Abstract

With a Call for Essays, the special issue Multimodality sought contributions that accept not only the material but also the body-bound dependence of media perception and understanding. To this end, contributions were included that shed light on both the structural and signifying potential of artistic works through multimodal analysis. Particular attention was paid to contributions that clarify how the structural features - the modes - of the arts, their perception, and their signifying potential in terms of content are interrelated and how they are to be understood in communicative and thus socioculturally relevant terms. Thus, in addition to neuroscientific contributions, those from cultural anthropology, art history, image and art studies, and literary studies were included. Articles 8 Martina Sauer and Christiane Wagner - Introduction 11 Giada Lombardi and Giuseppe Di Cesare - From Neuroscience to Art: The Role of ‘Vitality Forms’ in the Investigation of Multimodality 25 Martina Sauer - Abstract - Affective – Multimodal: Interaction between Medium and Perception of Moving Images from the Viewpoint of Cassirer’s, Langer’s and Krois’ Embodiment Theories 49 Göran Sonesson - The Secrets of Plastic Language Revealed: Multimodality, Polysemiosis, and Iconicity 71 Natalia Igl - Making Sense of the Material: Multisensory Reader Involvement in Contemporary Multimodal Novels 87 J. Philippe Thompson - Art is All: Proust’s Life Lessons Through Perception and Art 107 Hans Dieter Huber - Philippe Parreno and the Exhibition as a Multimodal Aesthetic Experience 135 Jörg U. Lensing - The Performing Human Being in a Media Interaction Space: Multi- and intermodal productions by the Düsseldorf Theater der Klänge (Theatre of Sounds)