comparison with relevant concepts from acoustic ecology. I argue that these films eschew conventions of synchronicity in order to emphasize the schizophonic nature of sound cinema, engendering a form of audience engagement that I call reflective audioviewing in which schizophonic experience becomes a model for understanding sound/image relationships in the cinema anew.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Humanities: Interdisciplinary Studies
Concordia University > Research Units > Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Authors:Jordan, Randolph
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:Ph.D. Humanities (Fine Arts)
Program:Humanities
Date:15 September 2010
Thesis Supervisor(s):Russell, Catherine and Sterne, Jonathan and Mountain, Rosemary
Keywords:Film Sound; sound design; acoustic ecology; audiovisual ecology; environmentalism; Jacques Tati; Peter Mettler; Andrei Tarkovsky; Gus Van Sant; Sogo Ishii
ID Code:7060
Deposited By: RANDOLPH JORDAN
Deposited On:13 Apr 2011 19:13
Last Modified:18 Jan 2018 17:30
Related URLs:

References:

Allaby, Michael. 2005. Oxford Dictionary of Ecology, 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Altman, Rick. 1992a. “The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman, 15-31. New York: Routledge.

Altman, Rick. 1992b. “Introduction: Sound’s Dark Corners.” In Sound Theory, Sound Practice, edited by Rick Altman, 171-177. New York: Routledge.

Altman, Rick. 2004. Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press.

Anderson, Joseph D. 2005. “Preliminary Considerations.” In Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations, edited by Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Fisher Anderson, 1-6. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Austin: Texas University Press.

Bazin, André. 1971. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema.” In What is Cinema?, translated by Hugh Gray, 23-40. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bazin, André. 2009a. “André Bazin: Fifteen Years of French Cinema.” Translated by Bert Cardullo. Bright Lights Film Journal, no. 64, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/64/64bazinfrenchcinema.php

Bazin, André. 2009b. “Monsieur Hulot and Time.” In What is Cinema?, translated by Timothy Barnard, 37-44. Montreal: Caboose.

Benjamin, Walter. 1968. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, 217-252. New York: Schocken Books.

Benjamin, Walter. 1999. “The Flâneur.” In The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, 416-455. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Berendt, Joachim-Ernst. 1987. The World is Sound: Nada Brahma: Music and the Landscape of Consciousness. Rochester: Destiny Books.

Borden, Iain. 2002. "Playtime: ‘Tativille’ and Paris." In The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis, edited by Neil Leach, 217-235. New York: Routledge.

Bordwell, David. 1980. “The Musical Analogy.” In “Cinema/Sound,” edited by Rick Altman. Special issue, Yale French Studies, no. 60:141-156.

Bordwell, David. 2005. “Foreward.” In Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations, edited by Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Fisher Anderson, ix-xii. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Bouquillard, Jocelyn. 2007. Hokusai’s Mount Fuji: The Complete Views in Color. Translated by Mark Getlein. New York: Abrams.

Brakhage, Stan. 1978. “Letter to Ronna Page (On Music).” In The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, edited by P. Adams Sitney, 134-138. New York: New York University Press.

Brakhage, Stan. 2003. “Stan Brakhage: Death is a Meaningless Word (Part 1).” Offscreen (February 28th), http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/brakhage_montreal.html

Brereton, Pat. 2005. Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema. Bristol: Intellect.

Bresson, Robert. 1977. “Notes on Sound.” Reprinted in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by John Belton and Elizabeth Weis, 149. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bruno, Giuliana. 2002. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso.
Bruzzi, Stella. 2006. New Documentary, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge.

Buck-Morss, Susan. 1989. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Buhler, J., A. Kassabian, D. Neumeyer, R. Stilwell. 2003. “Panel Discussion on Film Sound/Film Music.” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 51:73-91.

Burch, Noël. 1973. Theory of Film Practice. Translated by Helen R. Lane. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Burch, Noël. 1979. To The Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. London: Scholar Press.

Cage, John. 1991. Interviewed in Four American Composers: John Cage, VHS. Directed by Peter Greenaway. Williston, VT: Mystic Fire Video Inc.

Camper, Fred. 1985. “Sound and Silence in Narrative and Nonnarrative Cinema.” In Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 369-381. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cavalcanti, Alberto. 1985. “Sound in Films.” In Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 98-111. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chang, Chris. 2005. “Guided By Voices.” Film Comment 41, no.4 (July/August): 16.

Chion, Michel. 1983. Guide des objets sonores: Pierre Schaeffer et la recherche musicale. Paris: Buchet/Chastel.

Chion, Michel. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chion, Michel. 1995. David Lynch. London: BFI Publishing.

Chion, Michel. 1997. The Films of Jacques Tati. Translated by Antonio D’Alfonso. Montreal: Guernica.

Chion, Michel. 1998. Le son. Paris: Éditions Nathan.

