I'm a scientist who has worked in response mechanisms and we reduce these down to proteinaceous receptors, the genes which regulate them and the signalling cascades which leads to a biochemical response. In what I guess we might call non-neural organisms such as plants, these responses can be accurately measured and the consequences fairly accurately predicted. What strikes me about the comments that have been in this correspondence, and from talking with Raewyn (artist) and Richard (scientist) in NZ, is that despite the large amount of knowledge that we have about response to external stimuli in animals (and lets talk about humans), we can still not predict what these eventually will be - there is some intervention and "added value" provided by the brain. I am enough of an adherent of "biologism" to believe that we will eventually understand this in great detail - but not at the moment.
But doesn't that leave artists - including musicians, and writers - with the problem of working in a potential perception vacuum - not knowing what responses will be? I dont mean just in the more facile terms of liking something or not. But in how you even interpret colour, shape, perspective, nuance? I'll give an example - I have a very strong conception of numbers as a 3-D landscape - I see for instance, the numbers 1-100 in a landscape of differing gradients and angles in groups of tens - same applies for decades in a century and the centuries (though the past ones come from behind me). This is a very reproducible landscape. I'm not sure I can show anyone this, though Raewyn has suggested I draw it. It disappears when confronted with numbers in a 2-D grid such as a table (e.g. the periodic table) - as soon as there is a structural constraint. But this affects everything I encouter which has an unconstrained number system. Even individual numbers have different strengt!
hs and weaknesses.
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.
ian
________________________________
From: yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr on behalf of Raewyn Turner
Sent: Thu 4/03/2010 1:31 a.m.
To: yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] (Yasmin_discussions) MultisensoryPerception
Dear Richard, Hilda, Jenny, Sergio, Ian, and all Yasminers, welcome
everyone
I'm Raewyn waving from the top of my tree here in New Zealand, summer
slightly fading.
A great start to this discussion, so many avenues already-especially
Martin's opening post on proprioception, the forgotten sense of
awareness of movement and gravity...
There's a Radiolab podcast with Ian Waterman and his doctor Jonathon
Cole who wrote Pride and a Daily Marathon
Radiolab: The Butcher's Assistant (May 05, 2006)http://www.wnyc.org/go.py?r=http%3A//www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/05/05%23segment59024
Roger directed attention to cross modal illusions and Katherine
Gasaway's thesis where she writes
'The ventriloquism effect and auditory driving are two examples of
perceptual phenomena arising from this sensory override.' and I
started thinking too about the extraordinary and precise
synchronization by SMPTE time code of very loud music with visuals of
saturated colour by way of LED screens (eg Chemycal Brothers) and
which, along with the bodily vibration, may initiate feelings of
being transported...
Such synchronisation was, I felt during the experience of it, a
digital simulated synaesthesia.
Hi Clarissa, as an artist I've never felt that I had synesthesia; I
started with the question of what music might smell like if I was deaf
and wanted to experience it? How would it be to experience it in a
sense that lacks a language?
Thanks Paul for pointing us to "InterMedia Patterns" your great blog
with Jack Ox.
Could you expand on the ways that multi-sensory perception affects
language?
all the best
Raewyn
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