perceptionellaws

[perceptionellaws]

List of my references thought the project:

Calbi, Marta, et al. “Haptic Aesthetics and Bodily Properties of Ori Gersht’s Digital Art: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019. Crossref, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02520.

Harricharan, Sherain, et al. “How Processing of Sensory Information From the Internal and External Worlds Shape the Perception and Engagement With the World in the Aftermath of Trauma: Implications for PTSD.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, 2021. Crossref, doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.625490.

Harvey, Elizabeth D. “The Portal of Touch.” The American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 2, 2011, pp. 385–400. Crossref, doi:10.1086/ahr.116.2.385.

Hutchmaker, Fabian. “Touch Can Produce Detailed, Lasting Memories.” ScienceDaily, Association for Psychological Science, 27 Nov. 2018, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127092532.htm.

Kelter, Dacher. “Hands On Research: The Science of Touch.” Greater Good, 29 Sept. 2010, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_research.

Liu, Hui, et al. “Tactile Modulation of Memory and Anxiety Requires Dentate Granule Cells along the Dorsoventral Axis.” IBRO Reports, vol. 6, 2019, p. S322. Crossref, doi:10.1016/j.ibror.2019.07.995.

MARKS, LAURA U. “Thinking Multisensory Culture.” Paragraph, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 123–37. Crossref, doi:10.3366/e0264833408000151.

Mattens, Filip. “The Sense of Touch: From Tactility to Tactual Probing.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 95, no. 4, 2016, pp. 688–701. Crossref, doi:10.1080/00048402.2016.1263870.

Pan, Steven. “A Touch to Remember.” Scientific American, scientific America, 8 Jan. 2019, www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-touch-to-remember.

Wood, Harvey. Memory: An Anthology by A.S. Byatt (2008–03-11). Chatto & Windus, 2021.

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Another reading I found helpful

Reference: Hutchmaker, Fabian. “Touch Can Produce Detailed, Lasting Memories.” ScienceDaily, Association for Psychological Science, 27 Nov. 2018, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127092532.htm.

This article in a nutshell explained the way that our touch senses actually tend to remember things more accurately than for example our visual sensors. They did a test with objects and a test with eye sight and what it showed was that through physical memory much more could be retained and remembered.

They also predicted that this concept applies to all types of memory. "These results suggest that the human mind effortlessly and automatically stores detailed and durable representations of a vast amount of perceptual experiences, including haptic ones,"

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This was a really interesting article that I read that helped me to understand haptic and what it means in relation to human behaviour. “kind of seeing that uses touch like the organ of the eye” 

Some of the key points that I took away: - Our vision and touch sensors are intrinsically linked, whether that be we see something and really feel the need to touch it, or our touch sensor pathways get triggered and we can begin to imagine what it feels like. Lots of our senses are actually quite connected

- With art in particular, we really often feel the need to touch it, due to the fact that that is how we Will feel more connected to it. This made me think that touch really is how we connect, is there anything more intimate than being as physically close to something as possible. 

Calbi, Marta, et al. “Haptic Aesthetics and Bodily Properties of Ori Gersht’s Digital Art: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019. Crossref, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02520.

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This was an interesting piece of art to look at as often I wouldn’t consider, digital and haptic in the same sense. To me they seem completely disconnected from each other, however this is not the case as Gideon May proves through his art work. 

In this work which he created along with Jeffrey shaw and dirk groenvield the viewer embarks on a multi-sensory experience as they navigate a city, they are able to cycle on a stationary bike, touch things that appear as other things.

There is essentially a whole city architected which in reality isn’t there. I thought that this was an interesting piece of work as it shows how our perception can be changed. what the viewers were experiencing wasn’t real yet to the senses It felt very real.

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Georgia Krantz creates exhibitions for the visually impaired and she was someone I looked at before making my final work. “We see through our brains, not our eyes, The eye is just one of the channels through which sensory information is passed to the brain for processing.”

Krantz organises exhibions where people are able to “see” the work through touching them, this just goes to show how important the touch sensory is and as I have already discovered through my research the way it too can create visual images. Your eyes aren’t the only visual sense. “Indeed, cognitive scientists have found the senses interact in a number of brain areas, previously considered vision-specific. And for blind subjects in particular, touch can excite neurons normally reserved for sight”

This article and looking at the art that was made was extremely helpful in informing my own work. 

