I don't know why, I haven't received any of the messages Raewin comments on
this message.I have already checked my other mail folders to see if
something may misdirecting the messages, to no result. However, I felt I
should contribute someway to the discussion
There are two things I usually miss in most discussions on perception, and
which are of course valid for multisensory perception -- which is our common
mode of living, since we never operate with a single sense,
although,depending on cultural patterns, it seems that different
arrangements between the so called five senses determine different ways of
making meaning of reality (considering that the idea of objective reality
may be a prejudice and that all we have a world that is never neutral, and
always meaningful, so that perception is baby-cradle of meaning). Every
culture is more or less an hallucination in itself:
Thus, the first point upon which I've been insisting through these years is
the relation about "senses" and "sense": people don't usually notice their
perceptive world, and how much full of intentionality it is. Perception
invents our world, guided by our body needs, desires, cultural patterns,
and also language. Usually, getting in touch with our own senses is an
experience which is stronger and maybe deeper than expanding it -- though
sensory expansion sometimes helps us understanding our ordinary perceptual.
But most times, people get involved with the intensity of altered states and
do not notice how much ordinary perception grounds our most common values.
Howes quotes indians in South America who take Ayuhasca in their rituals to
establish multisensory correspondences which arethe bases of tribal values.
Those correspondences are so important to the social order on the tribe that
a Pajé is responsible for granting that people will make the right
correspondences during hallucinogenic trance. So, perceptual patterns are on
the bases of any society and we can understand much about our societies by
taking this into account.
Art is one of the ways of learning how much senses determine meaning -- thas
is, "aesthesis" grounds even power structures, and it is easy to notice how
important it's always been to any totalitarian regime to have control upon
arts.
A second point would consider that we are always under multisensory
perceptual states. The famous Merleau-Ponty quote states that "senses
translate each other without the need of concept". So, if each sense has
it's own way of making meaning of the world -- and a world under the primacy
of smell is so different than a world dominated by vision like ours. Thus,
if each sense makes sense of the world in it's proper way, this just can be
done on the gorud of the whole sensorium, so that a sense just make meaning
over the background of the whole body. Brazilian artist Lygia Clark
(1920-1988) has been brilliant in exploring almost didactically the
body always taking all the senses as the ground. It should not surprise that
she ended thinking of herself as a therapist, since her work brilliantly
brought together in an unique whole a sensorium almost brutally divided and
specialized during Modernity. This was such an artificial construct that it
does not surprise port-modern art has been frantically engaged in bringing
senses together in the last 50 years -- in many and many different ways.
Of course, one can remember the Helio Oiticica's meaningfull insight when he
was looking at a Mondrian's painting and said: "It seems that I breathe...
So he notice he was looking with his whole body, his eyes anchored and
belonging to a whole.
All this may seem too obvious, I apologize if I'm stating points much
explored in the last decades. But most of my work has been developed over
these ideas, which have large consequences. And most times I post these
positions on different contexts, people seem, to my own surprise, to be
surprised.
best from Brazil
s.
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Raewyn Turner <r.turner@orcon.net.nz> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Due to installing an exhibition posting my summary has been a bit delayed,
> however, many interesting and diverging points have been posted, and
> accordingly:
>
> Roger wrote: "Krueger's 'Synthetic Senses' statement—the sense of
> magnetism. "We are sensitive to a minor fraction of the available spectra"
> There are communications operating that we're not aware of, and it's the
> potential discoveries about the scope of those communications that's
> exciting. We hope to expand understanding and appreciation of the role of
> olfaction in our being and interaction with other organisms and environment.
> All life forms, including humans, are communicating with the sense of smell,
> but we're not tuned into the chemical signals that are the language of all
> nature.
> In the future, when we've developed technologies that assist us to perceive
> other 'spectra,' if the spectra are digitally knitted together into
> surprising patterns, will we be able to sense them without the technologies?
> To train ourselves to perceive in new ways? And be able to find a language
> for a sense that lacks its own verbal language because its mainly in
> simile. Perhaps not words but gesture, motion.
