Phenomenology of the image: Disembodied subject in cinematic space

This thesis investigates the relationship between architecture and cinema by employing concepts of space, perception, experience, and image, and interprets the effects of architectural images in cinematic spaces on the experience and mental states of the disembodied subject through a selected film. This thesis discusses space experiences in the context of the images that are formed in the subject's mind and applies phenomenology as research methodology to inquire the subjective structure of experiences. The first chapter introduces the aim, scope, and methodology. The second chapter discusses the relationship between architecture and cinema through their history, their contributions to each other, and their shared concepts and techniques. The third chapter investigates the concept of space as the main source of the relationship between the two disciplines with a phenomenological approach toward perception and experience. It has been concluded that these two disciplines can create similarities in the context of the experience of the "lived space". The fourth chapter discusses the concept of image through spatial representations and spatial images (reflections of these representations in mind), and examines the effects of images on the subject's spatial experience. The viewer who physically experiences the cinematic spaces as disembodied is investigated on how they come to have an embodied and multi-sensory experience through the moving images. In the case study of Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Nostalghia", the spatial phenomenology of the disembodied subject, the effect of the images in the cinema on the experience of space, and the emotions that these images reveal are discussed with the first-person phenomenological method. The researcher interprets his own image experience through a cross-reading of Juhani Pallasmaa's book "The Architecture of Image" (2001). The conclusion suggests that the architectural images in the cinema direct the experience of space, and similar to the architectural space experience, the experience of the cinematic space differs from subject to subject.