O artigo pretende contribuir para pensar o papel do audiovisual no campo da política contemporânea, com um olhar que dá centralidade ao campo de estudos do cinema e do audiovisual, realizando a análise fílmica de uma parcela do audiovisual presente nos Sites de Redes Sociais (SRS), com foco na produção do Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) durante o período do impeachment da presidenta Dilma Rousseff. A partir do entendimento que as matrizes do excesso, o sensacionalismo, o regime de (...) atrações e a emergência de uma “câmera-corpo” são fundamentais na construção de endereçamento e engajamento dos espectadores, percebe-se como é operada uma certa gestão sensacionalista da política calcada nesses aspectos. (shrink)

Since its establishment in 1979, the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University has given rise to numerous studies on history, memory and trauma in the wake of the Holocaust. While acknowledging its audiovisual nature, previous accounts have nevertheless failed to consider the significance of this novel archival formation and how it shapes the production and reception of survivors’ testimonies. This article occasions an unlikely encounter between the trauma and testimony discourse as developed by Dori Laub, Shoshana Felman, (...) Lawrence Langer in the context of the Yale archive, and the theory of “technical media” as developed by German media theorist, Friedrich Kittler. It argues that the trauma and testimony discourse has a technological unconscious in the form of videotape technology, which crucially conditions the way trauma is conceived in this discourse. It is only with an audiovisual medium capable of capturing and reproducing evidence of the fleeting unconscious that a discourse concerned with the unarticulated past becomes intelligible. (shrink)

An audiovisual correspondence (AVC) refers to an observer’s seemingly arbitrary yet consistent matching of sensory features across the two modalities; for example, between an auditory pitch and visual size. Research on AVCs has frequently used a speeded classification procedure in which participants are asked to rapidly classify an image when it is either accompanied by a congruent or an incongruent sound (or vice versa). When, as is typically the case, classification is faster in the presence of a congruent stimulus, (...) researchers have inferred that the AVC is automatic and bottom-up. Such an inference is incomplete because the procedure does not show that the AVC is not subject to top-down influences. To remedy this problem, we devised a procedure that allows us to assess the degree of “bottom-up-ness” and “top-down-ness” in the processing of an AVC. We did this in studies of AVCs between pitch and five visual features: size, height, spatial frequency, brightness, and angularity. We find that all the AVCs we studied involve both bottom-up and top-down processing, thus undermining the prevalent generalization that AVCs are automatic. (shrink)

Este artículo se enmarca en una línea de investigación que pretende analizar el humor como estrategia creativa en el ensayo audiovisual español. Para ilustrar el objetivo propuesto, se han revisado tres largometrajes que, a pesar de su diversidad, encajan, de una u otra forma y con diversos objetivos, en esta manera de enunciación cinematográfica: La casa Emak Bakia (Oskar Alegria, 2012), Mapa (Elías León Siminiani, 2012) y Muchos hijos, un mono y un castillo (Gustavo Salmerón, 2017). Los tres comparten (...) algunas características del ensayo audiovisual (la reflexividad, la escritura del yo y una preocupación estética que llega al cuestionamiento de las propias formas de expresión) y recurren al humor como un recurso para construir sus relatos. Por ello, se han revisado algunas de las características del ensayo audiovisual, se ha analizado el humor como elemento narrativo que se consigue a través de diversas instancias enunciativas y se ha pasado revista a dos recursos al servicio del humor. (shrink)

Considering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is used in (...) dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen and Diaz Cintas in the field of Audiovisual Translation, the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes. (shrink)

The critical discourse analysis is the tool used in this article, to study how audiovisual media have constructed mental representation about the historical facts occurred in Spain between the final stage of the Spanish Civil War and the late 1980s: the theft of newborn babies. The State has failed in an attempt to establish policies that support truth, justice and reparation as it has been recalled by United Nations experts to the Government of Spain, and the reports and documentaries (...) have become vehicles to capture and recover memories. Our objective is to analyze how this collective awareness has been realized and the contribution of reports and documentaries. Our results show that the Spanish television channels silence the Francoist context to depict the thefts as the product of economical mobs focused on child trafficking. The international channels, however, put the origin of the dictatorship at the center of the discourse. (shrink)

The article discusses teaching the analysis of documentary films from the standpoint of a discursive approach. The importance of teaching the analysis of documentary films is due to the specifics of audiovisual production. A documentary film is a polyosemiotic construct combined with verbal, pictorial and sound signs, which are important for the translator to take into account in the translation process. The discursive approach allows to teach future translators to analyze not only the work as a whole, but also (...) to analyze the historical and socio-cultural context in which it was created. (shrink)

