ARTiculation: When the sensory system fuses with art
I’ve written a bit before on cross-genre artists.
Not visual artists who use two mediums
like paint and collage, but artists who have
embraced more than one form of art.
I think I so astutely cited Justin Timberlake – who doesn’t love NSYNC and Black Snake Moan? But I’ve recently come across something more impressive than JT’s iron clad talent. It’s called sensory substitution, and it’s going to blow your damn mind.
Sensory substitution is basically converting an experience felt through one sense, to another so that anybody can access it. It’s just like translating a foreign book to English so that we can enjoy it… except the languages are our senses.
I got to researching this through the discovery of a place called the VibraFusion Lab, which is on Clarence Street right beside Grooves.
Although this technique has been put to use for other fields of study like medicine, VibraFusion is particularly concerned with the use of vibration in the arts, and proudly writes that it is “the world’s first artists workshop, presentation centre, and education lab for exploring vibrational art for the body” on the company’s website.
On LondonFuse, contributor Nicole Borland wrote about a recent experience attending an event at VibraFusion and being handed a pair of earplugs “not to block out the sound but to buffer the vibrations felt right to your inner ear because these are not ones we’re used to hearing at such intense volumes.”
Translating sound to vibration for accessibility purposes isn’t the only avenue that this sort of work is being worked with. It’s also being explored creatively as a form of conceptual art.
Audiolodge, a London-based sound art collective, developed a technique called Audio Cartography, where they transpose various visual descriptions of sound onto geographic maps.
Sensory substitution is a real mind-bending concept to grasp. Suddenly, your five senses aren’t attributed to body parts anymore.
You know when you’re sitting at home and think about pizza so hard that you can actually taste it? Or when you see a spider crawling on the ceiling and can feel them crawling all over you?
The mind-body connection is a profound area of study that we’re just scratching the surface of, but from what we’ve learned so far, there’s no telling where deeper exploration could take us in many industries, including the arts.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
I think I so astutely cited Justin Timberlake – who doesn’t love NSYNC and Black Snake Moan? But I’ve recently come across something more impressive than JT’s iron clad talent. It’s called sensory substitution, and it’s going to blow your damn mind.
Sensory substitution is basically converting an experience felt through one sense, to another so that anybody can access it. It’s just like translating a foreign book to English so that we can enjoy it… except the languages are our senses.
I got to researching this through the discovery of a place called the VibraFusion Lab, which is on Clarence Street right beside Grooves.
Although this technique has been put to use for other fields of study like medicine, VibraFusion is particularly concerned with the use of vibration in the arts, and proudly writes that it is “the world’s first artists workshop, presentation centre, and education lab for exploring vibrational art for the body” on the company’s website.
On LondonFuse, contributor Nicole Borland wrote about a recent experience attending an event at VibraFusion and being handed a pair of earplugs “not to block out the sound but to buffer the vibrations felt right to your inner ear because these are not ones we’re used to hearing at such intense volumes.”
Translating sound to vibration for accessibility purposes isn’t the only avenue that this sort of work is being worked with. It’s also being explored creatively as a form of conceptual art.
Audiolodge, a London-based sound art collective, developed a technique called Audio Cartography, where they transpose various visual descriptions of sound onto geographic maps.
Sensory substitution is a real mind-bending concept to grasp. Suddenly, your five senses aren’t attributed to body parts anymore.
You know when you’re sitting at home and think about pizza so hard that you can actually taste it? Or when you see a spider crawling on the ceiling and can feel them crawling all over you?
The mind-body connection is a profound area of study that we’re just scratching the surface of, but from what we’ve learned so far, there’s no telling where deeper exploration could take us in many industries, including the arts.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