Chion, Michel. 1999. The Voice in Cinema. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chion, Michel. 2001. Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. London: BFI Publishing.

Chion, Michel. 2003. Un art sonore, le cinéma: histoire, esthétique, poétique. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma.

Chion, Michel. 2009a. Film, A Sound Art. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chion, Michel. 2009b. Guide to Sound Objects: Pierre Schaeffer and Musical Research. Translated by John Dack and Christine North. Electroacoustic Resource Site, http://www.ears.dmu.ac.uk/spip.php?page=articleEars&id_article=3597

Christie, Ian. 1981. “Against Interpretation: An Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky.” Framework 14 (Spring): 48-49.

Clair, René. 1929. “The Art of Sound.” Translated by Vera Traill. Reprinted in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 92-95. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Clarke, David B. 1997. “Introduction: Previewing the Cinematic City.” In The Cinematic City, edited by David B. Clarke, 1-18. New York: Routledge.

Dalton, Stephen. 2005. “Last Days.” Sight and Sound 15, no. 9:65-66.

DeBord, Guy. 1955. “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.” Les Lèvres Nues, no. 6. Archived online, http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/2
DeBord, Guy. 1959. “Situationist Theses on Traffic.” Translated by Ken Knabb. Internationale Situationniste, no. 3 (December). Archived online, http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/all/display/316

DeBord, Guy. 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.

De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Doane, Mary Ann. 1980. “The Voice in Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space.” Reprinted in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 162-176. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Eisenstein, S., V.I. Pudovkin, G.V. Alexandrov. 1928. “A Statement.” Reprinted in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 83-85. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Eisenstein, Sergei. 1987. Nonindifferent Nature. Translated by Herbert Marshall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Friedberg, Anne. 1993. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Eisenstein, Sergei. 2006. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Frith, Fred. 1995. In Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible, edited by Salome Pitschen and Annette Schönholzer, 42. Zurich: Reihe Andreas Züst / Verlag Ricco Bilger.

Gleber, Anke. 1997. "Female Flanerie and the Symphony of the City." In Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, edited by Katharina von Ankum, 67-88. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Godøy, Rolf Inge. 2006. “Gestural-Sonorous Objects: Embodied Extensions of Schaeffer’s Conceptual Apparatus.” Organised Sound 11, no. 2:149-157.

Gunning, Tom. 1997. “From the Kaleidoscope to the X-Ray: Urban Spectatorship, Poe, Benjamin, and Traffic in Souls (1913).” Wide Angle 19, no. 4 (October): 25-61.

Gunning, Tom. 2001. “Doing for the Eye What the Phonograph Does for the Ear.” In The Sounds of Early Cinema, edited by Richard Abel and Rick Altman, 13-31. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Harrison, Jonty. 2000. Évidence matérielle. Liner notes to CD release. Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0052-0001.

Heathcote, Edwin. 2000. “Modernism as Enemy: Film and the Portrayal of Modern Architecture.” Architectural Design 70, no. 1 (January): 20-25.

Hempton, Gordon + John Grossmann. 2009. One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World. New York: Free Press.

Hilmes, Michele. 2008. “Foregrounding Sound: New (and Old) Directions in Sound Studies.” Cinema Journal 48, no. 1 (Fall): 115-117.

Ihde, Don. 1976. Listening and Voice. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Ingram, David. 2000. Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

Internationale Situationniste. 1959. “Unitary Urbanism at the end of the 1950s.” Translated by Paul Hammond. Internationale Situationiste, no. 3 (December). Archived online, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/unitary.html

Jacobson, Brian R. 2005. “Constructions of Cinematic Space: Spatial Practice at the Intersection of Film and Theory.” MA Thesis. MIT.

Johnson, Lawrence B. 1999. “Harmonic Progressions.” Stereophile Guide to Home Theatre 5, no. 2 (February): 100-106.

Jones, Kent. 2003. “Corridors of Powerlessness.” Film Comment 39, no. 5:28.

Jordan, Randolph. 2003. “Starting from Scratch: Turntables, Auditory Representation, and the Structure of the Known Universe in the Films of David Lynch.” MA Thesis. Concordia University.

Jordan, Randolph. 2007a. “The Work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Films of Gus Van Sant: An Interview with the Soundscape Composer.” In “Sound in the Cinema and Beyond,” edited by Randolph Jordan. Special double issue, Offscreen 11, nos. 8/9 (August/September), http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/pages/essays/jordan_westerkamp/.

Jordan, Randolph. 2007b. “Case Study: Film Sound, Acoustic Ecology, and Performance in Electroacoustic Music.” In Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual, edited by Jamie Sexton, 121-141. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

Jordan, Randolph. 2009. “The Visible Acousmêtre: Voice Body and Space across the Two Versions of Donnie Darko.” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 3, no. 1:47-70.

