Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
5 - Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
Summary
Abstract
This essay suggests reconsidering Futurist cinema in the light of Marinetti’s Tattilismo (or Art of Touch), by exploring contemporary experiences of tactile art and imagining the possible future(s) of touch cinema. In the early 1920s, Marinetti's Art of Touch was a provocation in the face of the dominant hands-off museum culture. Today, we are surrounded by screens and surfaces that invite us to touch them. Yet, as exposed here in six different takes, this increase of tactile interfaces in our daily lives does not (necessarily) imply an enrichment of our sensory perception, let alone a completion of touch cinema.
Keywords: Art of Touch, Marinetti, Contemporary Art Installations, Touch Cinema, Sensory Perception
Take One: TOUCHING REALITY
A huge forefinger ‘travels’ over the horrifying picture of a wounded, bloodcovered body; with the help of a (equally huge) thumb, it stretches the image in order to obtain a closer view, points to some detail and pushes the image around; with a firm movement from right to left, it makes another picture of another mutilated body, dead or alive, appear. The finger repeats this right-to-left gesture several times – now faster, now slower – to reveal more brutal images. At one point, it reverses the direction of its gesture, from left to right, to return to the previous image. Then, it resumes its swift right-to-left movement. Shortly after, it arrests to zoom in again on a gruesome part of the picture.
This ‘hand travel’, which lasts about five minutes, was recorded in 2012 by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn. The video is entitled TOUCHING REALITY, but, in reality, the finger does not touch anything, that is, it does not touch any thing, any destroyed body of this brutal reality of war and murder. It merely glides over the surface of a smartphone or tablet; it touches a touchscreen without really touching what is on display. Furthermore, Hirschhorn reinforces the distance by deliberately opting for a non-interactive installation that excludes the spectator, gallery visitor, or museum-goer from engaging directly, tangibly, with the artwork. The touchscreen footage is displayed on a non-touchable projection surface or screen. The spectator, who contemplates this detached, non-engaged ‘hand travel’, is thus put into an equally non-engaging viewing position.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Futurist CinemaStudies on Italian Avant-garde Film, pp. 69 - 88Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2017