The UQAM doctoral student Maxime Michaud is pursuing a researcher-creator trajectory, leading him to collect electroencephalographic data on his own experience as a spectator in a movie theatre.
Sophie Leclair-Tremblay
The cinEXmedia partnership is carrying out several projects which study audiovisual production through the prism of the neurosciences. But few researchers employ neuroscientific concepts to make films. This, however, is precisely what Maxime Michaud, a PhD candidate in communications at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), is attempting to do under the supervision of Diane Poitras and Louis-Claude Paquin, through an innovative research-creation approach.
With his doctoral project, Maxime Michaud, who holds a master’s degree in experimental media research-creation at UQAM, seeks to transpose the experiences of hypersensitive people, a condition with which Michaud himself is confronted, in the form of an experimental documentary. Wishing to avoid conventional “descriptive or informative methods” while amalgamating various personal experiences in order to bring nuance to his handling of this peculiar condition, he remarks that he wants to adopt a “poetic and sensorial form”.
His project thus draws on both his own experience in the world of cinema and his research in the neurosciences. In preparation for an article he is currently writing, he is already carrying out experiments on his perspective as a spectator in a movie theatre, collecting electroencephalographic data – an approach similar to other studies carried out by the cinEXmedia partnership, particularly with the Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM).
Maxime Michaud has thus adopted a hybrid methodology, both quantitative (collecting physiological data such as brain waves and varying cardiac rhythm in order to generate sounds and images which evoke or are connected to sensorial states) and qualitative (open and subjective interviews on people’s experiences),. The methodology is also obviously based on classical documentary research (the scientific literature).
“Cinema Is for Everyone”
Michaud is attempting to evaluate the effects of visual and aural data on hypersensitive individuals. He is also trying to create experimental film sequences which promote an understanding of hypersensitivity and to give it form in a way that can be experienced by the participants in these experiments.
As part of his research into the experience of cinema, Michaud therefore takes electroencephalograms (sometimes using himself as a subject) during a film screening, enabling him to try out different movie theatres and different kinds of films. “Cerebral activity while watching a film can be influenced by several factors”, he explains. He mentions such things as the presence of the audience and the sounds it can make, the medium used to project the film, the physical discomfort one may feel while watching the film or the seating arrangement of the movie theatre.
In addition to writing an article based on the electroencephalographic data derived from his film viewing, Maxime Michaud is presently also co-editing a special issue for the journal CiNéMAS entitled “Sensoralités: diversité capacitaire et cinéma”. All his projects are thus motivated by his philosophy, according to which “cinema is for everyone”. “Cinema is a medium which is part of the world and involves everyone in it”, he concludes.