mircea V deaca

University of Bucharest, Facultatea de Litere, Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty Member

Followers

112

Following

Public Views

Mircea Valeriu Deaca had at the Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle, Institut en Recherches en cinema et audiovisuel a Ph.D with a thesis on the carnival tradition and Federico Fellini’s films. He is currently teaching film theory and contemporary Romanian film analysis at the Doctoral School in Image Studies (CESI) at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest. He published several books on film: The Carnival and Federico Fellini’s Films (2009), Second Camera (2011), Postfilmic Cinema (2013), The Anatomy of Film. Introduction to the Semio-cognitive Approach of Film Studies (2013). He is writing about cinema since 1983. He is editor of the collective 2015 issue of Images, CESI, dedicated to the cinematography of the romanian director, Cristian Mungiu. He is currently working on a study on cognitive grammar applied to film analysis, Investigations in Cognitive Film Analysis.

less

Howard Nusbaum

University of Chicago

Robert Lickliter

Florida International University

David Sorfa

University of Edinburgh

Michael Spivey

University of California, Merced

Krishna Prasad Miyapuram

Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar

David Pierre Leibovitz

Carleton University

Yale University

Macquarie University

University of Ulster

Concordia University (Canada)

InterestsView All (8)

Uploads

Papers by mircea V deaca

17. The Conceptual Domains of Film Analysis

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

14. Circular Couplings in Cinematographic Constructions

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios

Transylvanian Review, Nov 25, 2021

The Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios the paper argues that ritua... more The Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios the paper argues that rituals and symbolic cultural artifacts are external models of the world. the key idea is that human agents do not have direct or unmediated access to the external world. Humans can sense and act upon intermediary processes such as cultural artifacts and rituals and construct a model of the target external world. in biological terms a Markov blanket mediates sense-making exchanges between the agent organism and the environment. in the cultural niche, humans, via rituals, model themselves modeling the world. in this structure of several nested Markov blankets the individual is included in a larger blanket. Hence, cultural practice offers a model of the world and a model of the self in the world. the cultural practice allows the creation of a cultural body/self for the agent. rituals mediate the relationship between the organism and the world. they also simulate the “incorporation” of the world and the self via the dynamic process of control. By action and sensory perception, the agent includes the external states in its area of control of the blanket. the agent and the cultural practice are coupled in a bi-directional control cycle. the agent controls the ritual and the ritual, once included in the field of control of a new encompassing blanket, changes the structure of the agent which becomes a new entity/self. rituals targeting the individual designate the personal transformation (e.g. birth, transition from child to adult, marriage, and death) and rituals of collective transformation (spring festivals that mark the passage from one year to another) target the evolution of the world in time. rituals formulate (in a descriptive manner) hidden realities and, at the same time (in a performative manner), bring them into existence as external realities that can be described and controlled via what is commonly labeled as magical thinking. rituals, conceived as explanatory models, simultaneously provide evidence for a self nested in a cultural niche and for a conceptualized external environment.

13. Kitchen Encounters: Scenes of Face-to-face Dialogue in Films of the New Romanian Cinema

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Apr 12, 2019

15. The Motion

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

10. The E-site

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

11. The Image Pole and Object Pole

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

13. The Metaphor

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

1. Cognitive Grammar Notions

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

2. A General Description of the Control Cycle

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

4. The Grounded Approach of Perception and Action

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

12. The Reference Point and Metonymy

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Facebook as Emotion and Action

