"The Spell of the Sensuous" Six!

Did you "hear" the song? Or the clapping from the song? (We Will Rock You) This isn't my image but I immediately thought of it after this reading. I really responded to the parts talking about "reading out loud" (the silent reading), synthesia, and being able to feel pain when you see it happen to someone else. I was blown away that "silent reading" is so new and that "silent reading" is really us reading out loud in our heads. My doodles were responses/tests to see if I could create synthesia just from images, like the gif.

 "In different situations, other senses may initiate synthesia: our ears, when we are at an orchestral concert; or our nostrils, when a faint whiff of burning leaves suddenly brings images of childhood autumns; our skin, when we are touching or being touched by a lover."

"The diversity of my sensory systems, and their spontaneous convergence in the things that I encounter, ensures this interpenetration or interweaving between my body and other bodies-this magical participation that permits me, at times, to feel what others feel."  

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Five

Bee Leaf

"We could, that is, resort to a visual pun, to images of things that have nothing overtly to do with belief but which, when named in sequence, carry the same sound as the spoken term "belief" ("bee-leaf")." (pg 98 because no one bee-leafed that this was in the book!)

I was simply so inspired by this visual pun that I had to create it. How could you not?! This is my favorite piece.

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Four!

"Saussure described the structure of any language as a thoroughly interdependent matrix, a webwork wherein each term has meaning only by virtue of its relation to other terms within the system. In English for example, for instance, the sounded word "red" draws its precise meaning from its situation in a network of like-sounding terms, such as "orange", "yellow", "purple",
"brown", as well as from its participation in a still wider nexus of related terms...each of which holds significance only in relation to a constellation of still other words, expanding thus outward to every term within the language."

So overall most of my response was directly related to this quote. I chose to create a physical web to represent the web of languages. Instead of using a clear fixture I purposely chose to use the black tape to represent the relationship between terms in a system. I suppose in a way this piece is an illustration of this quote. 

In another way though I think it also represents how all of the different languages are connected together as well. Or on an even bigger squale, how all human are connected by language. It failed to mention sign language, but it did briefly get into body language and gestures Humans all know how to communicate with a formal language, they will create one if one doesn't exist, or learn a new one fairly quickly through adaption, and I find that super fascinating. It connects us all in this giant web of sorts.

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Three!

For this reading I actually responded to several sections in one piece. 

"The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved- the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens- all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities-crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfalls- all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into unique dance."

"In contrast, the mass-produced artifacts of civilization, from milk cartons to washing machines to computers, draw our senses into a dance that endlessly reiterates itself without variation."

Basically, with those two quotes in mind and that whole section in mind, I created this piece. Basically I wanted to combine the human artifacts and organic materials together to show a sense of coexistence. I also really wanted to use the human artifacts in a way that they weren't intended, and create a variation. I wanted the piece to have a sense of movement like a "dance". I used the lightbulb, milk cartoon, and newspaper specifically based off of the quote. I added a weed from around the house and dead flowers from in the house (they used to be from outside somewhere). I included the paintbrush to really push on the idea of the coexistence because it is made out of the organic materials now made into a human artifact. I placed everything into the bowl simply because I just love the quote below so much and I really needed to involved a bowl in the piece. I think it really pulled it all together. (And it took everything in me to not break the bowl. But there is a importance in not breaking it.)

"If I break it into pieces, in hopes of discovering these interior patterns or the delicate structure of its molecular dimensions,  I will have destroyed its integrity as a bowl; far from coming to know it completely, I will simply have wrecked any possibility of coming to know it further, having traded the relation between myself and the bowl for a relation to a collection of fragments."  (my favorite)