To encourage myself to be more regular and thoughtful in my dissertation research, I'm going to attempt to summarize my reading periodically. I know I won't do it every day, but perhaps short reading/writing sessions are what I need to get things going. I decided to revisit from the beginning a book that has provided much insight for me throughout my comps and first chapter, Kevin Dann's Bright Colors, Falsely Seen. Dann argues against the Romantic notion of synesthesia being a glimpse into a unseen, higher plane of consciousness, though he does believe that it is something we are all capable of. Tonight, I only revisited the introduction, but here are a few points I picked up that may be helpful:
*When someone perceives something that the rest of us do not, it raises questions about whether or not the perception is "true". If we acknowledge that it is, then we tend to think of their perception as MORE true. This seems to be at the core of Western Romanticism, as well as common beliefs about synaesthesia. (vii)
*In these kinds of phenomena, empirical validity doesn't matter as much as their existence as cultural and intellectual artifacts. For example, the existence of angels, spirits, elves, fairies, etc. has had little impact on history, but the belief in them has. (vii)
*Romanticism seems to regard synaesthesia as "the path to liberation from the prisonhouse of the senses and their tyrannical overseer, reason." (ix) Note: Which 19th century writers/artists used synaesthesia to exercise this idea of LIBERATION?
*Many of those who support synaesthesia maintain that the ultimate function of literature and the arts is to manifest this fusion of the senses (ix).
*Romantics are fascinated by synaesthetes because they view them as having "escaped the consequences of the fall into rational consciousness suffered by the rest of us" (x).
*Liberatory Romanticism has viewed the bizarre sensations associated with synaesthesia as containing esoteric truths that we only need to learn to decipher (x).
NOTES: I am not really concerned about whether synaethesia represents a higher plane of thinking or a window into the unknown or a daily occurrence that we all can learn to master. I am, however, fascinated by how and why the 19th century writers and artists fostered these ideas. Was synaethesia liberating to them? Was it simply a way to rebel from reason? Did it help them tout their own doctrinal beliefs, or convince the public that they had attained true artistic vision? Or, did they just like the pure sensuality of combining the senses? I hope to find examples of how several artists/painters used synaesthesia to various ends in their work.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
March Dissertating, Day 1
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Here's a short update. I have a few interesting things going on...
1) Internship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - for the last two summers, I've interned at the Virginia Museum in Exhibition Planning. The first summer I assisted them with some ideas for their Ning Statewide Partners site, and I created an audio tour on Women Artists. Last summer, I began work on a second audio tour on African American artists that I just finished a couple of weeks ago. I will be expanding this tour for the Education Department over the next few months, and plan to continue to do various projects for the museum.
2) I'm involved in the new Department of Olfactory Art at the MAD in New York. It's all very classified right now, but I'm so excited to be working with Chandler Burr and can't wait to embark on some new projects in the world of olfaction!
3) I've written what I called a chapter of my dissertation, about 35 pages where I contrasted the synaesthetic intentions of Baudelelaire's Correspondences and Rimbaud's Voyelles. I think I made a couple of breakthroughs, but my most significant discovery is that I really don't want to spend my dissertation work trying to translate French, and I want to move to the British writers instead. I'm also toying with straying from synaesthesia altogether and moving to the senses in general or smell specifically in the 19th century.
Two Years?
I suppose I'm not a very competent blogger. I think it takes a careful blend of having something to say and self-confidence that I haven't developed fully yet. I wrestle with feeling like all aspects of social networking are just self-important cries for attention. I know that they aren't, completely, because there are blogs that I love to read, and people who say things in blogs that inspire, comfort, intrigue, and teach. I'm just not certain yet that I am able to say those things. I do think, though, that there is a small group of interesting people out there who share my passion for all things olfactory, and thus, I don't want to let go entirely the idea of writing and talking about it periodically. I will try to revisit this blogging thing upon occasion to see what happens.
Read more!Saturday, March 21, 2009
Is it worth it, after all?
Have been through a couple difficult weeks, and am facing spring with with a distinct lack of energy that I hope dissipates as it gets warmer. The daffodils look darker this year, perhaps because of the snow right as they started to bloom, but they aren't their typical bright cheery yellow. They're kind of gold, worn-looking. That's how I feel, I guess. I haven't smelled any of them yet, perhaps that will help. I wonder if they will smell differently. I wonder if my own weathered perspective will make them smell differently, or if they will actually smell that way on their own without my twisted view of things.
What makes words so powerful? I love writing. Not necessarily writing things myself. I generally can find the right words for things, and get what I want to say across in a good, if not "just right" manner. But reading things other people have written, thinking about their thinking about what they write, is so fascinating. There are those writers who brood, and cross things out, and labor over every step, and there are those, like me, who just spew it all out there and walk away. Where do the words come from? Why do they choose this one, or that one? If a stream-of-consciousness kind of writer decides to labor over a work, will it get better or worse? I always hate revisiting anything I've written, because it's too hard for me to change it. I feel like I make it worse.
