Screen
Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World
Robert Pepperell
and Michael Punt, Editors
Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2006
202 pp., Trade, $50.00
ISBN: 90-420-2016-4.
Reviewed by Anthony Enns
Department of English
308 English-Philosophy Building
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242
USA
anthony-enns@uiowa.edu
In their previous book, The Postdigital
Membrane: Imagination, Technology and
Desire, Robert Pepperell and Michael
Punt argue against the binary logic of
the digital paradigm, and they employ
instead the metaphor of the membrane,
which "gives form to complex phenomena
. . . at the same time as enabling a continuity
between them."[ 1] The "complex
phenomena" under discussion in this
book are "imagination, technology
and desire," and the convergence
of these three terms allows the authors
to examine the continuity between art,
computing, philosophy and science. A similar
goal informs their most recent collaboration,
an edited collection of essays entitled
Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind
and World. This volume is truly interdisciplinary,
as it includes contributions from scholars
in such varied fields as art history,
cinema studies, and philosophy, and one
of the primary goals of the collection
is to illustrate the arbitrary and historical
nature of disciplinary boundaries as well
as the potential benefits of interdisciplinary
work. As with their previous effort, Screen
Consciousness also addresses the relationship
between technology and consciousness,
and many of the contributions similarly
resist binary ways of thinking about the
mind and the body, art and science, faith
and rationality. The overall aim of the
book, according to the editors introduction,
is to examine how contemporary research
in the field of Consciousness Studies
might be incorporated into film theory,
yet many of the contributions are far
more ambitious, as they also explore what
cinema might reveal about the nature of
consciousness itself.
The authors approach these issues by attempting
to move beyond the two dominant interpretations
of film as either a realistic or an illusory
form of art. One of the central claims
of The Postdigital Membrane is
that "reality, which was formerly
understood as the counterpoint of imagination,
was increasingly seen as continuous with
it," [2] and several of the essays
collected in Screen Consciousness
similarly posit film as a technology that
is simultaneously realistic and illusory.
In "Shaping Consciousness: New Media,
Spirituality, and Identity," for
example, Michael Punt discusses the early
reception of film as a technological spectacle
that shared the stage with telepathic,
spiritualist, and mesmeric practices,
and he argues that the cinemas fusion
of technology and entertainment blurred
"the distinction between the paranormal
and materialist science" (p. 89).
Punt refers to this as the "double
life of the cinema, in which the fantastic
and the real are visualised with equal
conviction" (p. 101). Martha Blassniggs
"Clairvoyance, Cinema, and Consciousness"
similarly argues that early cinema was
"an expression of technology and
the occult that was an undercurrent in
the nineteenth century" (p. 106),
and she employs the theories of Henri
Bergson, Edgar Morin, and Gilles Deleuze
to show how the film spectator, like the
clairvoyant, enters "a flux of continuous
exchange and transformation of images
. . . which is profoundly spiritual"
(p. 116). Patricia Pisters "The
Spiritual Dimension of the Brain as Screen
Zigzagging from Cosmos to Earth (and Back)"
connects Deleuzes notion of the
brain as the screen to recent neurobiological
findings, which reveal that the "perception
of reality and illusory perception of
reality (like cinema) are quite similar"
(p. 127). Pisters discusses "mirror-neurons,"
for example, which are fired "when
we actually do something" as well
as "when we see (or hear) somebody
do something" (p. 128), which makes
"the distinction between fiction
and reality blurred and unimportant for
the brain/mind" (p. 130). Pia Tikkas
"Cinema as Externalization of Consciousness"
similarly questions the distinction between
fiction and reality by arguing that cinematic
narratives emerge "when mind recycles
. . . false body-state
representations" (p. 146), which
recreate situations that threaten the
spectators survival, much like dream
imagery. This theory problematizes the
notion of cinema as a purely illusory
artform because these states can only
be experienced by drawing on "the
embodied preconceptual schemata
of being in the everyday world" (p.
140).
The last two essays in this collection,
Susan Stuarts "Extended Body,
Extended Mind: The Self as Prosthesis"
and Robert Pepperells "Wheres
the screen? The paradoxical relationship
between mind and world," are perhaps
the most significant, as they address
the potential implications of the previous
film theories on our understanding of
consciousness. Stuart, for example, does
not locate the self in the mind or the
body, but rather she describes it as "a
set of relations between the senses, actions
and objects; it is nothing more than an
artefact of engagement with the world"
(p. 164). Stuart thus supports the externalist
view of consciousness, which asserts that
"we are only conceivable as selves
in dynamic conjunction with our world"
(p. 168), yet she also adds that "a
virtual world is as successful as a real
world in providing the interplay and content
we need to make these relata possible"
(p. 176). Like Pisters and Tikka, in other
words, Stuart concludes that media technologies
play a key role in the formation of consciousness
as they "alter irrevocably our perception
of our location, our extension and our
limitation" (p. 168). Pepperell complicates
this theory, however, by showing how the
cinemas integration of the fantastic
and the real illustrates the merging of
the externalist view of consciousness
and the internalist position, which claims
that "the world we see is not objective
or direct, but a subjective and indirect
representation constructed internally
by the nervous system" (p. 184).
Instead of attempting to reconcile these
apparently contradictory positions, Pepperell
concludes that "mind and world are
both distinct and unified,"
"visual perception occurs both
internally and externally," and therefore
"the screen is perceived in
here and out there at
the same time" (p. 192). The
paradox of cinematic perception thus reveals
the inherent paradox of consciousness
itself, which "may help to account
for the efficacy of the illusion in which
we simultaneously believe in and do not
believe in what the screen affordsthe
so-called Paradox of Fiction"
(p. 193).
The only evident shortcoming of this collection
is that the first three essays seem to
have only a tenuous connection to the
other contributions. The editors suggest,
for example, that Angela Ndalianis
discussion of robots illustrates "the
investment of technology with a soul"
(p. 19), yet it is unclear how this topic
is relevant to the books overall
theme. The editors also suggest that Sybille
Lammes analysis of technoscience
and eugenics in H.G. Wells The
Island of Dr. Moreau and the film
The Island of Lost Souls "argues
for a kind of science informed by Christian
belief" (p. 20), yet Lammes does
not address how this merging of science
and spirituality might represent a blurring
of the distinctions between the fantastic
and the real, which is the main focus
of the remaining six essays. However,
these later essays complement each other
extremely well, and while they may not
offer any definite conclusions they clearly
illustrate the value of interdisciplinary
research and the potential benefits of
further inquiry into this fascinating
field of study.
References
1. R. Pepperell and M. Punt, The Postdigital
Membrane: Imagination, Technology and
Desire (Bristol, UK; Portland, OR:
Intellect, 2000) p. 2.
2. Ibid.