Página inicialLa voix des choses

The Voice of Things

La voix des choses

La vocce delle cose

“PHILM” Journal of Philosophy and Cinema #6

*  *  *

Publicado quarta-feira, 06 de maio de 2026

Resumo

Of many films one might say what Michel Chion has clearly observed : one need only strip the sound from a sequence of moving images for its perceptual coherence to begin to unravel. Sound participates in the very constitution of the cinematographic image : it sustains its temporality, organises its space, and models its sensible presence.

Anúncio

About the Journal

PHILM : Journal of Philosophy and Cinema was established with the aim of examining the complex interconnections between contemporary society and the various forms of expression that constitute the audiovisual landscape. In the contemporary era, it is of fundamental importance to examine the shifting boundaries between imagination and reality, between icons and tangible world, between screens and practices, between the visual and the gestural, insofar as they contribute to the shaping of the cultural landscape of the present and future. The research conducted by PHILM will not only concern cinema in the classical sense but will also examine the broader implications of the new media practices affecting our perception of reality, modifying our space-time coordinates and redefining the very meaning of the concept of experience and subjectivity. The journal proposes itself as a research path open to transdisciplinary perspectives. Its philosophical vocation is nourished by the involvement of film historians and theorists, aesthetologists, anthropologists and artists who reflect on the relationship between cinema and thought.

info : https ://vup.univr.it/index.php/PHILM/index

Argument

Of many films one might say what Michel Chion has clearly observed : one need only strip the sound from a sequence of moving images for its perceptual coherence to begin to unravel. Sound participates in the very constitution of the cinematographic image : it sustains its temporality, organises its space, and models its sensible presence.

And yet the question of the sonic in cinema does not simply coincide with the historical advent of sound in film. Live sound practices accompanied the film experience from its very beginnings. Even prior to the development of synchronisation techniques between sound and image, cinema already seemed to evoke a sound internal to the image – a virtual, implicit sound, suspended within its own visual evidence. Does not the piano tumbling down the stairs in Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box, already carry with it its own sonic self-evidence, as if sound had always inhabited the sensible potency of the image ?

Hence the question this issue of PHILM poses : in what forms does the sonic exceed, displace, or redefine what is seen ? What happens to the image when sound no longer coincides with the visible source that is supposed to anchor it ? A celebrated figure of this excess is what Chion himself termed the acousmêtre : a voice whose source – or whose origin – remains enigmatic. A bodiless voice, a sensory phantom that is everywhere, sees everything, knows everything, and can do everything, and that for this very reason alters the relationship between body, space, and presence. But the question of the split between voice and body, pushed to its limit, opens up a broader one : cinema renders sensible an impersonal dimension of the sonic – noises, vibrations, echoes, murmurs, silences, acoustic atmospheres, and soundscapes that do not necessarily refer back to an identifiable source, yet which fundamentally participate in the construction of the cinematographic image. The acousmatic situation marks a threshold through which cinema draws us into a more radical dimension, in which what resounds can no longer be traced back to a singular body.

PHILM #6 seeks to explore precisely this dimension of the relationship between the sonic and the visual : sound as the resonance of the world, as a sensible field that contains bodies, objects, landscapes, and devices, while simultaneously traversing and exceeding them. From this perspective, cinema does not merely record sounds but gives form to a relationship between the visible and the audible in which the world appears as that which resonates, persists, and surfaces in its remains, its traces, its sonic afterlives.

This is a resonance that is never simply immediate. The “voice of things” is also always manipulated, reproduced, amplified, transmitted, intercepted : it passes through microphones, recording devices, telephone devices, surveillance systems, technical supports, and acoustic mediations that transform the relationship between presence, distance, and perception. To interrogate the sonic in cinema is therefore also to interrogate the technical forms of this mediation.

PHILM accordingly invites, for this monographic issue, contributions that explore the relationship between the sonic and the image in cinema starting from the questions outlined above : the dissociation between sound, body, and source ; the impersonal dimension of the sonic ; and its forms of technical mediation. The issue welcomes essays that investigate the sonic as atmosphere, as relational matter and as a force that relocates the image : a form of manifestation of that which exceeds the fullness of visible presence.

Topics and possible variations

  • The constitutive function of sound in the cinematographic image ;
  • The problem of the sonic in silent cinema and the forms of an implicit or virtual sonority of the image ;
  • The acousmêtre and the dissociation between sound, body, and source ;
  • Photogénie and phonogénie (Epstein) ;
  • The soundscape, noise, the acoustic field ;
  • Acoustic spatio-temporality in the cinematographic image ;
  • Silence as suspension, tension, or space of resonance ;
  • The impersonal sound quality of the world : machines, ani-mals, natural elements, cities, and architectures ;
  • The relationship between the sonic, memory, spectrality, ar-chive, and trace ;
  • The thresholds between human and non-human in the con-struction of the acoustic field ;
  • Technical devices for the mediation of sound : microphones, recorders, magnetic tape, synthesisers, loudspeakers, telephones, surveillance devices, etc. ;
  • The forms of reproduction, transmission, amplification, and refraction of sound ;
  • The aesthetic, ontological, and political implications of the sonic in its relation to the visible.

Submission guidelines

Please send an abstract of a maximum of 1000 characters (including spaces) by the 1st of September 2026 to the editorial board address : philm.redazione@gmail.com, indicating the title of the proposal, the section of the journal in which you intend to participate (Scritture or Tracce) and a short biography of the author. Proposals will be evaluated by the editorial board and the results of the selection will be communicated, by email, by the 30th of September 2026. Selected contributions must then be submitted by May 1st 2027 and will be subject to double-blind peer review.

Contributions, written and composed specifically for the journal, must fall into one of the following sections :

*Scritture : in-depth essays dedicated to the specific theme of the single issue, between 25000 and 35000 characters in length

(including spaces and notes) ;

*Tracce : shorter articles, dedicated to individual films or video-art works which are linked to the theme of the issue but between 15000 and 20000 characters long (including spaces and notes).

The volume is expected to be published by the end of 2027.

Categorias


Datas

  • terça-feira, 01 de setembro de 2026

Palavras-chave

  • philosophy, cinema, sound, voice

Contactos

  • philm.redazione@gmail.it
    courriel :

Fonte da informação

  • Luca Cardone
    courriel : luca [dot] cardone [at] univr [dot] it

Licença

CC0-1.0 Este anúncio é licenciado sob os termos Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

Para citar este anúncio

« La voix des choses », Chamada de trabalhos, Calenda, Publicado quarta-feira, 06 de maio de 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/166hm

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