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Some more illustrations of the body for my written work

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I ended up creating a sensory experience, I imagine it in the context of more people, but because of covid the only people that I could do it on were my flatmates. I got them to feel each object, deprived of their other senses and then to record whether or not it brought up a memory for them and if it did, what that memory was

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I found five things that when create significant haptic memories.

- The flour reminds me of a flour fight my sisters an I had when we were younger and the feeling of fun, for some reason I don't get this memory from purely looking at flour, it comes from the physical sensation

- The clay reminds me of making play dough with my sisters, again these are all memories that only come haptically 

- the grass reminds me of a specific garden that we had when we lived in the UK

- The blankie is one I had from when I was born to now, whenever I touch it I get feelings and memories of comfort.

- The smooth stones remind me of eskdale river and experiences I had with my friends as a child, particularly when I touch them on the grounds, I don't have to be at eskdale river but the smooth sensation of the stones brings up that memory

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A really helpful resource that I found 

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The making of the boxes

- I found some cardboard at gordon Harris and found a template online and decided to make some boxes.

- I painted them black to make them darker but because my sense is touch, I was trying really hard to focus more on the functionality rather than the actual aesthetic of the boxes. As a design student this went against everything that I am used to creating

- I cut a hole in the box for people’s hand to fit through with a craft knife

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- I found this beautiful to watch

- the process seemed far more important than the finished product

- maybe I could apply that principal to my work?

- For some reason the sounds added a layer of uncomfortability for me

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An emotional illustration of the body without the other senses

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Thinking about my project:

- because touch is such an experiential thing I want to create an experience for people

- a piece of contemporary art, that is less about the aesthetic and entirely about the haptic experience,

- how do I do this?

- how do I relate this experience to haptic memory which is what I am largely interested in?

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independent

I started by exploring all the senses that I had previously ignored

This is why I then focussed on touch in a way I hadn't before

And this is what I discovered, touch is integral to all parts of life, to memory, connection with other people, making my way around the world, sensing danger.

AND then I did this: I started to really focus on touch and what I was feeling when I noticed the sense, I started to become aware of haptic interactions in my everyday life

Because touch is the way in which I communicate and understand the things around me, its how I memorise and learn 

And this is what I discovered touch really is an amazing sense, it effects all of the other senses and in my opinion if I had to create a hierarchy of senses as the philosophers have done, touch would be at the top of my list

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Extra reading

The portal of touch

Elizabeth D Harvey

Harvey begins by explaining that touch is important in both a mystical world view as well as in a scientific world view, For example Ovid claimed that a pair cub was born as a lump of flesh and was licked into ursine shape by its mother’s tongue. And science shows that infants who receive more maternal touch as a baby have far better cognitive development as they grow up and later on in life.

Physical touch helps us to form pathways and connections in our brain which is what makes it such an extremely important sense

“agic effects of tactile depriva- tion to renewed and sensational public attention. Western culture’s relatively re- cent recognition of the primacy of touch is striking because it stages a retrieval of tactility, foregrounding the importance of a sensory faculty that seems to have been lost or overshadowed by the other four senses.” I liked this quote from the reading, as up until I had taken this paper “perception” I think even I had largely forgotten about my other senses, as a design student I was hugely focussed on visual and aesthetics without much regard for my other ways of viewing the world.

Harvey makes an interesting point in that touch is the only sense that is dispersed throughout the body, the rest of our senses are located to a specific point

“More than any other sense, touch establishes our sentient border with the world. It is also the sensory faculty that shapes our social connections; it is primarily through touch that we form and express our bonds with others. Gestures of contact—a hand- shake, kiss, or caress—define the nuances of our relationships, the subtle inflections of class, power, and familial bonds. The social “tact” that regulates these interactions recognizes the incendiary power of sexual touch, even as it also affirms our funda- mental need for human physical contact”

It is interesting the connection between touch and emotion, there is a tactility in our everyday understandings of the world.

“Because touch is a property of the body’s cutaneous covering, skin becomes the largest and most essential organ of sense. 

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Made a painting of a body showing only the touch sensors, they have no eyes ears, mouth or noes. an interesting concept and I think it shows the real power of the body

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This week I tried hard not to forget about my body and I made a list of physical interactions when I remembered to. These interactions are so nuanced yet I often let them go unnoticed. They describe my relationship to the person in action without the need for words. The way you physically communicate is just as powerful and telling as how you do another way, whether that be visual or audiological.