Haptic
Our 5 senses are crucial to our everyday lives. But ‘Haptic’ challenges humans to use their imagination to replace the 5 senses. I wanted to give an experience of what it would be like if we could only use our sense of sight to imagine how an object feels, smells, tastes, and sounds. ‘Mental imagery’ (Nanay 2021) is a more philosophical term. Mental imagery used in visual arts is when a drawing is cut off and the viewer uses mental imagery to complete the rest of the drawing.
Sense of touch helps to create relationships with people and the objects around us; we are able to develop an emotional connection to form an intimate relationship with other people or the objects that have meaning to us. With the help of sight, we can use our imagination to experience how it feels not to touch an object but to know how it already feels. What we can imagine in our head is a form of memory, of what we already know through previous interactions.
“Human brains capture and store physical sensations, and then replay them when prompted by viewing the corresponding visual image” (Perkins 2011)
For this body of work, I wanted to focus on the connections between the sense of sight and the sense of touch; without sight, the sense of touch almost becomes meaningless. Philosophically and psychologically, the sense of sight has always overshadowed the sense of touch although it is the main form of perceptual experience.
In relation to human brains storing physical sensations and fragments of time, I explored the idea of memory and how I interpreted the sensations in mental imagery. During my practice, I wanted to ensure that the materials shown, were commonly found in households. I explored with different light and dense materials to create a flow-like body of work. Through photo manipulation, I portrayed how I connect with the materials through mental imagery and the memories of sensations.
Fulkerson, Matthew. 2015. “Touch (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/touch/#BacTer.
Nanay, Bence. 2021. “Mental Imagery (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/#MentImagMemo.
Perkins, Robert. 2011. “Scientists probe connection between sight and touch in the brain.” ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110908141443.htm.
diana seepha 