It's neat how sometimes, the words themselves are what make one gasp - the simplicity of them, the intensity - and sometimes, the words aren't all that special, but the thoughts behind them hint at ideas so amazing that the brain can barely take it in. Is that why I love reading so much?
So, yeah, I created this blog more for academic reasons than personal ones - to talk about my research and such, so I'll offer a few words. I'm still in kind of a funk in that area. I am trying to find theorists to put on my bibliography, and I don't like most of what I encounter. I'm sick to death of academic pomp and pretentiousness, and don't WANT to know what Joe Scholar thinks about the nature of thingness and the phenomenology of perception. I want to know what Joe Poet thinks about it, and how it makes him feel, and what he smells, and tastes, and how he uses words to describe that. I feel like the theorists distance me from the real, from what it's actually about.
I'm feeling rather empty these days...but relying on spring to sweep in and fill me up again.
"Still to come, the worst part and you know it...there's a numbness, in your heart and its growing." - The Shins
Saturday, February 7, 2009
I'm taking an Art History seminar on contemporary photography this semester, which I hope will help me plan my summer research project. Photography, of course, is completely reliant on vision. What I want to do is use photography to emulate the other senses, smell in particular, but touch and taste as well. I've noticed two main ways that photographers seem to work to "confuse" the eyes. One is to provide an environment so rich and full of stuff to see, that the eye doesn't know how to process it (Andreas Gursky does pictures like this: http://www.yardwear.net/blog/content/binary/andreas-gursky2.jpg). If, when you look around the photograph, your eyes don't know what to make of it, is there some way that the artist can force the other senses to compensate for what vision is missing? Can we mimic the other senses visually, or do we need to use enhancement that actually invokes the other senses - textured pieces stuck to a photograph, microencapsulation so that the photographs actually have a scent, etc.? Or, rather than give the eye so much to see that it doesn't know what to do with it, would it be more effective to limit what the eye can do, so that the other senses feel like perhaps they can do better? Jean-Marc Bustamantes pictures are a good example. His cypress pictures "eliminate the sense of visual depth". His tableaus seem to be wide, empty expanses that the eye wanders around, but doesn't really find anything to focus on (http://image-imatge.org/images/cache/220bfd7cfa9d098fc41a2cdd3080c78d.jpg). If the eye can't settle on something to see, will the other senses be able to jump in and process the images, or will the observer just lose interest in the image and walk away? How can the photographer encourage the viewer to think with the other senses when "looking" at a photograph? Before I begin my big photography project this summer, I need to find at least my own answer to this question...
In other news, I've had a long couple of months of winter moroseness, which is always coupled by general malaise and low self-esteem. But, I did exercise my vanity a little yesterday and play with Photoshop for a new, springy profile pic:
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New website maps smells!
This is a really fabulous idea, but sadly, the website is all in Japanese, so I can't see how great it is!
New Web Site in Japan Maps out Smells
(http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6625432)
Japanese take noses global with Web site 'smell map' that tracks odors around the world
Japanese are taking their noses global with a Web site that describes different odors around the world and pinpoints where they can be found on a map.
Launched in December, the "Nioi-bu," or Smell Club, has registered more than 160 scents around the world, ranging from "steam coming out of a rice cooker" to "used socks in the summer," and pinpointed their locations on a Google map.
Nearly 200 members, called "smellists," have joined the Japanese-language only site, said Kayo Matsubara, spokeswoman of its operator, KAYAC Inc.
Users can either click on a balloon on the world map on the Web site, or use an index to find each scent if they're not yet on the map.
Some of what they report: "A toasty odor of cow dung" in Fujisawa City, just southwest of Tokyo. In Kamakura, eastern Japan, "cats with halitosis" were suspected to be roaming about.
"All that is missing on the web is a smelling function," Matsubara said. "That's our next challenge."
Not all reports are of stenches, with others including mouth-watering dishes, fresh laundry, greenery and scented soap. From Paris, there is a "scent of verbena soap near a monastery," and from Thailand's ancient capital Ayuthaya, a mix of "incense, grass, dirt and wild dogs."
See the website here:
http://www.nioibu.com/
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
This will just be a short update because I haven't in awhile. Few newsworthy items:
*I think my dissertation project is going to be curating an exhibit called "Synesthesia" and creating an exhibition catalog. This will (I hope) be sponsored by and feature various members of the MATX program.
*I finished the book "What the Nose Knows". It was great. Right now, I'm most interested in the author's argument that Proust was totally wrong in his very famous description of how smell and memory work together - that it's nowhere near as ephemeral as Proust makes it out to be, but instead our scent memories are highly concrete - the element of surprise we feel at being transported into a scent memory is that we aren't aware we are making memories of scent until we experience them much later.
*I found a place that will make scented stickers/pages etc. based on my specifications. They are not being very helpful in their e-mails, probably because they can tell that I am not a huge business wanting to spend millions of dollars. But, I think I might be able to use some of their scented stuff to make an olfactory artist's book and scent my exhibition catalog.
*I finally got my website going - it's still under construction, but here's the link:
http://web.mac.com/jessematx
*Thinking of declaring "Curating" my second area of competence and trying to get an internship at the Virginia Museum.