Mediamorfoze, 2015

The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhai... more The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition to official Power. This opposition is not the expression of a clear message issued by a single author. It is mainly a reversal of the discourse of the o Other and the expression of freedom of views. As a play of masks Facebook allows its user to adopt an avatar considered to be immune of responsibility : it is what one can call an “public intimate” channel of communication. It is private but nonetheless expressed for a community of users. As a narrative it lacks a single author. Any user is author and lector; actor and audience. It represents a narrative without a closure and has family resemblance to play and performance. As a social mechanism Facebook seeks affiliation as cooperation and competition as domination. A lot of Facebook elicit an emotional approach. Emotion is a construal – action readiness - based on the appraisal of a situation in virtue of current goals and concerns of the individual. A lot of Facebook testimonials display a personal experience that is undisputable “true” (lyrical and ego centred). As such Facebook is a constant conversion mechanism that transforms emotion into reasons for beliefs and an invitation to action readiness – either in the mode of cooperation or participation or in the mode of domination and competition. „I like” is the minimal expression of emotion that creates the gateway to belief conversion and action. Keywords: Facebook, carnival, emotion, conversion, belief, action, narrative

The Control Cycle in Film

Mashup Cinema or Eisenstein’s Legacy

The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey ... more The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey of several points of view on the matter I discuss the case of mashup cinema. This genre is based on recycling of cinematic sequences in order to create new narrative and fictional discourses. Contrary to Dada&#39;s rhetoric, mashup cinema is prone to create narratives based on continuity. New semantic constructions are elaborated out of heterogeneous filmic scenes and sequences. Discontinuities, viewed as autonomous sequences, are enjoyed per se. Sequences are further bound by narrative roles, and by abstract and sensorial modifiers such as music, movement, shapes and colors. This characteristic has been, since its birth, an explanatory element of what we call film. Today&#39;s mashup cinema tends to become an audiovisual hieroglyphic language available to viewers and users situated at both ends of the spectrum, i.e. producers and addressees. Faced with this democratization of audiovisual use poststructuralist philosophical approaches have a gist of panic, and today&#39;s films and shorts are considered to be the epiphenomena announcing an apocalypse. Film analysts like David Bordwell, Roger Odin or Laurent Jullier adopt a more sober stance and study the new shifts in emphasis and the innovative use of new constructional schemas in a manner closer to the filmic text. Cinematic discourse, through the use of prefabricated chunks, cinematic topoi, is evolving towards a language which resembles the medieval literature and carnival where a common cultural thesaurus was available to users in order to create new conceptualizations and reality conceptions.

Circular Causality of Emotions in Moving Pictures

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2021

In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you... more In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference (2014), humans construct instances of emotions by a double arrow of explanation of stimuli. Top-down cognitive models explain in a predictive fashion the emotional value of stimuli. At the same time, feelings and emotions depend on the perception of internal changes in the body. When confronted with uncertain auditory and visual information, a multimodal internal state assigns more weight to interoceptive information (rather than auditory and visual information) like visceral and autonomic states as hunger or thirst (motivational conditions). In short, an emotional mood can constrain the construction of a particular instance of emotion. This observation suggests that the dynamics of generative processes of Bayesian inference contain a mechanism of bidirectional link between perceptual and cognitive inference ...

Download

Coping with the Unknown in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar

After Kubrick, 2020

Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 20... more Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) exhibit a family resemblance. Both films are constructed as instances of SF film genre. Categorizing a film sequence as a token of SF concept is the result of a bidirectional mechanism. First the viewer will categorize elements of the setting that evoke the SF diegesis. The winner categorizing element propagates and categorizes the ensemble in bottom up manner. It categorizes the ensemble as a token of SF. Categorical inferences are activated and expand the scope of expected knowledge associated with a concept. Secondarily the evoked concept categorizes the instance in a top down manner. Other elements in the compound conceptualization are tuned and warped to be instances of the top down categorizing concept. 1 Once a viewer compares them he will construct a common pattern – a conceptual prototype – and will distinguish differences between both instances. The comparison act has a direction of categorization between the standard and the target of the comparison. Depending on the choice of the standard the viewer will construct an ad-hoc concept that will serve as the prototype (a type) used in order to apprehend the target (a token). Alternating the direction of categorization (AàB or BàA) means that at each comparison a different type (C and C*) will have two token instances. In time the viewer will construct a common concept out of the summary features extracted from both instances (C/C* ß D). Apprehending each instance is an act of making meaning, of conceptualizing. Each instance is a particular and unique combinatory mix of common bits and pieces that are represented schematically in the concept constructed and bits and pieces that are instances of other categorizing types. The prototype is the combination of both elements aggregated in an abstract common compound. The viewer will have conceptual access to the common template – a schematic representation of both prototypes –, to the prototypes, and finally he can keep in memory the two distinct instances. In order to apprehend the specificity of a particular cinematographic instance – a film – viewers will record the individual construal, i.e. the cinematographic work (camera work, shot scale and duration, dominant chromatic toning, movement and sound design). Constructing a particular conceptualization fuses expressive channel and content channel. The viewer keeps in memory a schematic representation of the conceptualization, a scarce representation or a summary of the conceptualization.

