This week’s sprint, I mainly focus on two questions to answer. The first question is whether works that focus on the senses other than vision ignore vision altogether. The second problem is the multi-sensory and gallery problem. After answering the first two questions, I’m going to talk a little bit about group work at the end and how I understand colonization and decolonization voices.
First and foremost, does the focus on sensory artworks other than the visual negate art altogether or do they still have a visual aesthetic? In my opinion, vision is an inevitable sensory element in art, and to some extent it will interfere with your understanding of art. The example I would like to give is an interactive exhibition in Calton Hill called The Seeing Hands. In the exhibition, people can use their own senses to experience. When I entered this exhibition for the first time, my visual preconceptions made me feel many bright colors, such as red and green. As vision takes over my brain’s perception, I forget that this is an interactive exhibition that can be touched, and I just think about why these colors are assigned to the objects in the exhibition and what these colors represent.When I went into the exhibition a second time and looked closely at the preface, I realized that I should amplify my sense of touch and faint sense of hearing in my touch. On the wall of the exhibition, you can see a lot of square objects of different materials, and the kinds of these objects are different and also produce different touch. When I touch the tile, I feel the cold and smooth touch. When I touch the cut surface of the tile, I need to pay attention to the sharp feeling of the tile, so as to prevent my hand from being cut by too much force. In the process of touch, I amplify my senses. Although each object brings me a different touch, I still can’t ignore the influence of vision. As you can see in the image below, these square objects have different colors and patterns. So, for me, artworks that focus on the other senses can’t completely ignore the visual, they still embody the visual aesthetics.
Figure1: The picture taken in The Seeing Hand exhibition
And then, the answer to the question of whether galleries need to be multi-sensory is yes. Multi-sensory has positive influence. “It makes museums more accessible to the visually impaired. It brings in visitors who may find the conventional formal visualism of museums disengaging or daunting.” (Classen, 2017) On the one hand, multi-sensory galleries can help visually impaired people to understand art and the world from different angles to some extent. Dodek (2012) notices that according to research, multi-sensory experiences can benefit many non-visual learners who prefer to use other sensory ways to create meaning in the world. At the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, there is an exhibition called “Touch the Prado”, which allows people with visual impairment to feel the paintings in the exhibition through touch, and imagine the pictures through touch. This is a great way to help people who are good at using touch feel the artwork. The same, different senses bring different people into contact with art. So I think galleries need to be multi-sensory. Multi-sensory provides more people with access to and insight into artworks.
On the other hand, multiple senses can leave a deeper impression on people. For example, Van Gogh’s interactive experience exhibition makes use of multi-sensory technology and multimedia technology to bring visitors a different audio-visual feast. The multi-sensory experience allows visitors to delve into the gallery. From just looking at the artworks in the gallery with the eyes to the combination of audiovisual touch and even smell, the interaction between the gallery, the artworks and the audience can be increased, and this interaction can increase the understanding of the gallery and the artworks by visitors. I agree with that “Exhibits should invite visitors to participate and become intellectually involved, let visitors touch objects, manipulate machines, smell an environment and hear sounds…. The interaction between museum and visitor should not be limited to exhibits but should extend to the gift shop, food service, and all areas of the museum. ” (John Howard Falk and Lynn Diane Dierking, 2016b) Therefore, I think galleries need a multi-sensory approach, and museums also need it. In addition, I would like to add a point of my opinion about he multi-sensory exhibition. I’m not sure if my idea is correct, I think maybe in some relatively new exhibitions, curators tend to use multi-sensory and multimedia technology to plan an exhibition. This kind of exhibition has become one of the more popular exhibitions, of course, this is just my guess.
Last but not least, about this week’s group work, our group carried out according to four parts. The last part about reflection is completed by me. In the section of reflection, I want to discussed the topic of the voices of decolonization and decolonization and divided the topic into two positions. The first position is that the past human voice is colonial compared to the present human voice, and the second position is that the present human voice is still colonial compared to the natural voice. Both comparisons are made with the sound of people’s voices today. the final conclusion is that compared to the colonial sound of the past, the sound that people make today is non-colonial. But compared with the mountains, the land, the sea and so on, the voice of the people still seems to be a colonial presence. I looked at the link on decolonize listening in the handbook, but I’m not sure I fully understand what a decolonize listening is, what a colonizing sound is. It seems to me that human activity may be of a colonial nature. In the past, during periods of war or during periods of dispeace, such colonization may have been among human beings. But, but compared to nature and human society, nature was colonized to some extent. So, the decolonization listening maybe is the voice of nature, and the colonial listening is the voice of human.
Figure2: Our group’s powerpoint part4
⚠️As for the additional work, I’ve watched the readings, videos and audio for the first, second and third days. I really like artist Hanna Tuulikki’s artwork, especially her Deer dancer’s electronic album. That’s all for this week’s sprint blog, thanks for reading.
Reference list
Classen, C. (2017). The museum of the senses experiencing art and collections. London Oxford New York New Delhi Sydney Bloomsbury Academic, An Imprint Of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Dodek, W.L. (2012). Bringing Art to Life through Multi-Sensory Tours. Journal of Museum Education, 37(1), pp.115–124. doi:10.1080/10598650.2012.11510723.
John Howard Falk and Lynn Diane Dierking (2016b). The museum experience revisited. London: Routledge.
Misty Li
Fantastic blog! Your submission shows an engagement with some of the key texts explored as part of your work during this sprint and it is good to learn from you that your article brings very clear structure and theoretical materials. You raised the idea that vision is an inevitable sensory element in art and use your own experience to exemplify it. Also, in the end, you find strong examples of the multiple senses that can leave a deeper impression on people, which is rich in logic.