Jordan, Randolph. 2010. “Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema.” Cinephile 6, no. 1:25-30.

Kandinsky, Wassily. 1912. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Reprint translated by Michael T.H. Sadler. London: Tate Publishing, 2006.

Kassabian, Anahid. 2001. Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music. New York: Routledge.

Kolber, David. 2002. “Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: Shifting Perspectives in Real World Music.” Organised Sound 7, no. 1:41-43.

Kulezic-Wilson, Danijela. 2008. “Sound Design is the New Score.” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 2, no. 2 (Autumn): 127-131.

Langois, Philippe. 2004. “Les procédés électroacoustiques dans les différents genres cinématographiques. Une étude transversale au XXe siècle.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Paris IV Sorbonne.

Lastra, James. 2000. Sound Technology and the American Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press.

Leach, Jim. 1990. “Hideousness and Beauty.” In Before the Wall Came Down, edited by Graham Petrie and Ruth Dwyer, 203-213. Lanham: University Press of America.

Marie, Laurent. 2001. “Jacques Tati’s Play Time as New Babylon.” In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, 257-269. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Martin, Sean. 2005. The Pocket Essential Andrei Tarkovsky. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials.

McCartney, Andra. 2000. Sounding Places with Hildegard Westerkamp. Electronic Music Foundation Institute Site (November), http://www.emf.org/guidetotheworld/artists/mccartney00/

McCartney, Andra. 2002. “Sharing Experiences Towards the Possibility of an Electroacoustic Ecology.” Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 3, no. 1:22.

McSorley, Tom. 1995. “Pilgrimage to Vision: The Cinema of Peter Mettler.” In Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible, edited by Salome Pitschen and Annette Schönholzer, 88-121. Zurich: Reihe Andreas Züst / Verlag Ricco Bilger.

Mes, Tom. 2001. “Angel Dust.” Midnight Eye (June 19th), http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/angldust.shtml

Mes, Tom. 2007. “Kyoshin.” Midnight Eye (January 16th), http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/mirrored-mind.shtml

Mettler, Peter. 1992. “Music in Film: Film as Music.” In Cinémas 3, no. 1:35-42.

Montagu, Ivor. 1973. “Man and Experience: Tarkovsky’s World.” Sight and Sound (Spring): 89-94.

Mountain, Rosemary. 2001. “Composers and Imagery: Myths and Realities.” In Musical Imagery, edited by Rolfe Inge Godøy and Harald Jørgensen, 271-288. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger.

Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Nichols, Bill. 1994. Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Norman, Katharine. 1996. “Real-World Music as Composed Listening.” In “A Poetry of Reality: Composing with Recorded Sound,” edited by Katherine Norman, 1-27. Special issue, Contemporary Music Review 15, nos.1-2.

O’Brien, Charles. 2005. Cinema’s Conversion to Sound: Technology and Film Style in France and the U.S. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ondaatje, Michael. 2002. The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Oren, Tasha G. 2003. “Cultural Preservation and the Global City Marketplace.” In Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age, edited by Linda Krause and Patrice Petro, 49-68. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1988. Heretical Empiricism. Edited by Louise K Barnett, translated by Ben Lawton and Louise K. Barnett. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

Petric, Vlada. 1989/90. “Tarkovsky’s Dream Imagery.” Film Quarterly 43, no. 2. (Winter): 28-34.

Pitschen, Salome and Annette Schönholzer. 1995. Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible, edited by Salome Pitschen and Annette Schönholzer. Zurich: Reihe Andreas Züst / Verlag Ricco Bilger.

Postman, Neil. 1970. “The Reformed English Curriculum.” In High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education, edited by A.C. Eurich, 160-168. New York: Pitman Pub. Corp.

Pudovkin, Alexander. 1929. “Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film,” translated by Marie Seton and Ivor Montagu. Reprinted in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Weis and John Belton, 86-91. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Rall, Veronika. 1995. “A Window into State: Driving Towards a Natural Wonder. A conversation with Peter Mettler, Fred Kelemen, and Veronika Rall.” In Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible, edited by Salome Pitschen and Annette Schönholzer, 56-85. Zurich: Reihe Andreas Züst / Verlag Ricco Bilger.

Riffaterre, Michael. 1980. “Syllepsis.” Critical Inquiry 6, no. 4 (Summer): 625-638.

Rist, Peter and Randolph Jordan. 2010. “Movimento e stasi I film di Ishii Sogo (Movement and Stasis in the Films of Sogo Ishii).” Cinergie, no. 19 (Spring): 34-35.

Robertson, Robert. 2009. Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: The Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema. London: Taurus Academic Studies.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 1973. “Tati’s Democracy: An Interview and Introduction.” Film Comment 9, no. 3 (May/June): 36-41.

Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham:
All items in Spectrum are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. The use of items is governed by Spectrum's terms of access.

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads per month over past year

Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
- Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
Back to top Back to top