“The Sound Exists Only in Your Own Body”—Sensory Approximation of Visual and Aural Impairment through Media Art Projects

Abstract

This article is about art practice that aims at researching and recreating the condition of living with a particular sensory disability, and this through an interactive installation. The two artists whose work I investigate research the visual and aural experiences of themselves and others and attempt to recreate those experiences using computer-generated images and sounds: it is a process of sensory approximation. The audience interacting with these art installations, created in this process, are meant to experience—if for a moment—the condition of living with tinnitus and amblyopia, conditions that considerably affect one’s sensorium. These multimodal attempts at transforming a person’s bodily condition and sensorium into an intersubjective experience resonate with the methodological and epistemic concerns of sensory anthropology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank Aleksandra Stodulska and Hui Ye for sharing their thoughts and materials documenting their research and creative work; and Maurycy Wiliczkiewicz for providing invaluable assistance and advice during the WRO 2017 Media Art Biennale.

Notes

1 For a general article on physcal impairment, see Shuttleworth (2004).

2 My point here is not to argue for the superiority of any medium, in the daunting task of conveying the sensual aspect of human existence, but to discuss new modes of engaging the senses that can be further related to the wider discussion on the irreducibility of sensations to their description (e.g. Jakab 2000; Landau and Gleitman 2009).

3 White and pink noise are random sound signals that are rather difficult to describe, although I presume most readers will be experientially familiar with at least the former. While white noise is equally intense across the frequency spectrum, pink noise is characterized by a decrease of power as the sound frequency increases, so that lower frequencies are louder and more audible, relatively speaking.

4 In addition to Stodulska, the editor of this journal also suffers from amblyopia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan Lorenz

JAN LORENZ is an Asst. Professor at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology, Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznan, Poland. His research and creative work have focused on questions of belonging, otherness and self-transformation, particularly in the areas of religion and ethics. Recently he has been exploring the interstices between ethnographic practice and media art, and developing a new project on the religious and moral dimensions of new technologies. E-mail: [email protected]