Fresh sensations - newly discovered senses and their use in art, Contemporary Lynx

Imagine yourself standing in front of an artwork. What do you see? There is a high probability that what’s appearing in your mind’s eye requires exactly that - seeing. Among the five basic senses, sight is that which is utilised the most, given that so much art, old and new, relies on a flat surface, colour and line as the chosen means of communication.

Although artists increasingly engage other means of perception, science recognises at least five ‘new’, additional senses. The findings cause heated debates on what exactly constitutes as a sense and there is no agreement on the final number. Yet, regardless of the figures, how exactly are they used in art?

Ouch!

Starting with seemingly the least desirable sense, nociception is responsible for the sensation of pain. Intertwining with the sense of touch, yet physiologically different, it is often utilised in performance art. Performers who consciously choose pain as their medium for reasons other than shock and disgust can be categorised in two ways: those who put themselves through physically traumatising experiences to communicate a message; and those who successfully communicate their pain to the audience, causing something akin to the mirroring of sensations.

Pain simply cannot be discussed without the contribution of Marina Abramović and her performances which, it would not be an exaggeration to say, are remarkable sacrifices on the altar of art. Most famously, Abramović’s ‘Rhythm 0’ (1974) saw her offering her physical body to the audience almost entirely for 6 hours, while providing 72 tools to ‘use’ on her as the object of the show. These included instruments for both pleasure and pain such as a wine, a feather, paint, knives and even a loaded gun. Initially shy, the viewers gradually got used to the artist’s body as an item to play with and became increasingly more hurtful, tearing off her clothes, cutting her skin and even picking up the pistol.

The inclusion of pain in the piece retains genuine shock value to this day because unlike in many performances, here the artist is not her perpetrator. Despite providing the tools, Abramović could not have predicted the violent outcome and her injuries carry a conclusion lasting far beyond than physical scars.

Reversing the situation is Marco Donnarumma with his performance and film ‘Hypo Chrysos’ (2011-2013). Inspired by the circles of hell in Dante’s ‘Inferno’, the piece consists of the artist pulling two concrete blocks tied to his arms with rope. The action itself would fall into the more predictable group of performances designed to test the creator’s limits, yet here the physical strain on Donnarumma’s body is communicated through sound. The audience is faced with the overwhelming sounds of bone cracking and blood flow, amplified through ‘The XTH Sense’, an instrument designed by the artist himself.

It is the deeply unsettling sound, as though taken straight out of a horror film, that is most effective. Its jarring quality can cause the audience genuine aural pain to the extent that Donnarumma’s physical strain can be more thoroughly understood by an onlooker. Actually causing pain to an art audience is probably not something that can be easily sneaked past gallerists without appropriate health and safety procedures, so the performer managed to find a way of reaching adequate levels of discomfort (without bloodshed) to achieve his purpose.

What time is it?

Chronocetion, or the awareness of time passing is not reliant on a specific sensory system, yet scientists agree that a number of physiological components, like the circadian rhythm, work together to aid our perception of time.

Time is perhaps most famously illustrated by Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’ (2010). The 24-hour film is a collage of scenes taken from film and TV, all of which are showing the time and as a result becoming a fully functioning timekeeping device, played in real time. In today’s world we often focus on time as a commodity that we don’t have enough of or as mere figures counting down to an event, but here the audience are invited to, quite literally, do nothing else than watch time passing as it is happening.

While video itself is a time - sensitive medium whose its speed can be manipulated to stretch or skip, participating in Marclay’s piece means we take a step back from our own relationship with transience and become hyper-aware of the current moment, watching it pass with every new scene of the film. While ‘The Clock’ doesn’t actually make full use of our innate sense of chronoception, it drags the viewer out of their subjective perception of time.

Let’s move!

Close your eyes and attempt to touch your nose with the tip of your finger. Most likely you’ll have no problems doing it, thanks to your sense of proprioception: an awareness of the body’s position and the placement of limbs. Similarly, equilibrioception refers to our sense of balance. By allowing full engagement and awareness of the body, both are key senses responsible for the feeling of immersion when experiencing art which involves us physically, let’s take a look at some examples.

Mirosław Bałka’s’ famous commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall entitled ‘How It Is’ (2009) is as much an example of expert use of proprioception as the conscious use of sensory deprivation. The installation comprised of a giant, steel box on 2-metre stilts, the inside of which could be accessed by a wide ramp. The piece carried strong historical connotations of concentration camps, displacement and the literal disappearance of thousands of victims of conflict, yet the communication of these ideas relied solely on the viewer’s physical experience. Inside, the visitor would encounter only shadow and eventually complete darkness.

