ILUMINACE, Czech scholarly film journal, invites authors to submit papers for the special issue on FILM AND NEUROAESTHETICS. The submissions will undergo blind peer review. The selected studies will be translated into Czech and published in the fourth issue of 2011 Iluminace. The authors can seek publishing their articles in English provided that the publishing date will not be sooner than January 1, 2012 and that they include a reference to Iluminace in the article.

Background

A new field called neuroaesthetics has emerged recently. Most famously, a neurologist Semir Zeki found a rich ground in the arts, enabling him to discuss and promote his theory of early vision processes. Few laboratories worldwide – in Copenhagen, Leipzig or Parma, among others – have followed his example. Although Zeki's original interest was mainly in human early vision, neuroaesthetics has soon focused on neurology of aesthetic experience – presumably a higher-level cognitive state. By now, neuroaesthetics has flourished mainly in relation to visual arts, literature and music.

Film has been rarely an object of interest in neuroaesthetics, in spite of the fact that exploring the relation between cognitive processes and film is a traditional topic in film studies. Muensterberg's Photoplay (1916) – one of the first books in film theory – understood film as objectification of mental processes. Furthermore, the tradition of cognitivist approach to film theory naturally supports empirical research, neurosciences included. Some scholars – e.g. Gregory Currie and Uri Hasson – take current neurosciences to be an inspiration for film theory or, even, the beginning of a new era of film studies. Although neurosciences seem to be a natural ally of the cognitivist film theory, this alliance is not mutually binding: on the one hand, the cognitvists can – and more often do – carry empirically informed research outside the field of neurosciences, and, on the other, the neuroscience-friendly film theory framework is not, necessarily, cognitivist.

The objective of a special issue of Iluminace is to introduce readers to the area where the neurosciences meet film studies. We invite scholars from the film studies, neurosciences and philosophy to help us identify those problems in film theory that represent potentially fruitful topics for the neuroscientific research, as well as those results of the research in the neurosciences that may trigger interest in the film studies.

Topics

Suggested topics include, but are not limited, to the following:
Neurons and Films: Analysis of film representation of the brain processes.
History of empirical approaches to film spectatorship, or Muensterberg's Photoplay after 95 years.
Can the hypothesis about two streams of visual perception (Goodale, Milner) make any impact on our understanding to film perception?
Can the discovery of mirror neurons (Rizzolatti) contribute to our understanding to film perception?
Narration, emotion, imagination from a neuroscientific perspective.
Film as an experience instruction manual: Analysis of the cognitive mechanisms of a particular film.
Experimental cinema from a neuroscientific perspective.

Schedule

Extended abstracts (1000 words): May 30, 2011.
Full articles: July 20, 2011.
Notifications: July 31, 2011

Further information

Tereza Hadravova
Charles University, Prague
iluminace.neuroaesthetics@gmail.com