>
> Paul, Hi Paul! thanks for the very interesting link to metaphor and
> language.( Goerge Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By,
> etc.).Looking forward to more.
>
> In correspondence Antonio Brech ( Metavision) uses the analogy of the
> inter-sensory integration of the senses using for example "sound, graphics
> and motion (ALOGIC-Instrumentality operational), working as a bicycle"
> .....like a bicycle.
> Our sensory input has changed over the past 20 years, what is the
> experience when for example simulated sensory inputs of sound, graphics,
> vibration and smell, are fused digitally in the way that they are integrated
> before the cross - modal experience happens?
> Veroniki wrote: "There seems to be an effort for artificial stimulation of
> synaesthetic perception through chips and inplants, goggles and other
> sensors, in order to restore damaged eyesight, especially when parts of the
> vision is lost at a very young age. For instance, one argument that mental
> representation can work autonomously, without the prerequisit of visual
> sensory input is the fact that dreams are internal representations which are
> not affected by external stimuli, meaning that certain representational
> forms archetypically exist in the human mind somehow."
>
> I approached making music translations for concerts for the deaf assuming
> that persons who lacked hearing would be naturally more attuned to another
> sense such as smell, and I was surprised that they weren't. They had, as I
> found, other ways of thinking and therefore perceiving...as Lawrence M Marks
> says: 'synaesthesia is a mode of perception and thinking; Wheeler; Karowski
> also suggest that synaesthesia constitutes a mode of thinking and not just
> perceiving'
> In thinking I refer to Ju Gosling's discussion on medical and scientific
> models of disability and disabled people. 'Abnormal' developed from
> Ju'sartist's residency at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR),
> where she residency explored ideas about normality, and asked whether there
> is a 'Scientific Model of Disability' that is distinct from the 'Medical
> Model of Disability'?
>
> Khadija wrote: Coffin /Nest. "The new version of Coffin /Nest is not only
> about my memories but also speaks of my life and relationships in Montreal
> made here. The piece has perhaps become less about the past and more about
> the present with a connection to the future. Acting as a strengthening
> framework, the nest- or womb-like structure contains and holds me, while
> suggesting the possibility of new life and beginnings. The act of weaving
> is also very important for me as it is a part of me touching and interact
> with each piece of clothes , how it smells and what kind of image it might
> propose, and how it will be reformed to become a story teller or a symbolic
> act of hop."
>
> Island women wind the sarong in a nest for a baby to sleep ;Worn clothes
> exude olfactory information about the person who last wore them. Could you
> describe the images that the clothes conveyed to you while you were in the
> nest?
>
> Ian wrote :"So when you assemble something, construct it, develop a
> concept, how do you know that this is not something that can be meaningfully
> shared, or in the way that you want it to be - or does that not matter?
> Predicting the perception of others seems an impossibility once you start
> thinking about it. In the end, despite the canard that literature isn't
> complete unless someone reads it, does art fail, or at least, become very
> random in its effect?
> I would be less concerned about modes of perception and more about
> connectivity and recognition".
>
> As an artist I see connections and place things together much like words
> are placed in a sentence, if you change the order( configuration) the
> meaning is changed. I'm always searching for resonance in the work which I
> understand is where the crossover to the audience takes place, although they
> will experience it differently. They might read it in a different order. Its
> a good question and one which Kathleen Coessens writes on: aesthetic
> reception, and artistic practice as a human social practice.
>
> The Artistic Turn: reflections on art and territoriality, Kathleen Coessens,
> Darla Crispin & Anne Douglas
> http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/print/node/34791
>
> Luis Miguel Girao wrote: "if we make use of a single stimulatory channel,
> like visual, it seems to me pretty obvious that wecannot turn off all other
> senses…
> My question would then be: is the sensation of presence multisensory or
> omnisensory?"
> I don't know enough about presence in vr but when we become engaged it
> could be through one or many senses—could you elaborate on omnisensory?
>
> all the best
> Raewyn
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to.
> In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and
> password in the fields found further down the page.
>
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter
> your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the
> unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
>
> HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set
> Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
>
--
-- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
-- Coord. Tecnologia e Mídias Digitais
-- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
