Electronic soundscape: The impression of reality in synthesis cinema

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the involvement of sound, specifically electronic generated or modified sounds in the construction of the impression of reality in cinematographic experience. From an analysis of Jean-Louis Baudry on the film apparatus, I propose that, although often underestimated, sound is a fundamental tool in the mobilization of the senses and, therefore, the creation of an immersive space. Following Baudry, cinematic experience has intrinsic relations to the state of dream. The absence of a “test of reality” effectuated by our motor mechanisms would give the favorable conditions for a misled interpretation of representations as if they were genuine perceptions. This is a usual process in dream state. Cinema, as commonly compared to dream conditions, deals with a similar effacement of reality perceptions in order to instigate a new sort of “real”. How can we describe the process of turning into reality soundscapes which components do not have, themselves, an immediate relation to concrete objects? How can those electronic sounds contribute in this process of new realities construction?