The Control Cycle Cognitive Model in Biology, Film and Culture

Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 2018

The focus of the present study is the Control Cycle (CC), a seldom discussed cognitive model that... more The focus of the present study is the Control Cycle (CC), a seldom discussed cognitive model that is yet to be applied in film theory. The CC is grounded in bodily experience and is related to image-schematic thinking. The CC is based upon the Tension Cycle, consisting of four successive stages: an initial stage of relaxation; next a stage of increasing tension followed up by a force-dynamic event which releases the built-up pressure; and finally, resulting from the event, another stage of relaxation. The proposal of this article is that the CC takes a wide array of manifestations in biological cycles, brain processes, epistemic and cognitive phenomena, vision, culture, linguistic predication and semantic constructions. Cinematic conceptualizations are no exceptions. Editing constructions, camera movement, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, emotion mechanics, narrative interest and narrative absorption instantiate the phases of the Control Cycle.

Download

Hypertheatre or Media Entanglement in the Theatre of Jay Scheib

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2016

The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features, allowing for a theoretical inves... more The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features, allowing for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film and theatre fuse and, at the same time, be apprehended as separate artistic means in a single artifact? The present article uses a theoretical interpretive metaphor that rests on an application of the mechanisms of relationship between two physical systems issued from the quantum mechanical view of reality. From this perspective, the two afore-mentioned media are in an entangled state. Media is understood as “potential materials or forms for future practices,” or “automatisms” (

Download

Science fiction films as gedanken experiments

Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 2017

The paper investigates some features of the science fiction film genre, as seen from a cognitive ... more The paper investigates some features of the science fiction film genre, as seen from a cognitive perspective. Starting from the theoretical framework of Lawrence Barsalou, we consider the concept of SF film to be a radial category that encompasses a wide array of particular instantiations clustered around several generic clusters. The definition of the genre is encyclopedic, and thus it does not require a sufficient and necessary set of distinctive features. During film experience, the audience will categorize visual elements composing the diegetic setting in a bottom up fashion. These elements are functional bundles and form a repertoire. They evoke a representation that includes properties, relations, rules, behavior of objects, agents, settings and a wide variety of internal states such as interoceptions and mentalizing. This representation is a background situated conceptualization. This background situation is apprehended in a top down manner as an instantiation of the SF abstract concept, a whole situation category. The overall conception is a familiar landscape that has a more schematic and abstract description, a descriptive system, and comprises a collection of different situated conceptualizations. Conceptually, SF is understood as a thought experiment based on the 'what if' speech act scenario performed by an explicit / implicit narrator. The conceptual description of the counterfactual proposition contains a comparison between an actual situation (the natural world conception) and an alien one (the proposed new situation or event).

Download

17. The Conceptual Domains of Film Analysis

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

14. Circular Couplings in Cinematographic Constructions

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios

Transylvanian Review, Nov 25, 2021

13. Kitchen Encounters: Scenes of Face-to-face Dialogue in Films of the New Romanian Cinema

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Apr 12, 2019

15. The Motion

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

10. The E-site

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

11. The Image Pole and Object Pole

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

13. The Metaphor

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

1. Cognitive Grammar Notions

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

2. A General Description of the Control Cycle

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

4. The Grounded Approach of Perception and Action

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

12. The Reference Point and Metonymy

Sciendo eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Facebook as Emotion and Action

Mediamorfoze, 2015

The Control Cycle in Film

Mashup Cinema or Eisenstein’s Legacy

Circular Causality of Emotions in Moving Pictures

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2021

Download

Coping with the Unknown in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar

After Kubrick, 2020

The Control Cycle Cognitive Model in Biology, Film and Culture

Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 2018

Download

Hypertheatre or Media Entanglement in the Theatre of Jay Scheib

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2016

Download

Science fiction films as gedanken experiments

Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 2017

Download

Coping with the unknown in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar

Download

The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989). The impossibilia of incompleteness.

