First of all your research subject sounds fascinating.
I agree there is still a huge amount we don't know about the
workings of our body and mind. Where this might be frustrating or challenging
for any scientist I as an artist do not feel troubled about working in "a
potential perception vacuum". An understanding of the 'mechanics' of the
body can certainly help an artist in inducing a physical affect or emotional
response. Nevertheless, even if we where to better understand perception, cognition
or connectivity, the audience is always an individual that is different from
you and me. We are as much the products of our (social) environment as of our
body and while our perception might be similar but it will never be the same. Therefore
I don't believe we will ever be able to really predict what the exact responses
will be. I for one am not too concerned with this. As an artist I come across 'oddities'
that I wish to explore and expose, I believe that's what artists 'do'; looking
at the world consciously. This means not being blunted by repetition and never
loosing curiosity always questioning what we 'see', 'what we perceive with all
our senses'. The inquisition and a rendition of this perception takes place in
the form of our artworks.
Your landscaped experience of numbers and decades sounds
like a great subject to explore and translate in a physical rather than a
verbal manner. Creating it as a 2D drawing or schematic is a traditional choice,
in spite of this it might be more comprehensible if you where to recreate such
a concept in 3D. For example I imagine that sound and light points in a three
dimensional array could be very effective. Please keep in mind that although there
is a strong link between science and art in that both try to 'visualize' (again
read this ocularcentristic word as representing any of our sensory abilities,
be it; make audible, tactile and so on) a concept. Generally the difference is
that science aims to make a factual representation (illustration) of a
phenomena rather than in interpretation of the same phenomena intended to
trigger an 'emotion' in the visitor.
Personally I make art for the audience, even if the desire
to make a work comes from within me and the concept choice is mine (or ours
when collaborating) as is the entire process towards a presentation to the
public. It makes me cringe when I notice a visitor placing more emphasis on what
the artist meant than on what the work evokes in them. If a work doesn't carry
any meaning, if the outcome isn't meaningful for the audience I have failed. Yet
that meaning varies from person to person, it is wonderful if the audience
experiences the work in a way similarly to my intention. However thorough
observation has thought me never to underestimate the imagination of the
audience, who frequently make out countless unpremeditated meanings and options
in a work.
I am currently in the process of writing my masters thesis
"Audience Engagement in Multisensory Art Installations" and will be
following this discussing with much interest. In the meantime I would like to
finish this reply with a beautiful relevant text by Brian Massumi.
"In art, we see life dynamics "with and
through" actual form. Or rather, we always see relationally and processually in
this way, but art makes us see that we see this way. It is the technique of
making vitality affect felt. Of making an explicit experience of what otherwise
slips behind the flow of action and is only implicitly felt. Making the
imperceptible appear. In everyday perception, the same thing occurs. There is a
certain artfulness in every experience. Art and everyday perception are in
continuity with one another. But in everyday experience the emphasis is
different. It is all a question of emphasis, an economy of foregrounding and
backgrounding of dimensions of experience that always occur together and
absolutely need each other. Art foregrounds the dynamic, ongoingly relational
pole. Everyday experience foregrounds the object-oriented, action-reaction,
instrumental virtual. Art is the technique for making that necessary but
normally unperceived fact perceptible, in a qualitative perception that is as
much about life itself as it is about the things we live by. Art is the
technique of living life in -- experiencing the virtuality of it more fully.
living it more intensely." [Massumi, Brian. "The
Thinking-Feeling of What Happens: A Semblance of a Conversation." 1, no. 1
(2007)]
Ms. Duke Albada, Australia
--- On Thu, 4/3/10, Ian Ferguson <Ian.Ferguson@plantandfood.co.nz> wrote:
From: Ian Ferguson <Ian.Ferguson@plantandfood.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] (Yasmin_discussions) MultisensoryPerception
To: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>, yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
Received: Thursday, 4 March, 2010, 7:33 PM
ian here
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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