Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen

In “Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen,” French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception.

Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception: we don’t see images and hear sounds as separate channels, we “audio-view” a trans-sensory whole. Expanding on arguments made in his influential books The “Voice in Cinema” and “Sound in Cinema,” Chion provides lapidary insight into the functions and aesthetics of sound in film and television. He considers the effects of such evolving technologies as widescreen, multitrack, and Dolby; the influences of sound on the perception of space and time; and the impact of such contemporary forms of audio-vision as music videos, video art, and commercial television. Chion concludes with an original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film.