Text, obiect, context. Studii de antropologie istorică și arheologie. Department of Ancient History, Archaeology and History of Art. Faculty of History. University of Bucharest, 2018

Michael Haneke's film, The Seventh Continent (1989) is a clear case of a meta-film that contains ... more Michael Haneke's film, The Seventh Continent (1989) is a clear case of a meta-film that contains a bididrectional metaphoric construal. The analysis is based on Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980) in which a metaphor is construed out of the mapping of semantic correspondences from a source to a target conceptual domain. The film combines two metaphors. In one a diegesis (the life of an Austrian family) is the source for the understanding of the concept of film. The film* is the resulting conceptual blend that boroughs elements from both the source and the target. In its turn this blend is the new source for conceptualizing the target conceptual domain of the human condition. The secondary metaphor is LIFE IS A FILM*. The human condition is a cinematic condition; it exhibits the features of the cinematic artifact and of the cinematic image. In this case it appears that there are two metaphors, each with a different mapping: FILM IS LIFE and LIFE IS A FILM. The filmic discourse is a performative conceptual act. The claim is that Haneke proposes us a film in which semantic oppositions are constructed and systematically cancelled. When the film is apprehended from a logical point of view it is an impossibilia, i.e. an auto-referential conceptualization exhibiting incompleteness or inconsistency. The cinematic viewer is not aware of the internal contradictions since he is immersed in a dynamic mental scanning of the meaning trajectories between descriptive systems that are locally comprehensible.

Download

Cognitive grammar applied to cinematic movement

The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar ad... more The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar advocated by Ronald W. Langacker to film analysis. Cinematic conceptualizations are constructed in a scaffolding manner. The constructions contain bindings between schematic subcomponents (elaboration site, i.e. e-site) and more fined grained elaborations (instantiations). The e-sites are ad-hoc goal derived categories or abstract summaries of conceptual content that is further elaborated in cinematic discourse unfolding. The schematic element and its instantiation have a conceptual commonality (one is schematic and the other an elaboration of an inherent conceptual content) and exhibit similar connections with external elements, i.e. play analogous roles in processual (head – complement) and non-processual (head – modifier) groupings. Specifically character movement and camera movement can be described with this conceptual apparatus.

Download

THE CONTROL CYCLE IN FILM. CIRCULAR COUPLING FROM BRAIN TO CULTURE.

Berlin: Sciendo, 2020

The aim of the present study is theoretical. The question set up for examination is whether there... more The aim of the present study is theoretical. The question set up for examination is whether there is a cognitive model that underpins human sense-making in the context of film experience. The conceptual resources provided by Cognitive grammar (as elaborated by Ronald W. Langacker), the recent developments of the neuroscience of emotions (as advocated by Lawrence Barsalou, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Giovanna Colombetti), the theory of attention advocated by Michael S. A. Graziano, and several suggestions from the embodied-enactive approach (in the works of Evan Thompson and Maxine Johnson-Smith) seemed particularly useful coordinates for this research composed of analytical reflections. The study focuses on the cognitive model based on the action of control, understood as an explanatory instrument for creating meaning, and follows up with the possible applications in the domain of film analysis. The work is the result of collaborative research spurred by theoretical advances and hypotheses from neuroscience, neurolinguistics, and film theory and analysis. On the account developed here, the structure of the control cycle cognitive model is regarded as central to sense-making.

Download

mircea V deaca

Uploads

Papers by mircea V deaca

Log In