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Jan Topolski – Embodiment through sound in sci-fi films 1956–1991 My thesis is about embodiment through sound in old sci-fi films. Whaaat? Ok, it all started, I guess, in childhood, when I shared with my grandma a deep fascination with outer space… We used to wake up in the middle of the night for the lunar eclipse, discussed searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and watched obsessively the Star Trek series. Of course, we laughed at all these fake latex ears and wrinkles of aliens as well as loud explosions in space vacuum, where there should be no sound at all. But why, actually? After years I realized that sound in film has to be artificial if it aims to be… realistic. Composer and theoretician Michel Chion coined the term ‘rendering’ to describe materiality of bodies transmitted by sound. I examine it through the lens of haptic and affect theories that explain multisensory and physical experience of watching films. I chose the science fiction genre, as it introduces obviously unseen – and unheard – worlds, events, and characters. It also shapes our future like in computer or vehicle sound design. Then I made an attempt to come up with some affect categories, inspired by writer Italo Calvino’s Harvard Lectures. How do we feel the smoothness of heavy spaceships, flying cars or tele transportation, like in Star Trek? How are we scared by the sliminess of alien creatures or paranormal beings like in Ghostbusters? How are we disturbed by the uncanniness of Forbidden Planet or futurist labs of Doctor Who? And eventually, how are we intimidated by the throbbing of laser swords, photon torpedoes or other lethal weapons of Star Wars? What I am trying to demonstrate is that, all this happens on the level of hearing – sometimes even without seeing, like in sci-fi horrors, let’s take Alien. That’s the sense which allows for full physical immersion in worlds represented in cinema. It is quick, it is direct, it is unconscious: all fit very well in the ‘affect’ definition sketched by Gilles Deleuze. Thinking along these lines, Laura Marks introduced haptic theory to describe mechanisms that enable us to physically feel textures or smells of moving pictures. Just as we felt them, back then, with my grandma.