[Commlist] CFP - L'Atalante #35 - Immersive Cinema. Devices, Stories, and Virtual Worlds

L'Atalante is pleased to announce the call for papers of issue 35 of 
*L’Atalante. Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos* which, under the 
title of “*Immersive Cinema: Devices, Stories, and Virtual Worlds*”, is 
open to contributions.

Executive Issue Editors: Àngel Quintana and Daniel Pérez (Universitat de 
Girona).

The period open to full article contributions between 5,000 and 7,000 
words goes fromApril 1st to April 24th 2022. The issue will be published 
in January 2023. There are no article processing costs charged to authors.

You can find detailed information at: 
http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement&op=view&path%5B%5D=86 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement&op=view&path%5B%5D=86>

www.revistaatalante.com <http://www.revistaatalante.com/>
(info /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>

IMMERSIVE CINEMA. DEVICES, STORIES AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

Thanks to the new digital technologies, much contemporary representation 
is based on virtual reality (Rodowick, 2007). Computer, television, and 
film images are the product of mathematical expressions that transform 
all signs into something equivalent to the medium they came from. As 
Pierre Lévy suggests, we are witnessing a “general movement of 
virtualization [that] has begun to affect not only the fields of 
information and communication but also our physical presence and 
economic activities, as well as the collective framework of sensibility 
and the exercise of intelligence. The process of virtualization has even 
affected our modalities of being together, the constitution of a 
collective ‘we’ in the form of virtual communities, virtual 
corporations, virtual democracy…” (Lévy, 1998: 15).

In spite of this process, photographic realism continues to be the Holy 
Grail of the digital image. But this kind of realism, which is 
celebrated in many of the discourses on the new media, has nothing to do 
with the need to capture and document events; rather, it is associated 
with the possibility of building new worlds with the same guarantees 
once offered by the analogue image. In other words, the digital image, 
drawing on mathematical algorithms, explores the possibility of creating 
a multi-layered three-dimensional space that is heavily marked by 
simulation. This is why, in the process of capturing images, the 
contemporary world gives way to the virtual world. Nevertheless, in view 
of the debate over the persistence of cultural series (Gaudreault, 
2008), where the concepts of continuity and singularity are disputed, it 
is worth questioning whether this photographic realism of the digital 
age is really new. We should be able to identify its essence in the 
mythical story of Zeuxis and Parrhasius (Gubern, 2005), or in ideas like 
that of a “total cinema” capable of creating other worlds, described by 
René Barjavel in the 1940s.

The digitalisation of cinema, in the context of a broader process of 
virtualisation, has positioned the medium in a new realm of creation of 
virtual worlds that needs to be defined, studied, and analysed. However, 
to be able to tease out its implications, it is also necessary to 
revisit that moment when photography and analytical computation first 
began to explore new directions (Manovich, 2001). The first 3D films and 
the subsequent development of stereoscopic images explored new 
three-dimensional forms of depth of field in a manner similar to Hale’s 
Tours of the World, the Mareorama, and even the panoramas of the 
late-18^th  century, to offer /immersive/ aesthetic experiences not so 
different from the cinematic experience. While the first screening of a 
3D film took place on 10 June 1915 at the Astor Theatre in New York City 
(Barnier and Kitsopanidou, 2015), featuring footage shot by Edwin S. 
Porter, today the 4DX format offers a viewing experience on a huge IMAX 
screen, with Dolby Atmos surround sound enhanced by seat movements and 
other sensory effects (rain, fog, wind) that bring the spectator closer 
to the action. To map a genealogy of the cinematic experience, to 
situate it in its historical context and place it in relation to other 
cultural phenomena of its time, is just as important as investigating 
how film narratives are conditioned by these different approaches to the 
relationship between spectator and film.

Immersion in the virtual worlds of cinema raises a theoretical problem 
that involves the concepts of virtual reality, augmented realities, and 
(especially) /photorealism/. All these variations on the notion of 
reality point to the idea that cybernetic realism has never contradicted 
the principle of classical cinema that associates the film image with 
figurative realism. In all cases, what these variations offer is not a 
realism of the represented, but a realism of the representation 
(Quintana, 2011). The objective of this kind of realism is to conquer an 
imaginary: its intention is not to imitate the coordinates of the real 
world, but to bring dreams to life, to create a limited, realistic and 
internally consistent world.

The aim of this monograph is to explore different facets of the 
immersive capacity that cinema has possessed and continues to possess, 
through studies examining the relationship between aesthetics and film 
narrative and the devices that make that relationship possible. In this 
sense, rather than exploring immersion and virtual experience in cinema 
from a merely technological point of view, the intention of this issue 
is to investigate how they influence cinematic enunciation and spectator 
reception.

