Freedom of senses

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Freedom of senses

Lygia Clark (Belo Horizonte, October 23, 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, April 25, 1988) was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicalia movement. Even with the changes in how she approached her artwork, she did not stray far from her Constructivist roots. Along with Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, and Lygia Pape, Clark co-founded the Neo-Concretist art movement. The Neo-Concretists believed that art ought to be subjective and organic. Throughout her career trajectory, Clark discovered ways for museum goers (who would later be referred to as "participants") to interact with her art works. She sought to redefine the relationship between art and society. Clark's works dealt with inner life and feelings.

Experiments:
Caminhando- The participants are each invited to take a pair of scissors, twist a strip of paper and form a Mobius loop out of it and continuously cut alone the plane. This is the art experiment in which Clark commented that the meaning of this particular experience lies in actually engaging in the activity.

1966: Air & Stone- A small plastic bag was filled with air. A stone is then placed on the bag and the participant squeezes the bag to experience the heft of the space and the weightlessness of the air inside the bag. The rock begins to show qualities of a living organism. In this experiment, Clark played with the concept of opposites such as emptiness and fullness and air versus solid.

1967: Sensorial Hoods- This experiment involved eye pieces, ear covers, and a small bag that would be affixed over the participant's nose. The participants would also have helmets with small mirrors affixed to them. The purpose of this experiment was to utilize all of the senses at one time. The outcome of this experiment might be that a participant would use his senses in a way he would never have thought possible.

Abyss-Masks- The participant's eyes were blindfolded and large bags of air weighed down with stones could be touched giving off the sensation of empty space from within the body.

The I and the You: Clothing/Body/Clothing- A man and a woman wear hoods over their eyes and a full body suit and during this experiment, each would come to understand their own gender by feeling through their pockets

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome

This is the blog of the Extra Senses, Extra Interference research group, taught by Edwin van der Heide and Joost Rekveld at the Interfaculty ArtScience in The Hague in april and may 2009.

http://www.interfaculty.nl/

In 1964 Marshall McLuhan wrote his now classic book ‘Understanding Media’, in which he developed a completely new view of what a medium is. Instead of focussing on the content offered by the new, technological media that have been appearing in the last century and a half, he called attention to how the experience of a new medium changes the web of relations between our senses, how it changes the way in which we interpret what we perceive and how it ultimately changes our worldview. For him, every medium is an ‘extension of man’, and every new extension has a profound, total influence on how we sense, think and act. In developing this view he was influenced by the bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who was fascinated by the new perceptual possibillities offered by the new media of his time (photography, film, electric sound) and who thought that artists had a responsibility for literally shaping mankinds’ perception of the world.
In science, views on the flexibility and adaptability of our senses were developed by the Mexican/American scientist Paul Bach-y-Rita. In a series of far-reaching experiments he showed the incredible extent to which our perceptual system can adapt in real-life situations. This ‘Sensory Plasticity’ was most dramatically demonstrated in a series of experiments in which Bach-y-Rita restored sight to a number of blind people. He gave them a crude interface that translated a camera image into a series of tactile impulses on the skin. After a short period of accomodation these people reported visual sensations, and they could recognize objects, move through spaces or even catch a ball thrown at them. As a kind of cyborgs they were truly seeing, not through their blind eyes, but through their interface and their skin. Key to the success of these experiments was that the people involved could move around with their interfaces and use them in real-life situations, in which perceptions are always related to intentions, bodily movements and actions.
In this research group we want to apply this perspective on the plasticity of our senses to interactive art. We are going to develop and build (preferably wearable) interfaces that will enable us to navigate through the world on the basis of information to which we normally have no access. We are going to try and build new senses. In order to translate these normally imperceivable aspects of the world into sound, image or tactile sensations, we will study different approaches to sonification, visualization and the tactilization of data. Also we will have to think about the environment for which we build these senses and perhaps design a special environment for them.

Extra Senses, Extra Interference | ArtScience

Wednesday, April 29, 2009