Themes and Questions for Exploration

<< Themes and Questions for Exploration >>

This sections focus on themes and questions that can help to think about the senses in relation to self, society and history in a class context and for group activities in the city or a museum.

i. Self

Some philosophers argue that our sense of self is mediated through perception: I sense therefore I am. Every individual has sensory experiences, regardless of age or disability that position her in an environment. Before addressing how sensing is shaped by social factors, it is therefore worth to ‘feel’ ones own senses and engage in a debate about what sensations in a given environment are shared by different members of a group and which sensations are not.

1. Individual Senses

Sensing is multi-modal. Therefore, it is useful to zoom in both on individual senses and to observe their interaction and synaesthesia. When mapping environments as multi-sensorial spaces (as they are actually experienced by most able bodies) we can pay attention to how different senses interact, which sense predominates, and which sensations are absent and why. How does our sensation change if we focus on one senses versus trying to capture all our sensations? Does everybody in a group share the same sensations, and if not why?

> Methods:

Different methods can be used for this exercise – Sensory walking is among the most popular (see sensory walks), but a conversation can also start by observing the sensory atmosphere in a class room. Games and performances (see below) can offer a playful approach to the relation of individual sensations and group interactions - that can then be talked about and analysed.

Giovanna Pezzullo and Stephane Laident (Teatro de los Sentidos)
The Theatre of the Senses - Performance with participants

> Links to talks

Introduction by Dr Monica Degen and Dr Astrid Swenson, London

Marta Tafalla (Barcelona University)
Rethinking the Senses: from the Landscape to the Multisensory Environment

Hanna Katherina Goebel (Universität Hamburg, Institut für Bewegungswissenschaft)
Users without bodies. Material paradoxes of ‘socially’ engaged architecture

Giovanna Pezzullo and Stephane Laident (Teatro de los Sentidos)
The Theatre of the Senses - talk

2. Social Media:

While one might mostly think of urban sensing happening ‘in the wild’ – a considerable part of the perception and representation of the city is now happening digitally. An analysis of how places are represented in different social media platforms can give insight into ‘analogue’ uses of the city. How do people represent the city in social media and how do these images influence people’s uses and expectations of a city? In turn, collaborative digital project can help to make the hidden aspects of sensing visible and to create a shared space for the experience of the city.

> Methods:

The Social Media Research Group London examined the ways in which people use Instagram/twitter to represent themselves in and in front of buildings. The main questions were: What types of filters are used (and what filters are provided by the particular technology?). What kind of sensory atmosphere is displayed through social media? What are important buildings in social media? How are emotional connections to places represented through people’s photographs? The approach provides a visual-emotional account of a site.

> Links to talks/literature

Katherine McLean (artist, Royal College of Art)
“Invisible, Erratic, Ephemeral: Lives of Urban Smells”

Ilaria Sartori (Director at Barcelona Sonora)
Barcelona through Sound

Hochman, N. & Manovich, L. (2013) Zooming into an Instagram City: Reading the local through social media. First Monday, Volume 18, Number 7 - 1 July 2013 http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4711/3698

3. Age and Group identities:

Different social groups use space in cities in different ways and have different needs. These uses and needs can clash, but dialogue, the willingness to listen and thoughtful design can help create public spaces that are inclusive. Here are some suggestions for young people to map the uses of the city by their age group and an example of a collaborative project. For an example of sensory approaches aging, see the Inclusion, disability and dementia in the museum section.

> Methods:

Walking, Talking & Chalk-marking a Street.

To analyse how 13 to 16 year old experience public space and how they would like to change it, an interdisciplinary group during the Barcelona Workshop developed a programme a range of talks:

Unstructured / observing task: give them a camera / recorder and tell them to move around capturing whatever interests them personally. The data comes from their current physical use of the space and their movement through it.

Structured / game playing task: give them an imagined scenario, eg a global fashion brand wants to create a new perfume based on the ‘authentic’ smells and feel of el Raval: the task is to analyse the smells and pitch the results to the client. The data comes from their take on what the smells of the space mean to them.

Structured / analytical task: Analysing and marking pleasant and unpleasant sensory experiences in space using different coloured chalk – e.g. circling areas of particular smells or obstacles to or assets for use.