Two experiments examined how affective values from visual and auditory modalities are integrated. Experiment 1 paired music and videos drawn from three levels of valence while holding arousal constant. Experiment 2 included a parallel combination of three levels of arousal while holding valence constant. In each experiment, participants rated their affective states after unimodal and multimodal presentations. Experiment 1 revealed a congruency effect in which stimulus combinations of the same extreme valence resulted in more extreme state ratings than component stimuli (...) presented in isolation. An interaction between music and video valence reflected the greater influence of negative affect. Video valence was found to have a significantly greater effect on combined ratings than music valence. The pattern of data was explained by a five parameter differential weight averaging model that attributed greater weight to the visual modality and increased weight with decreasing values of valence. Experiment 2 revealed a congruency effect only for high arousal combinations and no interaction effects. This pattern was explained by a three parameter constant weight averaging model with greater weight for the auditory modality and a very low arousal value for the initial state. These results demonstrate key differences in audiovisual integration between valence and arousal. (shrink)

Background Speech understanding may rely not only on auditory, but also on visual information. Non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques can expose the neural processes underlying the integration of multisensory processes required for speech understanding in humans. Nevertheless, noise (from fMRI) limits the usefulness in auditory experiments, and electromagnetic artefacts caused by electronic implants worn by subjects can severely distort the scans (EEG, fMRI). Therefore, we assessed audio-visual activation of temporal cortex with a silent, optical neuroimaging technique: functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Methods (...) We studied temporal cortical activation as represented by concentration changes of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in four, easy-to-apply fNIRS optical channels of 33 normal-hearing adult subjects and 5 post-lingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users in response to supra-threshold unisensory auditory and visual, as well as to congruent auditory-visual speech stimuli. Results Activation effects were not visible from single fNIRS channels. However, by discounting physiological noise through reference channel subtraction, auditory, visual and audiovisual speech stimuli evoked concentration changes for all sensory modalities in both cohorts (p<0.001). Auditory stimulation evoked larger concentration changes than visual stimuli (p<0.001). A saturation effect was observed for the audiovisual condition. Conclusions Physiological, systemic noise can be removed from fNIRS signals by reference channel subtraction. The observed multisensory enhancement of an auditory cortical channel can be plausibly described by a simple addition of the auditory and visual signals with saturation. (shrink)

For more than a century now, researchers have acknowledged the existence of seemingly arbitrary crossmodal congruency effects between dimensions of sensory stimuli in the general population. Such phenomena, known by a variety of terms including 'crossmodal correspondences', involve individual stimulus properties, rely on a crossmodal mapping of unisensory features, and appear to be shared by the majority of individuals. In other words, members of the general population share underlying preferences for specific pairings across the senses. Crossmodal correspondences between complementary sensory (...) cues have often been referred to as synesthetic correspondences but, we would argue, differ from full-blown synesthetic experiences in a number of important ways, including the fact that there are no idiosyncratic concurrent sensations. Recent psychophysical evidence suggests that such crossmodal correspondences can modulate multisensory integration by helping to resolve the crossmodal binding problem. Here, we propose a model to account for the effects of crossmodal correspondences between complementary auditory and visual cues and critically review their relation to full-blown synesthesia. (shrink)

Numerous studies have linked the consumption of violent audiovisual content to the increase of aggressive cognitions and behaviors. This research aims to clarify whether the possible harmful consequences of violent videogames might vary depending on an individual variable such as trait aggressiveness. A correlational study was carried out among 6,130 teenagers from two European countries, in which it became evident, by means of multiple regression analyses, that there was a positive correlation between the use of violent videogames and aggressive (...) behavioral intentions. More relevantly, these correlations were greater amongst those subjects with higher scores on the Aggression Scale. Finally, when analyzing the subjective experiences of users of violent videogames, the more aggressive individuals manifested a greater desire to imitate the characters of the interactive content, admitting that they ended up more agitated even when their initial objective was to relieve tension or relax. Practical and theoretical implications of those results are discussed. (shrink)