The piece was designed to push the viewers outside of their comfort zone and, as the artist describes it, to “touch the subject of disappearing”. In day-to-day life, particularly in the city, utter darkness is hard to come by and being associated with danger and vulnerability, we rarely encounter it willingly. Here, Bałka invited the viewer to let go of any expectations and embrace the usually unwanted sensory experience. Incredibly, just because we cannot see anything around us, we still know exactly what our bodies are doing. Admittedly, hearing voices and being able to smell the scent of the surroundings does not mean we rely solely on proprioception when navigating a space like that of ‘How It Is’, but due to the limited sensory data available, we become a lot more sensitive and aware to how our bodies exist in the space. Movement becomes slower, more calculated and careful, proximity to people and objects signals an obstacle. In this seemingly deprived state, we can truly begin to contemplate the aspects of the work that Bałka is making so clear - the symbolic and true meanings of darkness and light and our fragility in the face of both. Disorientation is a powerful tool in demonstrating the power of proprioception and balance and their role in perception as a whole. Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is a master of visual and spatial deception in the most wondrous sense. “Awareness of the self (grounded in felt relationality of our body parts) is most significantly activated at the moment of disturbance of balance, situations of disorientation” - Ksenia Fedorova wrote in ‘Mechanisms of Augmentation in Proprioceptive Media Art’ published by M/C Journal. In Eliasson’s work, this bodily awareness is closely connected to vision and the ‘disturbance’ often stemming from seeing the self from an unexpected perspective. ‘The Open Pyramid’ (2016) consisted of reflective panels suspended from the ceiling, creating a square pyramid 2.5 metres above ground. A spotlight was positioned in the middle casting a large circle of light and once inside, the viewer saw their own tiny reflection, vertically inside the cube of the pyramid.

As the piece created something of a detachment from the body for the visitor who would see a distant reflection at a strange angle, they would often indicate and reclaim their bodies in the space by waving their arms around, dancing or through any other physical, identifiable signifier. The piece cannot function without the viewer who activates it and once it becomes clear the effect that their body has in the space, the viewer can begin to take full advantage.

It could be said that in order for a piece of interactive installation art to be successful it has to always work well with and around the body. A space designed to work only when we enter it enhances our sensual awareness. On the most basic level we begin to monitor our movements more carefully. We look where we place our feet and think before we turn our heads. The awareness of the body keeps us grounded in the present moment of experiencing the piece. When it works, the result is a truly immersive and memorable encounter with art.

Hot and cold

Another one of Olafur Eliasson’s works, created in collaboration with geologist Minik Rosink perfectly illustrates working with another ‘new’ sense - thermoception, or the perception of temperature - and does so in a way that goes beyond the personal, haptic experience. ‘Ice Watch’ (2014-2018) was entirely site-specific and unpredictably temporary. It consisted of 12 blocks of ice brought over from Greenland (each block weighing between 1-1.5 tonnes) placed in a circle in popular areas of Copenhagen, Paris and most recently, London. Despite having set dates, nobody could predict exactly how long the blocks would last, making a poignant environmental point about the effects of climate change even before the event happened.

The arrangement of blocks in a circle was symbolic in a multitude of ways, but most significantly, according to the artist, they can be described as an ‘ice parliament’ - a group of beings who need to agree on something. Fittingly, the installation in London coincided with last year’s climate change conference in Katowice, Poland. The increasingly pressing issue of global warming is one that Eliasson comes back to throughout his oeuvre and this is perhaps its most literal, yet powerful embodiment. Inviting the viewer to “put their hands on the ice, listen to it, smell it, look at it – and witness the ecological changes our world is undergoing” the artist brings a physical, disappearing representation of the problem to us. By involving thermoception alongside other senses, the viewer has a chance to put their warm hands on the cold, wet, transparent surface, melting right in front of their eyes and under their fingers. Although climate change is an issue we are all too keenly aware of, to most of us it remains an abstract idea, happening elsewhere. Once again, the unusual geography lesson becomes an incredibly memorable experience when the body is engaged. Visitors touched, smelled, hugged, listened to and licked the ice, creating a much deeper physical connection and therefore an awareness greater than one could ever hope for from a book or an educational documentary programme. As Rosnik himself says “Art can engage people far better than science can.” Indeed art that engages the senses can achieve even better results.

Art and science are increasingly becoming inseparable accomplices and when it comes to our senses this can only lead to enhanced aesthetic and sensual experiences. It’s safe to say that the dismissal of new senses in art production would deprive audiences of some of the most extraordinary artworks of recent decades. As artists are continuously venturing outside of traditional means, we can only hope for even more innovative and challenging results, so that we can exercise our newly discovered senses more often.