Barcelona workshop - Research and Representing for Children (13-16 year olds)

> Link to talks/viewing:

Anna Terra (Director of Foment Ciutat, SA) and Carmen Gual
Planning el Raval and the Senses

Katherine McLean (artist, Royal College of Art)
“Invisible, Erratic, Ephemeral: Lives of Urban Smells”

‘You Can’t Move History. You Can Secure The Future’: Academics from the University of Glasgow, Sussex, UEA and Newcastle, worked together with the community film makers the Brazen Bunch and the Heritage Lottery Fund to ask how young people conceptualise their cultural heritage, the methods by which they have sought to communicate their feelings, and the way in which these messages have been understood and acted on by mainstream ‘formal’ institutions. (Best Research Film 2016 in the AHRC Research in Film Awards, 2016), http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_499997_en.html

ii. Society

Sensing is not only an individual process but also a social one for a number of reasons. For example, humans interact, and this interaction is always sensory in some ways and therefore involves a negotiation of ‘personal sensory space’. Moreover, our ideas about the nature and meaning of the senses are shaped by social factors. Different societies evaluate the meaning of sensations (and even the number of senses) in different ways and therefore have different norms with regard to sensory behaviour. Lastly, place experiences are linked to cognitive processes: the stories, myths and representations associated with particular places, these meanings are shared by groups of people and expressed in language, as the urban planner Kevin Lynch has argued: “Cognition is an individual process, but its concepts are social creations. We learn to see [and sense] as we communicate with other people.”

Both neuroscience and semiotics offer an interesting and complementary vocabulary to think about the difference between ‘sensing’ and ‘sense-making’. Neuroscientist call the first ‘sensation’ and the second ‘perception’, semiotics uses the idea of ‘denotation’ (observing a sensation) and ‘connotation’ (giving meaning to it).

Further Reading:

K.Lynch (1976) ‘Foreword’, in G.T. Moore and R.G. Golledge (eds) Environmental Knowing. London: Hutchinson.

1. Hierarchies:

Most societies have a hierarchical approach to the senses in two (often related ways). Firstly, they give a hierarchical order to different senses. For example, in the modern Western tradition, sight has often been seen as the ‘highest’ sense because it is associated to literacy, and therefore knowledge and science. In other societies, however, sight does not always have the same connotations. Secondly, and relatedly, in most environments the sensory experiences and needs of different groups have often a hierarchical relationship and modern urban policy is characterised by the tensions between the vested interests of particular groups and the desire to create shared spaces.

> Methods:

Hierarchies can be observed through a variety of methods - in our Barcelona workshops we focused in particular on how to make visible and communicate sensory power relations created by looking in different groups at sound, age and by focusing on the relations between local and tourists.

It is important here to note that not all hierarchies are immediately visible, as ‘absences’ (see below) often only are apparent through a deeper knowledge of the development of spaces over time.

> Talks:

Monica Degen (Brunel University)
Why El Raval?

Albert Sales/Carlos Delclós (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
A Sense of Exclusion: Poverty, otherness and the senses

Alex Rhys-Taylor (sociologist and deputy director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London)
Fried Chicken and Flat Whites: Olfactory Agents of Demographic Change

Chris Miele (architectural historian and chartered town planner, Montagu Evans LLP)
Measuring change in a changing city: Understanding London’s expansion

2. Otherness:

‘Otherness is a sensory experience’. Linked to the social and hierarchical construction of the senses, we relate to strangers and the unknown through references to the senses and create stereotypes. Social judgements such as rejection or acceptance of particular social groups or places are often wrapped up in sensory qualifications. The sensory connotations are not based on ‘real’ sensations but on sensory hierarchies in which the dominant group is associated with positive sensory experiences and the subordinate group with what are regarded as inferior or polluting senses. For example, many people associate homeless with smell, regardless of individual cleanliness.

> Links to talks/literature:

Albert Sales/Carlos Delclós (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
A Sense of Exclusion: Poverty, otherness and the senses

Anna Terra (Director of Foment Ciutat, SA) and Carmen Gual
Planning el Raval and the Senses

Monica Degen (2008) Sensing cities: regenerating public life in Barcelona and Manchester. Routledge

Alex Rhys-Taylor (2017), Food and Multiculture: A Sensory Ethnography of East London. Bloomsbury.

3. Absence:

Places and perceptions are as much marked by absences as by presences. Often what is not there can tell us much about norms, policies and politics. What senses are allowed to be expressed? Whose senses are absent? Who is allowed to express themselves sensorially? And whose presence has been erased either by the passing of time or purposefully? Absence does however not equal emptiness, as absences are filled often by our imagination.

> Methods:

The theme of absence and presence poses methodological questions about how to research sensory power relations and inherent power relations. Thus for example the ‘policy of land ownership’ is hidden, yet what is visible is increased homelessness, which people identify with sensory pollution. Here the questions are how research on the sensory can make visible the hidden land ownership and global financial processes? Another example is the way in which migration becomes perceptible in the public realm, namely when wives and children follow their husbands, and their daily practices and presence change the sensory make up of the public realm. Absence and presence are also related to power relations in historical research and contemporary policy making. For example, whose sensory experiences do we examine and highlight when analysing historical documents? Or when analysing how urban policy affects daily practices: whose sensory traces dominate and whose are hidden or absent, who is allowed to leave a trace and participate in urban life and which traces are removed (i.e. graffiti). Lastly in sensory analysis of branding places the question emerges who and what is present or absent in such campaigns?