In this contribution we will approach language and images in different modalities: speech and face, anticipated and imagined movements, illusions on the sound by the image. It will be the opportunity for us to revisit the Gestalt concepts which were considered obsolete since structuralism in Humanities. As instantiated by Gilbert Durand in The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (1999, French 1st ed. 1960), we shall recall that Gestalt is not—even implicitly—an exclusively static approach to cognition. On the contrary we will (...) emphasize that forms can emerge from movements and stabilize in memory, thence morphology. And for speech, we will consider phonology as the stabilized outcome from audible and visible gestures of the mouth—caught in the time-course of a flow of some four in six syllables by second—via the perception of motor coordinations: which is necessary to master the most common expression of language between humans. We will adopt here also for the perceptual flows of spoken language, Multimodal Scene Analysis, the ongoing legacy of Gestalt Theory, including one of our main research topics: the gestural expression of the face and the hand for Deaf people, who practise as an augment French LPC (Langue française Parlée Complétée), adapted in 1967 from Cued Speech by its originator Dr Richard Cornett. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on legal issues raised by the audiovisual broadcasting of performing arts, which has significantly increased due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. First, we contextualize this practice and briefly present the emergence and evolution of the practice of “filmed theater”, as well as any other form of performances (e.g., concert, ballet, opera) originally conceived for the stage but subsequently diffused through other channels. Secondly, we address the current legal issues that have arisen because of the increase of such (...) practice due to the containment measures taken by government. Two axes are of particular attention: the matter of copyrights and related rights, on the one hand, and the question of public financing, on the other. Concerning intellectual property, audiovisual broadcasting leads to several legal consequences and issues: effectiveness of related rights, emergence of new modes of exploitation and new authors, recognition of the recording as an original work, etc. This new practice is, moreover, likely to disrupt the categories established by public funding legal mechanisms, which are often poorly adapted to hybrid artistic objects. The objective of this part is therefore to analyze the new legal issues raised by the audiovisual distribution of performances. Finally, we go beyond exclusively legal issues to examine the very specificities of performing arts and, more specifically, the possible loss that would result from a fixation of a production on a reproducible medium, making its diffusion possible beyond the stage. (shrink)

Music is the carrier through which human beings express their emotions. It can clean up their hearts and seek emotional resonance. The combination of music and artificial intelligence, when music meets artificial intelligence, the mathematical logic part of data and algorithm replaces the image thinking, resulting in automatic music production. The basic principle of music creation is to use artificial intelligence technology to conduct in-depth training on a large number of songs, and then build a database. Then, within a certain (...) period of time, extract a segment from several songs, and then decompose it to form a new melody. The automatic music production is the collision of music and technology. With the flying of code and notes, it creates a different kind of beauty. Music culture is a new field of music application. With its refreshing audio-visual effect, it has made people have a new understanding of music and has become a hot topic in current mass cultural activities. The sound quality characteristics of music culture programs determine the characteristics of simple, fast and efficient design. However, the current audio and video design still stays in the traditional audio and video form design, with low design efficiency, long cycle, high cost and high requirements for designers. In view of the fact that the traditional audio and video design mode in China's music and cultural programs cannot meet the needs of performance programs at present, this paper proposes a design scheme of audio and visual effects of music and cultural programs with intelligent devices as the core, and develops a complete set of audio and visual effects aided design system on this basis. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists routinely distinguish between controlled and automatic mental processes. Through learning, practice, and exposure, controlled processes can become automatic; however, whether automatic processes can become deautomatized – recuperated under the purview of control – remains unclear. Here we show that a suggestion derails a deeply ingrained process involving involuntary audiovisual integration. We compared the performance of highly versus less hypnotically suggestible individuals in a classic McGurk paradigm – a perceptual illusion task demonstrating the influence of visual facial movements (...) on auditory speech percepts. Following a posthypnotic suggestion to prioritize auditory input, HSIs but not LSIs manifested fewer illusory auditory perceptions and correctly identified more auditory percepts. Our findings demonstrate that a suggestion deautomatized a ballistic audiovisual process in HSIs. In addition to guiding our knowledge regarding theories and mechanisms of automaticity, the present findings pave the road to a more scientific understanding of top-down effects and multisensory integration. (shrink)

The participants in the present study had to make speeded elevation discrimination responses to visual targets presented to the left or right of central fixation following the presentation of a task-irrelevant auditory cue on either the same or opposite side. In Experiment 1, the cues were presented from in front of the participants (from the same azimuthal positions as the visual targets). A standard crossmodal exogenous spatial cuing effect was observed, with participants responding significantly faster in the elevation discrimination task (...) to visual targets when both the auditory cues and the visual targets were presented on the same side. Experiment 2 replicated the exogenous spatial cuing effect for frontal visual targets following both front and rear auditory cues. The results of Experiment 3 demonstrated that the participants had little difficulty in correctly discriminating the location from which the sounds were presented. Thus, taken together, the results of the three experiments reported here demonstrate that the exact co-location of auditory cues and visual targets is not necessary to attract spatial attention. Implications of these results for the design of real-world warning signals are discussed. (shrink)

