ABSTRACT
The goal of audiovisual metaphors is the dynamic constitution of meaning, generated ad hoc by sense forms, visual and auditory elements, scenarios and image-laden verbal expressions. Basic forms of constituting meaning in moving images become comprehensible as metaphorical constellations. Metaphor is not some kind of abstract, extra-filmic reference; rather, it is based on the aesthetic configuration of modalities of experience. Film images generate an understanding that is in no way exhausted by reproducing existing cognitive schemata of movement, space, and time, but that gives rise to new differences and modalities. The author proposes basic processes of understanding audiovisual images as an act of fictionalization, to be reconstructed as dynamic transformations of audiovisual metaphors. Such reconstructions can give some indication of how diegetic horizons, narrative, and visual representations can emerge from out of audiovisual sense data as they traverse the embodied perceptual sensations of spectators.
