A Natural History of the Senses

Sense: Touch

I chose to create my hallway installation based on the sense of touch. Yarn World was built February 17, 2014. I wanted to create an enclosed space where you could not avoid being touched. In the book "A Natural History of the Senses" Diane Ackerman talks about hair being a receptor of touch. When something is close to our bodies our hairs get all tingly and send information to our brain that something is there. Yarn World was supposed to be a kind of claustrophobic touch overload. When you step inside Yarn World you are being touched by thousands of strands of yarn coming from all sides.

The part of the book that I took the most inspiration from was the section titled "Adventures in the Touch Dome." Mostly I just think that is a great title. I imagine a giant dome packed full of different objects to touch, all the different textures and consistencies. That is essentially what you do at San Francisco's Touch Dome apparently.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome

In the Tactile Dome you explore the pitch darkness using only your sense of touch. Yarn World is a similar concept, but not the same. I created Yarn World by covering the brown floor and skirting with white paper which I taped to the wall. I then created a false ceiling out of foam board to hide the pipes above as well as to give a surface to attach yarn to. Using multi-colored duct tape I taped strips of yarn which I cut to reach just above the floor to the foam board ceiling above. I used 12 rolls of yarn and calculated that there are over 1000 strings of yarn hanging. I then hung a thick yellow curtain in front of the yarn with an opening so that you have to enter into the curtain to find the yarn. Over the top of the curtain I created a sign on foam board to seal the top of the curtain and invite guests in.

I wanted Yarn World to be playful and have almost an amusement park feeling but also be a little intimidating and make the guests feel uneasy about being inside the tiny space.

SPELL READING 4: The Flesh of Language

On page 89 of the Spell of the Sensuous is an excerpt from a Modoc song which goes like this:

I

the song

I walk here

I found that to be very poetic. I like the way the author refers to them self as the song. In a way we are all a song. Then the song says I walk here. I thought about places I walk and I pictured being among the trees. On page 88 David Abram talks about how owls speak and how indigenous hunting people would be careful about what they spoke about in the woods because the owls hear them and spread the word. 

I had the vision of creating a miniature nature scene with a small tree and an owl perched below it but I had trouble with ideas of how to make the owl. Then I decided to search the antique stores by my house for owl figurines but could not find any. During this hunt though, I stumbled across a wonderful little iron goat. He looked so sad a lonely on the shelf and I knew I had to have him. To create a tree for the goat to walk by I picked a small weed from my yard and planted it in a rectangle box I made from balsa wood. I flattened the soil at the rim of the box and placed the goat under the tree limbs. 

I imaged how the goat would talk in his miniature land. I think it would be something like this:

 

Or this:

The next day when I went to take pictures of my small scene I found that my "tree" had withered. I was sad at first but then I realized that it was actually quite fitting with the piece. The sad little goat with his sad little tree both singing "I the song, I walk here."

Philosophy on the Way to Ecology Part II

"In Aristotle's writings, for instance, while plants are endowed with a vegetal soul (which enables nourishment, growth, and reproduction), and while animals possess, in addition to the vegetal soul, an animal soul (which provides sensation and locomotion), these souls remain inseparable from the earthly world of generation and decay. Humans, however, possess along with these other souls a rational soul, or intellect, which alone provides access to the less corruptible spheres and has affinities with the divine 'Unmoved Mover' himself." -David Abram from The Spell of the Sensuous

I like the thought of layering the three different variations of souls over one another. On the inside every living thing has a vegetal soul, and then over top of that animals have an animal soul and even on top of that humans possess a rational soul. I made a type of flip book to show the plant on the first layer, an animal on the second layer, and then a human on the third layer.

First Layer

Second Layer

Third Layer

SPELL READING 2: Philosophy on the Way to Ecology

This chapter of the book spoke a lot about reality and existence. It compared Objective Reality and Subjective Experience. Somehow we live and exist somewhere in between the two. Life is a strange kind of balancing act between the physical world and intangible beliefs and ideas. In order to display this strange phenomenon I built a wooden replica of existence. I cut, sanded and glued a beam to a platform and then erected two pillars atom the beam on opposite ends. On one pillar is written "Objective Reality" and on the other is "Subjective Experience." Then between the two pillars is stretched a thin sketchy ladder. Hanging from the center of the ladder is a plaque the reads "Exist" on one side and then "Life" on the other. This is to replicate how our lives dangle precariously in the vast expanse between objectivity and subjectivity as well as reality and perceived experience.