MJS2: "See Yourself Sensing"

Overall

• Generally these readings addressed this idea of completely messing with one’s senses and perceptions. Environments reading focused on the altering of senses within certain environments. Reframers reading focused on reversing or combining certain senses to completely put you out of touch with reality.

Environment

• This section focused on the combining of environmental aspects and the biological makeup of humans. By questioning the nature of space and its effects on how we perceive things. Diving deeper into this nature of space concept leads us to the various systems that exist within space: geology, wildlife, plant life, simbiosis, the flow of energy, water, oxygen. This reading on how we might distort our perception of space by intertwining these systems with the human senses of taste, touch, smell, sight, and sounds. By exploring this, you start to figure out the osmotic flow between humans and the environment. When can it become to much. How might we push one's fear of being taken over by a specific system? What stood out to me in this reading is how, a lot of the projects highlighted included masks or some sort of a contraption that encased one’s head. Yes, your head is home to most of your senses, but why did artists gravitate towards that. Why did a wearable piece have to be so large? Projects and creations that focused on isolating one of the senses would be stronger conceptually, in my opinion.

• ‘Body in Transit’ by Didier Fuiza Faustino was one of my favorites highlighted in the reading. This project focused on death and the feeling of senselessness. My initial reaction was, death can’t be the only time in our lives that experience senselessness. But after thinking about it, even when we are unconscious or sleeping we experiences senses and emotion within our dreams. This thought of being senseless is pretty terrifying, but Fuiza dives into this thought and created a shipping container that can fit one nude human body. This project was meant to influence politicians, citizens, and airport staff to rethink anti- immigration policy.

• This reading helped me to see the broader scope of the term environment. An environment does not need to a physical space or place, it can simply be a feeling. Being in a state of hypnosis is a type of environment.

Questions

• Do you have a favorite project from this reading? Which one? Why?

• How might we undermine our autonomy by pursuing these environmental changes that have physical affects on our bodies?

• How much should & can be controlled by design?

Reframers

• Reframers created experiences in which someone has the realization that they’re not what they seem to be, putting them completely out of touch with reality. ‘Technology is the ever present mediator between the self and the otherness of oneself.’ Reframers test the limits of both this idea, and they make questions assumptions about our own embodiment. These creators construct experiences in which your vision and touch are combined or your spatial awareness is completely messed with making you question your grip on reality. This sensory substitution will evidently make you interact with the environment around you differently. So this work that the reframers do ultimately influence a change between human and environment through mechanisms.

Questions

• Do you have a favorite project from this reading? Which one? Why?

• What are the places and forms for live tactile, viceral, face-to-face, experiences in a media saturated world?

• Do you think there are senses that shouldn’t be combined?

Conclusion

• These spatial practices play a huge role in how we as humans interact with the world around us, but it also shows us how we don't need to follow the norms of our senses. We can combine then, alter them, and push their limits. By doing so we have a better understanding of our bodily functions, and we also get a sense of how we respond to instances when our perception is completely being altered.