MovieScape: Audiovisual Landscapes for Silent Movie: Enactive Experience in a Multimodal Installation

Abstract

The multimodal installation MovieScape articulates sound, image, and movement with the poetics of silent film. It is an immersive mixed-reality environment in which the boundaries between the real and the virtual are imprecise and ambiguous. In MovieScape, audiovisuals generated in real time induce the emergence of recurring motor patterns performed by the visitor. An audiovisual-scape is selected with an imaginary steering wheel that is activated when the visitor closes both fists. After this initial gesture, a sphere covered with images of the silent movie is modified with rotations and displacements that alter the sequence of scenes, music track and the sound landscape. The interaction between perception, action and movement articulates with the concept of Embodied Cognition, bringing about an enactive experience in which the participant immerses in the possibilities of the silent movie. The basic setup of the installation is presented, as well as technical aspects concerning the network communication, motion capture, sonification and visualization. A participative methodology, which is (itself) a factor of knowledge construction and artistic expression, supports the creative process of MovieScape.