Scholarly record

THE CURIOUS ASPECTS OF AUDIONARRATOLOGY IN STEREOSCOPIC CINEMATIC VR

A. Ceplitis

Abstract

The term audionarratology was coined by Jarmila Mildorf and Till Kinzel in 2014, as a reaction to Lawrence Kramer who had argued a few decades earlier that music could not act as a narrative on its own. They took an opposite stand by offering theoretical considerations as well as methodological challenges with emphasis on narrative experientiality, audioception, situatedness, auricularisation, and focalization in sound. While they covered spoken language, radio plays, sound installations, music, video games, and traditional cinema, none of their contributions in the transposition, transformation and adaptation of sound and narrative, as the narration of its own kind, addresses the production of 360? stereoscopic spherical film, albeit the ambisonic sound designers believe that an immersive illusion is quickly shattered without the supportive auditory narrative. This paper aims to investigate whether the latter sentiment is valid in all instances and whether the feeling of a full psychosomatic presence might be in conflict with ambisonic narratives, whenever immersion is a key. By decoding the narrative structures of Mika JohnsonВ’s The Metamorphosis VR, a three-dimensional virtual reality installation, a metaphor and an irony of Franz KafkaВ’s story, done in much richer and more provocative manner, as well as field experiments, where the authorВ’s own Cinematic VR prototypes are used, the study outlines mechanisms by which an ambisonic sound design impedes an immersive experience, particularly when the audience is addressed via reverse internal locus (RIL), under the second-person perspective framework.

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