Author: Chip Limeburner
Presented May 6, 2023 at Uncommon Senses IV

Abstract
Though considerable scholarship has already been done examining spectatorship of multisensory 4D cinema, much of this work explicitly aims to situate 4D (and higher dimensional) cinema along a film history continuum. While this existing scholarship argues that 4D cinema represents an extension of earlier more-than-visual features of film as well as a contemporary reintegration of Tom Gunning’s “cinema of attraction”, this presentation will draw on examples from both traditional cinematic contexts as well as theme parks to demonstrate that this cinematic heritage has limited the actual use of multisensory storytelling, with non-visual effects frequently serving only as secondary evidence of the primarily visual events on-screen. A brief overview of the history of multisensory cinema will be outlined, tracing the medium from Hale’s Tours (1904) to contemporary examples in Disney and Universal theme parks, followed by discussion of the specific and limited ways multisensory effects are typically deployed, and finally the presentation will conclude with an exploration of possible avenues for novel multisensory storytelling that truly extend beyond the visual.