Narrative logic of enactive cinema:<i>Obsession</i>

Abstract

Abstract The cinematic montage installation Obsession is unique with respect to its interaction method: how the story is told is not directed by any kind of conscious activity of the spectators, such as clicking interface elements with the mouse. Introducing the notion of enactive cinema the work emphasizes unconscious interaction between the cinema and the spectators as participants, referring to the idea of acting with and within an environment. In this solution the narrative flow is driven tacitly by the participants' heart rate and skin conductivity evolving in response to the events on the screen, and a detector of orientation in the installation space. The invitation to enact this way is very gentle. In the middle of the space there are five chairs to sit down. On the arm of each chair a red-lit shape of a hand attracts the spectator to place her hand on the built-in biosensors. Each participant's heart rate is continuously measured from her fingertip, and the emotionalarousalis captured from her palmin terms of skin conductance. The spectators' common contribution is collected for the input to the software in charge of the narrative flow. This article concentrates on the explication of the narrative logic of this installation inspired by the Eisensteinian 'montage machine', and leaves aside a number of details of its complete setup. Keywords: biosensorscinematic montageenactive cinemanarrative flowskin conductivity Acknowledgements The gratitude of the authors to the Obsession team as a whole is expressed. Great thanks are given to curator Perttu Rastas, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki for the deliberate guidance in the practical set-up of the work. Warmest thanks are expressed to Niklas Ravaja and Mikko Salminen for expertise and support on Obsession's psycho-physiological aspects and data recording at M.I.N.D laboratory, Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research, Helsinki School of Economy. The work was partially supported by Academy of Finland funding for Interactive Narratives in Cross-media Systems research project (104768). Due to the limits of space, full acknowledgment for financial support, academic collaboration, as well as the completion of production team, can be viewed in URL: http://crucible.lume.fi/Obsession. Notes 1. Due to our restricted focus on narrative logics and the exploratory nature of the work, there is no possibility of an exhaustive discussion of the principles of interpreting emotion-related data. For such discussion see e.g. Ravaja Citation(2004) or Cacioppo et al. Citation(1993). 2. Obrist Citation(1981) links skin conductance activity to behavioural inhibition, and cardiovascular to behavioural activation. See URL:http://faculty.tc.columbia.edu/upload/sl2201/LeporeetalJPSP2000.pdf Additional informationNotes on contributorsPia Tikka Pia Tikka is a researcher at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Her background is in film, cinematography and graphic design. She has directed the feature films Daughters of Yemanjá (Brazil-Finland 1996) and Sand Bride (Finland 1998), and worked in a wide range of international feature film productions since 1989. Recently, in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Tikka introduced Obsession (2005), which puts into effect her doctoral research Framing narrative spaces for enactive cinema. Rasmus Vuori Rasmus Vuori is a Finnish new media pioneer who started in the early 80s hacking with computers and modems and in the 90s turned into a network and computer professional. He has participated actively in commercial and non-commercial cultural new media projects. His approach has remained instrumental, with an emphasis on art, culture and education. He is currently teaching and exploring new ways of authoring, designing and directing media artefacts with behaviour at the University of Art And Design in Helsinki. Mauri Kaipainen Mauri Kaipainen works as professor of new media at Tallinn University and an affiliate researcher at the Center of Knowledge and Innovation Research, Helsinki School of Economics. He studied education, musicology and cognitive science at the University of Helsinki where he earned his PhD in 1994. His approach to interactive media is based on a view of cognition as explorative activity of the embodied mind in its material, social and informational environment. He uses low-level metadata, or 'soft ontologies' and nature-like computational models as his core methodologies.