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Sprint 03 Beyond vision

A flower is a world, a leaf is a bodhi——Buddhist.

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

—William Blake

There is a philosophical saying in the Buddhist scriptures: “A flower is a world, a leaf is a bodhi”. The meaning is that a flower is a microcosm and a leaf is the embodiment of the Buddha’s wisdom. There are many versions and interpretations of this saying, but what remains the same is that it inspires people that the way they see and understand the world can change, that the so-called ‘world view’ is not just about the things in the world. The relationship between those things is not absolute in their presence. This always fits into the context of the question and allows one to rethink embodied knowledge. In the material world, the disasters we face may be meteorological disasters and man-made unjust wars, whereas if we translate the ‘world’ into our bodies, perhaps the diseases we experience every day are like terrible disasters on this continent. The world is a place of white supremacy, of heterogeneous patriarchy, of ableism, of hatred and filth against the poor.

When we think of sensory experience, people most often use their vision to judge everything and may frame their experience in a context. However, humans are also often deceived by their senses, for example, when we sit in the opposite direction of a moving car, as Jenna Carine Ashton could easily say in her essay ‘Derek Jarman’s Blue: Negating Vision’ “Hearing replaces seeing; when we are forced to listen, blue creates a sensory conflict.” This theory is well established in industry, especially in the film and gaming industries, such as the multifaceted auditory stimuli of traditional 3D films in cinemas, the stimuli of VR devices and simulator games, and even games such as (flight) simulators, which add more sensory experiences, such as simulating weightlessness.

Listening, for example, can be used as a relationship, a prayer, and in the view of deep listening developed by the composer Pauline Oliver, listening is also a concrete practice, a collective interpersonal activity. Before we walk to Calton Hill for our pre-walk observation, our focus is on making listening the focus of our thinking. Can sound be a distinct perception? How are sounds recorded and the way they are recorded, our relationship with Calton Hill, what is central and amplified, what is natural and what is not? What encroaches on what space? These questions, and many more, are well worth thinking about beforehand.

At Calton Hill we take a de-centralised, de-contextualised approach, recording sounds of various subjects at will, the sounds of people, the sounds of animals in motion, the sounds of animals calling, the sounds of the wind, the sounds of plants, the sounds of plants being touched by people and animals, mixing together to form an incredible product of human voices, joy, silence and many, many indescribable emotions. It makes you wonder if we are also ‘colonists’ of Mount Calton. Mount Calton is a dead volcano, originally part of the natural land mass, which has become a familiar place as people have arrived. Whether we observe Mount Calton or not, it is still there, watching over the world.

 

In addition to timeless coordinates, one can also think of works that go beyond the visual to touch other senses. This reminds me of Barcelona-born olfactory artist Klara Ravat’s Smell Lab, founded in Spektrum, the central art space in Berlin’s Kroizberg district, a successful example of moving from art to commerce, offering scent lovers a space to explore the science of art in the studio of an art brand.

Ravat studied art science at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and was inspired by her teacher Caro Verbeek to start experimenting with scent in earnest. As a child, she would make her own perfumes, collecting plants and putting them into bottles filled with alcohol for a few weeks to see how they worked. Her favourite game at the time was the memory test, where she had to match the description on the card to the scent in the capsule – it was like thinking back to the start of the scent lab activities.

Experimentation, that’s how Ravat works now, trial and error is how she works. She explains, “I do a lot of experimentation and if I like the finished product I keep it for myself, if I don’t like it I don’t use it.” This casual olfactory experimentation also sets her apart from professional perfumers. They [professional perfumers] know each ingredient very well, and the way they work and communicate with each other allows them to focus on what they want to create and achieve their goals in a more direct way,” she says. From an olfactory point of view, our process is the opposite, you have to experiment randomly first and then keep collecting pieces that you like.”

The first Scent Lab event was called Scent Walk, which used scents to capture the character of an area and had people practice collecting objects with their favourite scents.In 2015, Ravat started recording the unique scents of different places as a resident artist travelling between Belgrade and Athens. Since then, her process of refining and extracting scenes from the city has continued, and she was commissioned to capture the scents of Naples to create ‘Two or Three Things I Know About Ciro’. To satisfy your curiosity, the work is sweet, splendid and with a hint of the sea.

