Senses and Sensorium Part 2

Part 2 – Reading response

The senses are stimulated for a variety of reasons.  However, why specific senses are chosen over others varies based on numerous factors.  Their engagement and importance is subjective and based on cultural as well as individual contexts.  For example, as mentioned in the reading, sight was not highly valued until the Renaissance.  This might have been due to the new humanist ideals which lead to innovations in optics that had never existed prior.  These innovations lead to advancements in art such as one point perspective and chiaroscuro, which all appeal to the sense of sight.  This contrasts with the hierarchy of senses during colonial times where smell, taste and touch were deemed as most important.  These three senses were actively engaged while white Europeans explored new land.  However the use of these senses revealed the differences between the explorers’ culture and those that were newly discovered.  Unfortunately sight was used primarily during colonialism to “prove” that these people were different and to wrongfully type cast them as “lesser” reinforcing their idea of white supremacy. 

Since senses are completely subjective and their value is uncontrollably changing, it would be an interesting concept to try not engaging them at all.  This is why I chose to photograph what is seemingly a black abyss.  There is really nothing to see, hear, touch, taste or smell.  So then how are we able to engage with this photograph.  Perhaps it evokes those “other” senses that the reading spoke of that have not yet been identified and we are unaware of.  It could also act as a postmodern critique of the modernist theories expressed within the reading.

 

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