En la actualidad existe una divergencia entre el consentimiento informado vigente con las necesidades particulares de las Unidades de Terapia Intensiva, mismas que se caracterizan de las demás áreas de salud intrahospitalarias puesto que los pacientes se encuentran bajo sedoanalegesia. Esta situación impide a los pacientes la toma de decisiones y expresión de su voluntad en relación con los procedimientos que incluyen durante su tratamiento médico debido a una situación emergente o planificada. Otros países han respondido a esta necesidad al (...) implementar un documento legal que aborde todas estas inquietudes tanto para el paciente, familia como para el personal médico. Además, parte de esta problemática incluye el no cumplimiento de la Ley de Protección de Datos Personales debido a que el material audiovisual obtenido de los pacientes en el área crítica no es respaldado por el permiso escrito de los involucrados. En esta investigación documental se abordará esta carencia. (shrink)

This article explores how certain feminine voices are adapted or ‘naturalized’ in audiovisual translation in order to conform to the intended audience’s assumed gender beliefs and values. Using purposefully selected examples from the American series Sex and the City, the author analyses elements pertaining to American feminism and how they are rendered in the French dubbing and subtitles. While the subtitles retain most references, the dubbing reveals a marked tendency to delete, weaken and transform allusions to American feminist culture (...) as well as female achievements in the public sphere and feminist ideology. These findings are discussed in relation to the history, place and representation of women and feminism in France. The case study suggests that integrating a feminist approach in audiovisual translation research could help women’s studies detect the unspoken gender values of the cultures for which audiovisual translation is produced. (shrink)

La formación ética enfrenta el reto de ser comprensible para los estudiantes, pero, sobre todo, de formularsedesde las formas de comprender y discutir sus propias vidas, para que les sea relevante. Una de esas formasespecialmente atractiva entre niños y jóvenes es la comunicación audiovisual, cuyo potencial formativo ha sidocomprendido usualmente en términos instrumentales, cuando no negado absolutamente. Este artículo presentauna propuesta fenomenológica para trabajar dialógicamente en el aula la problematización de una ética centradaen el deber, tal como es puesta (...) en escena en dos productos de animación japonesa (“anime”). En primer lugar,discute fenomenológicamente cómo comprender el potencial formativo de la experiencia de ver una narraciónanimada. En segundo lugar, argumenta cómo la reinterpretación fenomenológica del imperativo categóricopuede superar su desconexión de la dimensión afectiva del sujeto ético y sus contextos fácticos de acción paracentrarse en el cuidado de la condición humana de vulnerabilidad. En tercer lugar, muestra cómo las discusionesanteriores son elaboradas en dos “animes” que permiten que los estudiantes se involucren vivencialmente enestas interpelaciones éticas y que los docentes puedan acoger sus vivencias en una experiencia dialógica deaprendizaje comprendida narrativamente. Concluye recapitulando las oportunidades y exigencias planteadasa los docentes desde esta clave de lectura del sentido de las creaciones audiovisuales en la actividad educativa. (shrink)

Opera is a performing art in which music plays the leading role, and the acting of singers has a synergistic effect with the music. The mirror neuron system represents the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the coupling of perception and action. Mirror neuron activity is modulated by the appropriateness of actions and clarity of intentions, as well as emotional expression and aesthetic values. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that an opera performance induces mirror neuron activity in the audience so that (...) the performer effectively shares an embodied performance with the audience. However, it is uncertain which aspect of opera performance induces mirror neuron activity. It is hypothesized that although auditory stimuli could induce mirror neuron activity, audiovisual perception of stage performance is the primary inducer of mirror neuron activity. To test this hypothesis, this study sought to correlate opera performance with brain activity as measured by electroencephalography in singers while watching an opera performance with sounds or while listening to an aria without visual stimulus. We detected mirror neuron activity by observing that the EEG power in the alpha frequency band was selectively decreased in the frontal-central-parietal area when watching an opera performance. In the auditory condition, however, the alpha-band power did not change relative to the resting condition. This study illustrates that the audiovisual perception of an opera performance engages the mirror neuron system in its audience. (shrink)