Speaking about the Scent Lab project Collected Smells, Ravat says: “During a Scent Lab event we went to the Neukolln and Kreuzberg districts and searched for scents there. We extracted several smells, including Middle Eastern snacks, sweat, smoke, dried leaves and markets – a mixture of orange peels, coriander and chillies that we picked up from the ground. You can describe the smell of a place in words, but it’s particularly difficult to extract smells from real objects, often borrowing odour-like ingredients to recreate the original smell.”

 

I’ve always wanted to understand people, why they think and behave differently, and to see the huge contrast between different people facing the same thing, observation through smell is a very simple way to do that.

Smell Lab’s activities also aim to create a connection between scent, memory and emotion, as Ravat himself confirms: “Scent is also a social connection, as if it’s a connector between people. Once you show the audience something related to scent, they are immediately interested and willing to relax and get involved.” The unique connection between scent and memory is based on science, as scent is processed by the olfactory bulb in the nose, which directly connects two areas of the brain responsible for emotion and memory – the amygdala and the hippocampus. Visual, auditory and tactile information is processed in a very different way, not through those brain areas, which may explain the unique ability of scent to stimulate emotions and memories.

“I’ve always wanted to understand people, why they think and behave differently, and it’s very easy to see how different people face the same thing in a very different way, by looking at it through scent. I’m also interested in creating new languages with scents, like when you smell a rose and think of your mum, and when I think of my summer holidays in France. By sharing each other’s olfactory experiences, you can learn a lot about other people’s personalities and life experiences.”

The Connected Smells series is an attempt to connect smells, memories and the collective experience of everyone. Participants are asked to bring a small item that reminds them of someone they know – anything: a spoonful of honey, an old sock, a handful of plants, a plate fragment, a handful of sweets and so on. These items are then put together and distilled to create a flavour that comes from everyone’s memories.

 

 

  1. Thomas Cleary. Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-Yen Buddhism. Shambhala.
  2. Jump up to:a b Thomas Cleary (1993). The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra. p. 2.
  3. Let the Artist Klara Ravat Re-Invigorate Your Sense of Smell. (2017, June 11). The Fifth Sense. https://thefifthsense.i-d.co/zh_cn/articles/olfactory-artist-klara-ravat-wants-to-empower-your-sense-of-smell-1/

4 replies to “Sprint 03 Beyond vision”

  1. s2449532 says:

    The author takes us on a tour of Calton Hill with a fresh perspective, and she suggests how to make listening the focus of our thinking. We instinctively prioritize vision with other sensory emotions and are limited to a particular environment. Sometimes we are also blinded by it. Sound, on the other hand, is an obvious perception that takes a decentered, decontextualized approach, synthesizing the many sounds that form a whole new emotional product at Calton Hill. To perceive the world with a concept that goes beyond the visual, to perceive Carleton Hill, more than Carleton Hill.

  2. xiaotong wu says:

    The author’s philosophical understanding of the idea of transcendental vision was a real eye-opener for me. I like the quote at the beginning, “A flower is the world, a leaf is a bodhi”. A thing is still there whether you care about it or not.

    I suggest that the author mark up the quotation and include the documentation at the end

  3. xiaotong says:

    First of all, I was struck by the author’s philosophical understanding of the idea of transcendental vision. I like the opening quote: “A flower is the world, a leaf is a bodhi. A thing is still there whether you care about it or not.

    Secondly, in the blog, I learned about the author’s Basho group’s trip to Calton Hill, where they experienced something beyond the visual by recording sound.

    Finally, it is recommended that the authors mark their quotes well and include documentation at the end.

  4. Nuanxin Zhang says:

    I love your discussion of multisensory and I often feel the same way as you, as you say, that sight can deceive the senses (although we often say seeing is believing). I can relate to what the Carlton Hill experience has inspired you to try to amplify more senses and get more out of the experience, that’s what I think.

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