newham sensory deprivation map

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

newham sensory deprivation map

Rechecking those emotion maps created by Christian Nold I found interesting one of the variations of the project, based on sensory deprivation of sight and hearing.

from the project background:

Normally we perceive our surroundings using 5 senses: Sight Sound Smell Touch Taste What happens when we explore our environment without Sight and Sound?

The Newham Sensory Deprivation Map (2007) is the result of an intensive workshop with 34 students from Newham Sixth Form College in London. The students were divided into pairs, one of whom was blindfolded and given ear defenders so that they could not see or hear. The other student was given a Global Positioning System as well as pen and paper. Together the two explored the local area around the college for up to an hour. The idea being that the blindfolded and deafened student verbally relates their sensory experience to the other student who is taking notes and making sure they are safe during the journey. On their return the geographical data from the GPS is downloaded and all the sensory observations made during the walk are spatially recorded. The final map combines all the annotations of the students and forms an alternative sensory map of Newham.

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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

Tuesday, April 21, 2009