‘Crows’ vs. ‘Avatar’, or: 3D vs. total-dimensional immersion

3D film’s explicit new space depth arguably provides both an enhanced realistic quality to the image and a wealth of more acute visual and haptic sensations (a ‘montage of attractions’) to the increasingly involved spectator. But David Cronenberg’s related ironic remark that ‘cinema as such is from the outset a «special effect»’ should warn us against the geometrical naiveté of such assumptions, within a Cartesian ocularcentric tradition for long overcome by Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment of perception and Deleuze’s notion of the self-consistency of the artistic sensation and space. Indeed, ‘2D’ traditional cinema already provides the accomplished «fourth wall effect», enclosing the beholder behind his back within a space that no longer belongs to the screen (nor to ‘reality’) as such, and therefore is no longer ‘illusorily’ two-dimensional. This kind of totally absorbing, ‘dream-like’ space, metaphorical for both painting and cinema, is illustrated by the episode ‘Crows’ in Kurosawa’s Dreams. Such a space requires the actual effacement of the empirical status of spectator, screen and film as separate dimensions, and it is precisely the 3D caracteristic unfolding of merely frontal space layers (and film events) out of the screen towards us (and sometimes above the heads of the spectators before us) that reinstalls at the core of the film-viewing phenomenon a regressive struggle with reality and with different degrees of realism, originally overcome by film since the Lumière’s Arrival of a Train at Ciotat seminal demonstration. Through an analysis of crucial aspects in Avatar and the recent Cave of Forgotten Dreams, both dealing with historical and ontological deepening processes of ‘going inside’, we shall try to show how the formal and technically advanced component of those 3D-depth films impairs, on the contrary, their apparent conceptual purpose on the level of contents, and we will assume, drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, that this technological mistake is due to a lack of recognition of the nature of perception and sensation in relation to space and human experience.

Self-care in Patients with Heart Failure

Objectives: To adapt for the Portuguese language the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index V6.2, analyse the self-care in maintenance, management skills and self-confidence of patients with heart failure who attend the nursing consultation of two Hospitals. Method: Explo- ratory study, sample 110 patients who frequented the nursing consultation for patients with heart failure of two Portuguese hospitals, conducted in the period of 6 months. He appea- led to the descriptive statistics and psychometric tests. Results: Internal consistency similar to the original scale. Mostly elderly, low literacy patients in self-care, low values associated with physical activity to the control of salt in meals taken away from home and inadequate control of signs and symptoms. Conclusion: Patients’ present difficulties in maintenance and management of the disease are self-confident face anyway. This instrument allows for individualized assessment leading to decision-making and action adjusted.