Cranes, Drones and Eisenstein: A Neurohumanistic Approach to Audio/Visual Gestures

In this article, a neurohumanistic, “third culture” approach to “gesture” is delineated. Grounded in an exegesis of Eisenstein's sensorimotor theory and extending to both contemporary and historical thinkers, a “constellation” of the notion of both visual and musical gestures is triangulated and operationalized into empirical research. An overlap between Eisenstein's model of audio/visual gestures and the contemporary frameworks of embodied simulation theory and embodied music cognition is revealed. Through artistic collaborations with a filmmaker and a film composer, custom-made, naturalistic video clips (filmed with a drone) and musical tracks were created using the film The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatozov 1957) as an aesthetic model. Empirical results demonstrate an increased sense of movement and involvement in the perception of both visual and musical “ascent.”