Senses and Sensorium Reading

In the Senses and Sensorium reading, I gathered the understanding that visual arts tend to appeal to sight as the main and focal sense. This article also employed the concept of the sensorium, which is the sum total of our ways of sensing and perceiving the world, arguing that we need to embrace senses beyond sight. This made me think about the blindfold activity/practice that occurred in week one of class. By taking away our strongest and most used sense, it created feelings of concern, nervousness and questioning. The reading states that seeing and knowing is often equated and that the mind and body are regarded as separate. This conveys sight to be associated with the mind, reason, rationality, and logic, whereas taste, touch and smell are associated with the body as a source of unreason, emotions and irrationality. Therefore, by practicing our awareness for our other senses, I believe that we will not only be provided with more in depth experiences, but also to connect and challenge our mind and body.

This photo depicts my understanding of the reading as we overuse our main sense of sight and leave other senses unacknowledged. By bringing our body awareness to these senses, we can begin to "see" through them as well.