Symposium: Texture in Film
Sat 9th March 2013 09:00 to 18:00
Center for Film Studies
University of St Andrews
Scotland, UK
Dr Lucy Fife Donaldson
Texture is more commonly discussed in relation to visual art and design, music and literature than film. In these other disciplines, texture may refer to the tactile quality of a surface, the way a surface is changed by light, paint or other materials, the composition of fabric or narrative (as in the root of the word, to make/weave), the pattern of sound (rhythm and register) and the ‘concrete’ properties of language (metre, diction, syntax). Texture also has an important sensory dimension: it expresses the feel of an object, surface or material, and thus offers a way of acknowledging the importance of decisions around formal properties to our responsiveness to film, and to its patterns, to its overall shape. Considering texture in relation to film involves attention to the fine detail of a film’s realization, and offers the potential to enrich discussions of form and sensation in film.
This symposium will seek to explore ways in which thinking about texture can reinvigorate discussion of film form across a variety of cinematic contexts, as well as research practices (such as archival or practice-based approaches); with particular emphasis on approaches drawn from understandings of texture originating in study of visual art, music and literature.
This one-day symposium seeks to provide a forum for interdisciplinary approaches to the close analysis of film, inviting papers which explore any aspect of texture in film. Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers, which should be illustrated with detail from films. Alternative presentations, such as workshops, will also be considered. In order to encourage discussion the day will run with no parallel panels.
Please send your 250 word proposal, plus a short biography to Dr Lucy Fife Donaldson lfd2@st-andrews.ac.uk by 11th January 2013.
[Source: University of St Andrews]