Congratulations on this exciting topic! Perceptual hierarchies in art and science have always fascinated me.
It is probably worth the while to draw your attention for a little bit on a Greek project, which has recently came across mine, since we are on a MedRim discussion:
In 2009, Curator Anna Hatziyannaki worked with an interdisciplinary team of artists experimenting with technology on a synaesthetic performance. What is very original, however, in this specific collaborative project, is that amongst the members of the group, one artist was visually impaired and one performer was having difficulties in moving by birth. Collaboration and group dynamics focused on how these artists could communicate with the rest of the members of the group in order to transform external information into internal experience.
Participating artists were Ioanna Myrka, Andreas Torengo and Constantin Tylgiadis who is also an engineer, as well as Music composer Nikos Sidiropoulos, lyrics writer Spyros Sidiropoulos and electronics engineer Yannis Manimakis. The idea for the project started in 2007 with a poem by Nikos Sidiropoulos who has completely damaged his optical nerve over an infintile accident, however is still able to preserve 25% of his vision, a fact with no scientific explanation whatsoever. Guessing rather than seeing, he is able to perceive the world through sound, complementing in a cross-wired manner what he is not able to see.
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.
Ioanna Myrka is a performer facing difficlies to move her body by birth, however, she has worked a great deal with her body and gives performances with her eyes blind-folded. In this performance, she is reading a poem written in braille, a language that she does not understand by using her sense of touch. In her effort to do so, she interacts with an electronic device until she finds the right way to read the poem written by Nikos Sidiropoulos. The poem is describing the world as he is not able to see it. When the poem is read aloud and clear as it should, via the electronic interface, in the dark space of the performance, space is odoured with a scent of YASMIN.
In this dark space, where viewers or rather visitors learn how to use the braille system via their touch, in order to hear the poem, vision is not important and when the poem (available both in english and greek language) is heard out loud and clear, sensors placed around in the participatory performance space release the odour of YASMIN.
For those YASMINers who read Greek, please find out more on the 2009 AMEA Conference Proceedings p. 233-34.
Available on-line here: http://www.ameamedia.gr/docs/amea_2009_opt.pdf
All the best,
Veroniki
--- Στις Δευτ., 01/03/10, ο/η nina czegledy <czegledy@interlog.com> έγραψε:
Από: nina czegledy <czegledy@interlog.com>
Θέμα: [Yasmin_discussions] Multisensory Perception
Προς: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Ημερομηνία: Δευτέρα, 1 Μάρτιος 2010, 16:43
Multisensory perception
Introduction by Raewyn Turner and Richard Newcomb
Invited Respondents:
Jenny Marketou, Hilda Kozari, Sergio Basbaum and Ian Ferguson
We are perceiving the world with all our senses; In visual media we've become mesmerised by the vibrancy of saturated coloured light, it reminds us of the colours of the hypnagogic fireworks in our minds. Ipods and MP3 players allow singular insular worlds of sound, which have become a personal soundtrack to real life instead of its own sound. Our sense of smell is informed by a synthetic overlay of fragrance in our personal space, the larger environment is re-perfumed with substitutes for the smells of nature and we make new associations with smells never before encountered.
How do these combined nuances of mediated sensing feel under our skins? What would a synthetic smell receptor be able to sense in 2020? and what are the consequences of being able to smell more-are we numbed to most of the fragrance of our time? Although we seem to be 'anosmic?'?.. (the term for a lack of sense of smell) to most of the fragrance of our time, odour signals are being transmitted, received, translated and associated by all living beings in nature. Could we grow an awareness of the full cross-sensory fragrance of life? These are some of the questions we would like to discuss in the coming weeks.
Our first venue for discussing these issues was through a public theatre/laboratory we constructed called 'Crossing Wires' which ran over three weeks during November 2009 in a downtown storefront in Auckland, New Zealand. The installation was both a working laboratory and a performative spacewhich provided us with an alternative venue to develop our dialogue on cultural, social and temporal constructions of olfactory sensing, building a relationship between the languages of science and art. Human smells were collected and processed, and passers-by were invited to experience, the smells and engage in dialogue. The lab was the 1st step towards collecting, categorising and coding of the human plume. For more detail see our blogsite for the installation (www.crossingwireslab.tumblr.com)
Our respondents: Jenny Marketou, Hilda Kozari, Sergio Basbaum and Ian Ferguson will join this discussion.
