Enactive Cinema
Moreover, considered alongside each other, Luria-Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory and Eisenstein’s Method seem to extend the paradigm of four Es in neuroscience (that posits mind and brain as embodied, embedded, enacted and extended) towards the realm of aesthetic, and specifically, cinematic experience. Thought and emotions are complexly interrelated in the aesthetic experience, moreover their joint work takes the form of a material experience which is embedded – i.e. relates to the context of a particular socio-historical environment. Furthermore, in Method Eisenstein argues that the act of engagement with the work of art represents an embodied experience – it relies on extra-neural structures and processes represented by complex organic reactions that Eisenstein explored under the umbrella concepts of “shifts in time” and “ways of regress”. Method also emphasises the enacted character of aesthetic experience – from complex bodily reactions to intricate involuntary movements, Eisenstein consistently explores the role of concrete material actions in the temporal unfolding of aesthetic reaction. But, perhaps most importantly, Method foregrounds the extended character of aesthetic reaction – its reliance on the mediating role of cultural tools and semiotic systems.