> Links to talks/literature:

Lars Frers (University College of Southeast Norway)
Confronting absence: Relation and difference in sensual engagements with the lived city

Mateu Hernandez (CEO of Barcelona Global – Branding)
Barcelona’s reputation and the senses

Lars Frers, Lars Meier and Erika Sigvardsdotter (2013) Absence. Materiality, Embodiment, Resistance, Special Issue of Cultural Geographies

iii. History

History can give insight into both the physical development of spaces (why are certain things present why others are absent) as well as into changing attitudes. By placing individual experiences in relation to those of people in the past, we can better reflect on both enduring as well as changing factors, opening up a dialogue about the future.

1. History and Experience:

The desire to ‘experience’ the past is behind many a historic city tour, museum visit, or ‘time travel’ through a fiction, computer games, or 3D consol. The wish to touch the past, to understand it not only intellectually but sensorially, has a long tradition. However not only gaps in sources, but the changing nature of sounds, smells, sights and shapes and humans’ habituation to them (people do not notice a bad smell for instance if it is always there) as well as the changing nature of our understanding and evaluation of the senses means that it is impossible to ‘relive’ the senses of the past. And yet, every encounter with a site, object or text from the past is also a sensory experience; and every act of the imagination (be it through the walk in a physical recreation of spaces or through story telling) draws on our own sensory experiences. The experience of history is thus inherently sensory – but it is also intellectual in that we need to understand how and why sensations changed. This will be addressed in the next section.

> Methods:

Example 1: Museum Visits are perfect to combine a reflexive with an immersive experience. Many of the objects exposed allow experiencing some of their sensory qualities (mostly through vision) but sometimes also through touch. At the same time, the fact that objects were moved helps to think about how their sensoriality is changed through a change in context.

For further examples see our section on Mediating Sensory Experiences

Museum tour images:

Example 2: Digital recreations

Digital technology can project a seemingly perfect recreation – but some of the most interesting project manage to combine recreation with an effect of Verfremdung – making gaps in knowledge or changes in context part of the experience:

Curing the Senses@ Curating Overflow, http://www.sensorycities.com/news/curating-the-senses-curating-overflow/

> Links to talks/literature:

Stefan Lewejohann (Kölnisches Stadtmuseum)
Eigelstein: 'History and Curation'

2. Changing Sensations:

The temporality of sensation thus does not necessarily mean that the past cannot be experienced. Almost every street corner or historical museum object - in combination with a range of other sources - can be used to think about how and why sensations have changed over time. And of course historical objects and buildings in themselves offer sensory experiences: Touching the wall of a cell on which a victim of the Gestapo wrote, obviously has not the same meaning as it did for its maker, but we still feel the properties in a different way and it can create powerful emotions. Many people feel that historical objects and sites bring out their ‘sense of time’. Connection to the past is among the strongest source for a sense of belonging (regardless of whether this past is real or imaginary) and attention to these feelings of belonging (whether they are built on personal or cultural memories) and potential conflicts over these memories is important for any city or society.

> Links to talks/ literature

Lars Frers (University College of Southeast Norway)
Confronting absence: Relation and difference in sensual engagements with the lived city

Dr Astrid Swenson (Brunel University)
In the Shadow of the Cathedral: writing sensory histories

Rebecca Madgin: Madgin, R. (2009) Heritage, Culture and Conservation: Managing the Urban Renaissance, (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag)

Madgin, R. (2013), A town without memory? Inferring the industrial past: Clydebank re-built, 1941-2013. In: Zimmerman, C. (ed.) Industrial Cities: History and Future. (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag)

Rodney Harrison: Understanding the Politics of Heritage. Manchester University Press (2010)

3. A Dialogue between Past and Present:

Past and Present can thus learn from each other. Attention to the sensations of the present can give us clues for the range of sensory experiences that exist at any given time and help to ask questions about where they came from. In turn, knowledge about the past can help to understand current presences, absences and debates. By making us aware of the changing nature of both ideas and the physical environment, a historical perspective helps to be less dogmatic about how one should feel or sense and therefore more open and imaginative when it come to discussing and shaping the future.

> Methods:

Almost all the methods discussed across the think-kit can be used here. What is important is dialogue between historical and social sciences, between preservationists, planners and architects to overcome blind spots, frame questions and develop solutions.

> Links to talks/literature:

Astrid Swenson and Monica Degen (Brunel University)
Introduction to the network and preliminary findings

Joan Roca (Director of the Barcelona’s City History Museum)
Displaying Urban History: Lessons Learned