Richard Newcomb is a molecular biologist interested in the mechanism and evolution of odour sensing in animals. Current projects include the development of an olfactory biosensor using insect odorant receptors and understanding the genetic bases of odour sensory acuity and food preference in humans. Richard conducted his PhD in Canberra. In 1996 he returned to New Zealand and has been based at The Mt Albert Research Centre where he is Science Team Leader, Molecular Sensing, Plant & Food Research, and Associate Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Auckland. Richard is an author on over 50 publications and is an inventor on five patents.
He is an investigator at two of New Zealand's Centres for Research Excellence: a Principle Investigator at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Evolution and Ecology and an Associate Investigator at the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery.
Raewyn Turner is an interdisciplinary artist investigating cross-sensory perception and the uncharted territories of the senses. Her multi-sensory, mixed media works have been shown in numerous national and international exhibitions and performances, including Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, Parque de las Ciencias, Granada, Spain, 11th Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Theatre Architecture 2007,Prumyslovy Palace, Prague, Argentina, Georges Pompidou Center, and Te Papa Museum of New Zealand.
Her work includes video, smell, coloured light, artefacts, and live performance with orchestras, jazz and contemporary music and dance; and has been published in 'Art of the Biotech Era', International Congress Synaesthesia, Art and Science 2009, 2007, Generative Art 2006, 2004, and Performance Research 2003 'On Smell'.
Respondents:
(Please note we are expecting Sergio Basbaum and Ian Ferguson introducing themselves).
Visual artist Hilda Kozári studies how the sense of smell affects emotions and visual expression. Her works (objects, paintings and installations) evoke connections between scents, places, memory and identity.
Born in Hungary, Kozári lives in Helsinki and exhibits in both Finland and abroad. Her olfactory installation AIR, Smell of Cities, was first exhibited in the Contemporary Art Museum Helsinki Kiasma in 2003 and now belongs to the collection of the museum. The artwork was part of the touring exhibition SAUMA, which was shown in the USA and Europe. In 2006, her Memo-trip installation provided an artist's reflection on Finnish Christmas and the collection of the Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum.
Kozári's projects are also inspired by the culture of the visually impaired: her SenseGraffiti installations, created with visually impaired students, were shown at the Vantaa Art Museum, Finland, and her multi-sensory White Wall cooperative exhibition was built in the WARC Gallery, Toronto, in 2008.
Among other projects she is currently working with a group of artists on a long-term public art project for the city of Vantaa, Finland.
Jenny Marketou (www.jennymarketou.com) was born in Athens, Greece and since 1984 she lives and works in New York City. She is an insatiable traveler as well as an interdisciplinary artist - educator- public speaker whose work is participatory and combines her interest in fusing art and technology. Be it installation, networked environments, videos, texts, internet projects, public interventions or performance, she has been especially interested in the appropriation and reinterpretation of familiar objects , simple actions and senses ,like smelling, walking, watching, drifting as esthetic experiences and how to use them at the centre of surprising actions and interventions that defy limits, transgress boundaries, and exceed expectations . In her video and time based work she explores the process of image making in relation to the space, spectatorship and the idea of the " iconic" reproduction of reality.
Her work has been shown worldwide, including the 3rd International Biennale of Seville, Spain, the Biennale of Venice, the Biennale of Sao Paolo, Brazil, MANIFESTA, The Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece; Anita Beckers Gallery, Frankfurt/Maine and most currently a solo show " Red Eyed Sky Walkers" at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece and Lighter then Fiction at the Project Room, Chelsea Art Museum, New York City; Le Grand Palais, Paris; Apex Art, New York City; Art in Odd Places, New York City; Tina B, Festival of Contemporary Art of Prague, Czech Republic; Pulse, International Art Fair, New York City; Esther M Klein Art Gallery, Philadelphia ; Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, UK; ZKM, Media Center for Art and Technology, Karlsurhe, Germany; Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach; Strozzina Center of Contemporary Art, La Fondacione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Ludwigshafen Mannheim among others.
She has won grants and several awards and artists residencies such as in CCA in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Banff in Alberta Canada; Eyebeam in New York City; MECAD in Barcelona, Spain .
She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York
And she is the author of the book "The Great Longing: The Greeks Immigrants of Astoria, Queens" Kedros Publishing.
Apart from having taught photography and studio art as adjunct faculty at Cooper Union School of Art and Science in New York she has also taught courses on studio art and video as a visiting artist at the New School ,at Parsons School of Design in New York City , at Rutgers University, New Jersey, MFA program .She has lectured at Pen World Voices Festival ,NYC; The New School,Terens Lang Center,NYC; Apex Art,NYC; Basel/ Miami Beach International Art Fair, Miami; Reina Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid ,Spain among other venues.
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