Libro

MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
Strategies, Debates and Good Practices
we have been developing, we shall analyze the function that audio may have on
a film aimed at a deaf audience.
All participants noticed the change in the movie, as the higher volume allowed
vibration to reach them. Thus, we concluded that sound touches the deaf
through vibration. There is, as a matter of fact, a compensation for the lack of
audition, promoting on such a group heightened attention in this perception
channel. For instance, all participants noticed when sound as turned off and this
change created a specific reaction connected to the movie.
As for the relationship between vibration and image, we consider that the
statements of both MA e GE point out to the third hypotheses, that the vibration
supports the understanding of the audiovisual message. MA stated that the
“music goes well with the chase scene, in which the boy had to run”. GE said
that he was more interested in watching the movie as he felt the beats vibrating
on his body. It means that there is positive interference by the juxtaposition of
sound and image. However, there is space for continuing investigation with an
expansion of the sample group in order to ascertain if this interference of sound
goes as far as creating what Deleuze called audiovisual, that is, a new image
created by the combination of the visual and sonant images.
It is necessary to consider that, for this research, we chose to conduct a case
study with a group of 3 people that fulfilled our requirement of having profound
deafness, without any auditory memories. Results within the group have shown
that 100% perceives sound through vibration.
The entire group felt that it was more pleasant to watch the movie with sound.
6.2. Interpretation of experiment I
By airing the movie partly with and partly without sound, we wished to avoid
harming our research by not leaving space for responses other than the
confirmation of the vibratory effects as they were received, with the
acknowledgement of its absence and an eventual additional contribution during
the reception of the movie’s audiovisual message. With that, we aim at proving
the reliability of our hypotheses.
All three investigation subjects perceived the presence or absence of sound,
which represents an 100% positive response. We can trust that they perceived
an aspect of sound that is not informational, as they never actually heard. Such
a result confirms our first hypothesis, the motivator of this work. We worked with
the most profound case of deafness possible, that is, congenital bilateral
deafness. As the result of the perception is positive, it leads us to the conclusion
that all deaf perceive sound. On the following phase, we analyzed its impact
on audiovisual perception.
For two of the subjects (GE and JO), sound improves their perception of film.
JO has a good, comfortable sensation and does not get into detail. JO reminds
us of Paul Valery (1937) who prefers the “science of sensations” then the
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