[-empyre-] sensory motor art

[Jonathan Bachrach <jrb@csail.mit.edu>]

i'd like to consider strategies for harnessing the enormous potential 
for artwork about normal and abnormal and supernormal sensory motor 
forms and experiences.  in our last collision show, "COLLISIONsix, 
senses", a catalog of which you can download at:

  http://www.collisioncollective.org/six/art/catalog.pdf

a number of pieces gave brief glimpses of the many possibilities.  i 
will highlight a few:

patten's piece, "three rotations", considered new forms of sensing as 
well as the potential coupling between senses (e.g., touch and 
hearing).  this perhaps is a synesthesia machine.  the human senses, 
acts and then the machine senses and acts causing another human 
sensation.

raffle and maynes-aminzade in "you're in control" examine sensing 
beyond your body.  the human is giving a new motor ability and is able 
to excite a distal skin which then feeds back this information through 
a visual proprioception guiding future human action.

lieberman's "slink" considers perceiving the imperceivable, namely a 
sound wave, or seeing sound itself.  his artwork is giving us 
superhuman sensing abilities.

ramash and agrawal in their "camera non-photo" show a machine that is 
able to reveal perhaps a more primitive visual representation, a sort 
of primal sketch.  a viewer's internal visual representations is 
potentially being tickled and thereby awakened.

breyer and my "walking wall" and neumann's "quartet" show multiple 
simultaneous viewpoints both spatially and temporally.  perhaps these 
multiple representations are rampant in our brains?

tremblay's "bionic log" provides a confrontational sensory motor world 
that we absorb sympathetically from a far.  perhaps we learn about our 
own sensory motor system from this simple creature, or at least learn 
the power of random motor rules.  dan roe's "specimen" uses a similar 
strategy.  neumann's piece also plays out a primitive sensor motor 
system replete with proprioceptive feedback.

finally, my piece, "the intimacy machine", focussed and distorted the 
users' sensory world to one not usually available.  in particular, the 
machine acted as a mediator for perception and intimacy.  two bodies 
formed a reflexive sensory system.

in summary some of the tactics were :

1. giving a voice to underlying sensory motor representations
2. providing superhuman sensory capabilities
3. engaging the user within an extended sensory motor system
4. simplifying, focussing, or distorting sensory motor
5. viewing a simplified sensory motor system from a far

i'm wondering what other ways there are to examine the human sensory 
motor system within artwork.  could we come up with a categorization of 
strategies for making and showing art about the sensory motor system?  
could we then identify novel combinations that have yet to be employed? 
 i'm also interested to hear about existing artworks that are 
particularly successful and why.