The following is an unpublished post from 2014 that would have formed one part of the introduction for the Ways 2 Interface research project.
Re-asserting Grand Theory with Practical Validation
Re-asserting Grand Theory with Practical Validation
While the seed for Ways 2 Interface was always germinating throughout the process of orchestrating Ways of Being, the seed for this project's essential aesthetic focus was established in Appendix I: The Multiplex is in your Pocket. Appendix I, with Appendix F: The Multiplex is in Trouble, was originally going to form Chapter Three of the paper's primary content, but this extra chapter was disbanded when I severly went over the primary content's required word count.
However, in The Multiplex is in Your Pocket I touched on the concept of the interface:
However, in The Multiplex is in Your Pocket I touched on the concept of the interface:
- the external physical interface, such as an iPad or cinema screen, through which the consumer directly experiences content.
- the theoretical construct interface, such as the gaze in Todd's McGowan's The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan, representing the point at which a spectator and spectacle come into contact.
- the neuorological interface, as posited in Film Theory: Introduction Through the Senses, where the spectator and the spectacle interact on a neurological or neurobiological level.
While I am championing the need to extend the scope of understanding, as an essential philosophical pursuit, I am also asserting a need to change/re-clarify the ways in which we discuss the relationship:
"we need to understand how the spectator views, absorbs, receives, engages, experiences, constructs, desires, negotiates, manipulates, participates, fantasises, debates, infers, identifies, critiques, addresses, senses, recreates and integrates with the cinematic fiction. The problematic nature of terminology and diversity in film theorisation goes to the very heart of this thesis’ focus" (O'Brien, 2013:36).
The inadacacies of terminology and definition were something that I continously came back to in Ways of Being:
"Beyond celluloid film being discontinued, does ‘film’ refer to just theatrically produced entities or does it also refer to entities produced for television and the internet? Likewise, what is ‘cinema’ referring to: the physical cinema location, an artistic temperament or the industry as a whole?" (O'Brien, 2013:111).
In Appendix A, I even went so far as to suggest a replacement for 'the spectator' and 'the spectacle' terms; respectively, these I repositioned as 'the percieving participator' and 'the spectacle experiencing situation'. While these were only hyperphetical, I created these new terms to demonstrate the shortcomings of current terminology.
Defining the Components
As I have already noted, my paper argued for the inclusion of the body and, therefore, a greater sensory consideration; to this end, to describe an audience member as a viewer or spectator - an entity that is reliant on the information going through the eyes - is not a fair representation of the true sensory experience that actually occurs when experiencing a film (you should note that I tend to use 'experiencing' opposed to the more typically used 'viewing').
Do we view or do we feel films?
I was never one hundred percent happy with the terms of the percieving participator and the spectacle experiencing situation; in fact, I think they are too clunky, but they still demonstrate a need for the current terminology to be clarified in regards to whatever context those terms are presented within.
I am no linguist, but until clarity is brought to the way in which we discuss the subject, how can we ever hope to disect this thing that we call 'cinema', 'film', 'the movies', 'content' if we can not even define its delivery and reception processes properly?
In the paper and here
also, I do use the terms 'spectator' and 'spectacle', because
they are specific enough to refer to a film and an audience member and loose
enough to refer to other forms of media and presentation that cater for
audience members (they sounded better as a title as well).
Spectatornoun.A person who watches at a show, game, or other event: around fifteen thousand spectators came to watch the thrills and spills.Spectaclenoun.A visually striking performance or display: the acrobatic feats make a good spectacle.[mass noun]: the show is pure spectacle an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact:the spectacle of a city’s mass grief.(Oxford Dictionaries, 2013)
However, their emphasis on the visual does still bother me and if some better terms come along, then I will certainly use them. For the time being, though, I rely fully on the context in which I utilise these two terms; it is a context in which a greater sensory influence is at work:
“[in terms of our growing understanding of film spectatorship] we have stopped viewing spectacle content on a screen, and we now experience and interact with it via an interface. If there is a great deal of neurobiological participation happening on the spectator’s part, then perhaps this offers a more accurate way to talk about the process by which the spectator interfaces with any type of film spectacle” (O'Brien, p. 2013).
The Process of Interfacing
The interface allows us a means through which to more properly discuss and to concieve of the means by which a spectator and a spectacle interact with one another. The reflexive nature inherent in the definition and function of an interface allows us to see the relationship of the spectator and the spectacle as being something that has a back-and-forth inclination on both fronts - two faces/systems interacting with one another - and which also provides something of a concept of a middle-ground between those two interfacing components.
The interface: the place/device/situation where spectator interacts with spectacle, where spectacle interacts with spectator. The interfacing and the process of interfacing are representative of an essential way of being that is integral to human nature and it has something to do with cause and effect, to want and to attain, the fantasy and the reality, the creator and the monster, excitement and crescendo, life and death. Basically, if I could define what it is, I would not have to orchestrate this research project! I believe as much as it is concerned with the physical delivery and neurobiological reception methods, it is equally tied up with a cognitively abstract, even psychoanalytical, understanding of the explorer and the explored.
I feel as a means to approach this subject from a progressive and combined perspective 'interface' offers the best focus from which to start. Hence, my reasoning for establishing it as the starting point and ultimate ending focus of the second phase of this research project.
Read part 6 of the introduction - The Network-Narrative: Understanding the Spectator's World Wide Interfacing Relationship with the Spectacle
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