From Sight to Touch, a Stereoscopic Cinematographic Experience

Abstract

This article investigates the complex relationship between sight and touch. Based on the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and on the analysis of movie extracts, I propose to study the stereoscopic device’s ability to take a hold on the viewer’s perceptions and his awareness of his own body, thus revealing the many enunciative possibilities of this perceptual crossing and its ability to produce meaning.

Keywords:

• Stereoscopy
• cinema
• phenomenology
• vision
• haptic
• perception

Notes on contributor

Yosr Ben Romdhane is a doctoral student at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, working under the supervision of Professor Dominique Chateau on the contribution of stereoscopy to the cinematographic spectatorial experience. In her scholarly publications, such as “Le Corps interprète” (The Interpreter Body), published in Les Cahiers Linguatek: Numéros 1 & 2 “Corps et langage,” (2017) and in contributions to academic conferences such as the International CRAL Graduate Student Seminar (2016), she examines the history and aesthetics of stereoscopy, highlighting its contribution to cinema.

Notes

1 All citations from Merleau-Ponty's Phénoménologie de la Perception are my own translations.

2 I propose a distinction between observer and viewer. The observer is a posture from which we study the stereoscopic picture. He sees his own pyramid of vision in front of him. From his perspective the other observers in the room are viewers.

3 Note that the mirror is a particular stereoscopic picture. It reflects a different image to each eye and a visual continuity using binocular vision. The reflected image is identical to a stereoscopic picture totally contained in the inward part of the scenic box.

4 Providing that it does not reinforce its initial spatial reference.