Abstract:

Art, including movies, is applied in the teaching methods at universities. This implies communicating with the audience using the language of art.

The purpose of this study is to establish how students read, interpret and perceive a communicative art signal during their lectures and classes at university. How they understand and perceive an audio-visual art signal (movie). Carrying out an experiment with students in the art department was the first step towards delving deeper and establishing the next question: how do viewers both perceive and understand visual narratives? This is a difficult and complex question that has not been addressed previously in any comprehensive theory. It involves coordinating perceptual and comprehension processes that operate over multiple images and produce a durable mental model of a narrative.

Artistic communication is an ancient form of human communication and it implies perceiving a message in an emotional way. Yet the emotional message is not always actually perceived, because “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” (George Bernard Shaw).

Our study, which involved 62 different students from two art universities, proved that communication with art consists of several stages or steps. The first impulse perceived by the recipient is a feeling. This means that communication has started. If this feeling is missing, there is no communication. Only the next step in artistic communication is the perception of rational information – who, where, when, how, what, etc. This is followed by the impulse 'interpretation', adapting it to oneself and generalising it.

The study proved that the key in artistic communication is the emotional charge of the artist or communicator. If it is present and existing, the emotional charge can be transmitted to the audience. In its absence rational-logical communication with the audience, very similar to business communication process, takes place instead of emotional communication.

The third conclusion of the experiment is that art is therapy for the artist. His communication with the outside world (via an emotional code) is a necessity and not a result of a logical, consciously generated process.

Reception analysis in art was applied as the study method: (Eriksson, 2006, Holub, 1984, Hall, 1980).

Keywords:

Artistic communication, cinema perception, artistic impulse, student perception, emotional charge.