UAL Sound Art, Year 2 by Zaron Lane
19 February, 2024
Lecture – Anthropology of the Senses
with Anne Goh
Class Critical Reflection
This text introduced my mind to the study ‘Anthropology (the study of human science) of the Senses’. Contemporary (the present period) Western culture deems we perceive only 5 senses, these are vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. As a class, we asked the question of who believes there are only 5 senses? To agree and disagree leads to interesting discussions thus the challenge of opinion was critically posed/opposed by information from the text.
“The fundamental premiss underlying the concept of an ‘anthropology of the senses’ is that sensory perception is a cultural, as well as a physical, act.”
Firstly understanding the significance of the cultural impact is a perception itself thus how we perceive the physical act of our senses. Expanding and learning the anthropology of the senses must mean learning the cultural significance of the senses for example the term Ocularcentrism (“perceptual and epistemological bias ranking vision over other senses in Western cultures”) Why do we as a Western culture bias vision? We have developed as a culture through evolution to agree on a subconscious bias, and learning that senses are culturally different opens the doors to questioning existence and reality.
Senses that aren’t common knowledge
- Proprioception (a sense of perception of location/balance)
- Sense of warmth,
- Synesthesia (sound of colour)
- Semiotics/Semiology (the study of signs and symbols use or interpretation)
- Gut feeling
- Common sense
- Intuition
Conclusion
To conclude today’s lesson about the anthropology of the senses excites and interest in the topic by learning more I hope to discover the mystery of understanding my existence through perception and transmitting reality into consciousness.
Lesson Notes
Spiritual Sounds
My Idea – Spitual Sounds
My idea is to investigate the relationship between sound and spiritualness. For example how sound is used in rituals and ceremonies.
Element 1 will consist of an essay about my discoveries relationship between auditory information and spirituality and Element 2 will take a more practical approach to a creative project about sound and spirituality.
Initial Research for Annotated Bibliography
Summary
Electroencephalography (the measurement of electrical activity in different parts of the brain and its recording as a visual trace) helps us understand the relationship between sound and spirituality. Culturally sound has been used to induce transformative states of consciousness through meditative practice while there is activity of the sense of hearing. The left hemisphere (associated with pleasant music) and the right hemisphere (associated with unpleasant music) play a part in how the brain perceives auditory information. The relationship between auditory information and an altered conscious state fascinates me, as we become more civilised modernists, especially in Western culture these primitive practices of power are numbed down by a society of consumerism. To learn the power, and thus auditory information relationship with spirituality is the objective outcome of my topic and this text modernises the scientific findings of brain activity, of practices of ancient times.