2nd International Baltic NeuroCine conference
Time: April 23.-24. 2024 Place: Baltic Film and Media School, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
Deadline for proposals: February 01, 2024
Tallinn University/ FilmEU invites scholars and creative professionals to contribute to the 2nd International Baltic NeuroCine conference.
The aim of the NeuroCine conference is to enhance joint interdisciplinary research endeavours on cinematic storytelling, film viewing, and related first-person experiences. The paradigm of ‘neurocinematics’ (Hasson et al. Projections 2008), refers to experimental studies that apply neuroimaging methods to study the functional brain of several film viewers, allowing generalisation over individuals in terms of what is called intersubject correlation (see reviews Jääskeläinen et al. 2020, 2021; Tikka et al. 2023). However, it has become evident that neuro-physiological measurements alone do not suffice to fully understand how the neural data of film viewers relates to the temporally unfolding narrative content they have been viewing on one hand, and film viewers’ embodied first-person experiences on the other.
Another issue the 2nd NeuroCine conference addresses is that, so far, the focus of neurocinematics has mainly been on the film viewers, while the study of professional filmmakers has been to a great extent neglected. This is why we turn the attention also to the filmmakers. We ask, how experiences and actions of filmmakers could be addressed using neurocinematic methods? Could the accumulated understanding of the film viewers provide some clues for such an endeavour? What type of challenges such a study program might face?
We trust that by associating accumulated knowledge from distinct domains will allow a more holistic window to the phenomena under scrutiny. Hence, the NeuroCine conference invites both local and international colleagues to join the effort of bridging the explanatory gaps between (1) neuro-physiological observation data, (2) first-person experiential data, and (3) descriptive data of the experienced film content.
We invite boldly multidisciplinary papers to contribute with theoretical, conceptual and practical approaches to the experiential nature of filmmaking and viewing. They may draw, for instance, from social and cognitive sciences, psychophysiology, neurosciences, ecological psychology, affective computing, cognitive semantics, aesthetics, or empirical phenomenology. Likewise, we welcome all relevant systemic models and epistemic considerations. The focus of a submission may also focus on a specific film expertise, for example that of the writer, editor, cinematographer, scenographer or sound designer.