Areas that submissions could consider include:

 1. *Media archaeology:* the analysis and study of technologies that
    developed prior to and during the age of cinema, which can serve to
    contextualise film history within a much broader process, focusing
    on the evolution of visual devices, such as screens, projectors, and
    audio systems.
 2. *Immersive experiences in early cinema: *research analysing films
    from the early years of cinema in order to identify traces of new
    sensory forms in such works.**
 3. *Theoretical reflections on immersive technologies:* hermeneutic
    approaches to the concept of “immersion” related to the audiovisual
    devices and spectacles of the early years.**
 4. *Immersive spectacles and virtualisation:* exploring different types
    of immersive experiences in connection with the film spectacle, also
    from a historiographic perspective.**
 5. *The role of the actor and virtual worlds: *the development of the
    actor’s work in the context of new virtualisation processes.**
 6. *Mise-en-scène and** immersive environments: *studying the
    development and associated use of /immersive/ spaces, such as those
    offered by 4DX technology, also in relation to other attempts to
    create immersive experiences in the past, such as Hale’s Tours of
    the World, the Mareorama, or the panoramas of the late 18^th 
 century.**
 7. *Relationships between the virtual worlds of early cinema and
    contemporary cinema: *a revision of the past from the perspective of
    a dual logic based, on the one hand, on an analysis of the reuse of
    pre-existing technologies, and on the other, on an aesthetic
    reflection on the modes of virtuality of the present in connection
    with the aesthetic achievements of the past.
 8. *Relationships between virtual worlds and film narrative*:
    reflections on case studies that consider how technological
    developments condition film narrative, i.e., that posit a discursive
    relationship between the mode of presenting a particular story in
    images and the devices that make it possible.**
 9. *Relationships between virtual worlds and film aesthetics:
    *approaches to the creation of visual imaginaries that emerge or
    have emerged in relation to the virtual worlds of different eras,
    either within the film world itself or imported from other worlds,
    such as the binary language of the digital world or of video games.**

*References***

Barnier, M. & Kitsopanidou, K. (2015). /Le cinema 3-D. Histoire, 
économie, technique, esthétique. /Paris: Armand Collin.

Gaudreault, A. (2008). /Cinéma et attraction. Pour une nouvelle histoire 
du cinématographe. /Paris: CNRS.

Gubern, R. (2005). /Del bisonte a la realidad virtual: La escena y el 
laberinto/. Madrid: Anagrama.

Lévy, P. (1998). /Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. /New 
York: Plenum Press.[MB1] 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement&op=view&path%5B%5D=86#_msocom_1>

Manovich, L. (2001). /El lenguaje de los nuevos medios de comunicación: 
la imagen en la nueva era digital/. Barcelona: Paidós.

Quintana, A. (2011). /Después del cine. Imagen y realidad en la era 
digital/. Barcelona: Acantilado.

Rodowick, D.N. (2007). /The Virtual Life of Film. /Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press.

/L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos/ accepts submissions 
of unpublished essays on topics related to film theory and/or praxis 
that stand out for their innovative nature. Articles should focus on 
approaches to the cinematographic fact made preferably from the 
perspectives of historiography or audiovisual analysis. Those texts that 
approach novel objects of study with rigorous and well-evidenced 
methodologies will be appreciated. Articles that take as their main 
reference the processes of signification through the analysis of the 
audiovisual form and/or the narratological elements specific to our 
field, focusing on methodologies specifically related to the treatment 
of the image will be favoured in the selection process. Although we 
accept works with other methodologies that approach the filmic fact from 
transversal perspectives (Cultural Studies, philological approaches, 
etc.) we consider that the main interest of the journal is located on 
the studies that take the specifically cinematographic expressive tools 
as the main elements of discourse. Likewise, texts that are not limited 
to describing, enumerating or summarizing details of the plot, but that 
rigorously apply a specific and well-evidenced analysis methodology, 
reaching particular and novel results, will be given priority.

Below are a few aspects to keep in mind:

  * Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission
    guidelines of the journal and to the standards and scientific rigour
    expected of an academic publication [see SUBMISSIONS section

<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions>]
  * Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic
    explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously
    addressed in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics
    previously addressed in the journal may be rejected. The content of
    the issues published to date can be consulted on the journal's website.
  * All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that
    will respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double
    blind peer review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias.
    In the event of a very high number of submissions, the Editorial
    Board will make a prior selection of the articles to be peer
    reviewed, choosing the articles deemed the most appropriate for the
    issue. Failure to observe the submission guidelines and/or standards
    of originality and academic rigour will result in rejection of the
    submission by the Editorial Board without external review.
  * Authors of accepted submissions will be contacted within six months.
  * Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including
    all sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as
    .rtf, .odt or .docx files, using the template provided for this
    purpose. Files containing the author's statement (.pdf) and any
    images (.psd, .png, .jpg, .tiff) must be uploaded to the website as
    complementary files. A detailed version of the submission guidelines
    can be found at the SUBMISSIONS

<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions> section.
    Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected
    automatically.
  * The selected articles will be published in a bilingual edition
    (Spanish and English).
  * If the original manuscript is in Spanish, the authors of the texts
    accepted for publication must pay the costs that result from the
    translation to English or revision—in the case of providing, along
    with the original, a translated version—of their article. In all
    cases, and in order to guarantee the quality of the translations and
    the unity of linguistic criteria, the text must be translated or
    reviewed by the translator recommended by the journal, a freelance
    professional specialised in Film Studies. His work will be paid in
    advance and via Paypal by the authors.
  * If the original manuscript is in English*, the authors of the texts
    accepted for publication must provide a professional translation to
    Spanish. [*L'Atalante may also suggest a revision by the translator
    recommended by the journal for Non-English speaking authors.]
  * /L'Atalante/ does not offer any compensation for published articles.
    For more information: (info /at/ revistaatalante.com)
    <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------