This paper shows how the method of cohesion analysis in film provides a strong foundation for constructing coherent filmic narrative across different spatial and temporal settings. Until now the unit of a fine-grained systematic analysis of film viewers' narrative comprehension has been anchored in the shot. This paper provides a semiotic descriptive tool of filmic cohesion for analyzing elements within and across shots, i.e., how viewers comprehend the presenting and tracking of dominant narrative elements such as characters, objects, and settings (...) as a film unfolds. In addition, this paper also reviews the Neo-Formalist exploration of cinematic cohesion and then demonstrates how the semiotics-oriented method suggested here can support more systematically and even strengthen the Neo-Formalist account. Most importantly, this article will explicitly show the potential of this tool for providing empirical accounts of filmic narrative construction by analyzing scene transitions in Wong Kar Wai's film 2046 (2004). (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone analizar el fenómeno del videoensayismo filosófico y pensarlo como un giro audiovisual que tiene la potencialidad de motorizar una transformación del campo. Para hacerlo, ofrece un mapa de producciones audiovisuales que pueden inscribirse en el campo de la filosofía, agrupándolas según tres regiones de origen, a saber, las instituciones académicas, que comienzan a permitir la experimentación con el soporte audiovisual, el circuito artístico, que aloja formas de reflexión híbridas, y el ensayismo audiovisual de (...) circulación masiva en YouTube, que desafía la cerrazón de las academias e inserta los desarrollos de la disciplina en el debate público. (shrink)

This collective book analyzes seriality as a major phenomenon increasingly connecting audiovisual narratives (cinematic films and television series) in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book historicizes and contextualizes the notion of seriality, combining narratological, aesthetic, industrial, philosophical, and political perspectives, showing how seriality as a paradigm informs media convergence and resides at the core of cinema and television history. By associating theoretical considerations and close readings of specific works, as well as diachronic and synchronic approaches, this volume offers (...) a complex panorama of issues related to seriality including audience engagement, intertextuality and transmediality, cultural legitimacy, authorship, and medium specificity in remakes, adaptations, sequels, and reboots. Written by a team of international scholars, this book highlights a diversity of methodologies that will be of interest to scholars and doctoral students across disciplinary areas such as media studies, film studies, literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. It will also interest students attending classes on serial audiovisual narratives and will appeal to fans of the series it addresses, such as Fargo, Twin Peaks, The Hunger Games, Bates Motel, and Sherlock. (shrink)

El presente artículo, de carácter descriptivo, analiza los principales métodos científicos utilizados en las Ciencias Sociales para analizar la violencia audiovisual. Así, los experimentos de laboratorio, o investigación experimental., estudios de campo, estudios correlacionales, estudios de panel longitudinal, experimentos naturales, estudios de intervención y revisión de meta-análisis han sido los principales métodos empleados por los investigadores más destacados en el campo de las Ciencias Sociales. En este artículo se presentan las técnicas utilizadas así como las principales investigaciones realizadas,con las (...) conclusiones más importantes sobre la violencia audiovisual. (shrink)

Bistable figures provide a fascinating window through which to explore human visual awareness. Here we demonstrate for the first time that the semantic context provided by a background auditory soundtrack can modulate an observer’s predominant percept while watching the bistable “my wife or my mother-in-law” figure . The possibility of a response-bias account—that participants simply reported the percept that happened to be congruent with the soundtrack that they were listening to—was excluded in Experiment 2. We further demonstrate that this crossmodal (...) semantic effect was additive with the manipulation of participants’ visual fixation , while it interacted with participants’ voluntary attention . These results indicate that audiovisual semantic congruency constrains the visual processing that gives rise to the conscious perception of bistable visual figures. Crossmodal semantic context therefore provides an important mechanism contributing to the emergence of visual awareness. (shrink)

Dubbing Dark Humour: A Case Study in Audiovisual Translation In an attempt to analyze the ways in which dark humour travels cross-culturally in audiovisual translation, the present study takes into consideration the processes involved in dubbing humour from English into Italian as observed in the English- and Italian-language versions of ten British and American dark comedies from the 1940s to the 2000s. In order to identify some of the main mechanisms of the dark humour genre, the humorous content (...) of the films was analyzed in terms of the elements on which specific scenes are based, mainly the non-verbal and verbal components. In the cases in which verbal elements were involved, i.e. the examples of verbally expressed humour, the analysis was concerned with the translation strategies adopted and with possible effects of alteration of the dark humour content as a result of translation. (shrink)