Surprising the Senses

ABSTRACT

We perceive the world around us and the objects in it with all our senses. Designers can therefore influence the way we experience everyday products by paying attention to the multiple sensory aspects of products.

When sensory information from two or more senses conflicts, people can be surprised. Currently, more and more product designers are experimenting with designing products that provide incongruent sensory information. Creating such products enables these designers to evoke interest for their products and let people experience something new.

In several studies, we have investigated people's reactions to and opinions about products with sensory incongruities. The results of our studies suggest that evoking surprise by incorporating sensory incongruities in products can be seen as a means to create more pleasurable product experiences.     

Sensing the Natural in the Caribbean's Nature Island

ABSTRACT

This article uses research carried out in the Caribbean island of Dominica to consider how sensory experiences shape and influence people's perceptions of and relationships to nature. People's ideas of nature are not purely abstract; they are embodied and emplaced in geographical and social contexts. That is, people acquire understandings of nature through their experiences of the natural world, their engagements with flowers and birds, rivers and mountains, forests and vegetable gardens. On this basis, this article explores how sensory perception, in addition to being a way to apprehend the material reality of the natural environment, also plays a role in how people relate to and think about nature and the natural, based on their bodily experiences in a particular place.     

Puzzling pieces: a sensory design learning tool

ABSTRACT

This article gives an account of an activity that is part of a collection of instructional materials for learning about sensory aspects of design for products, environments, and services. It describes the participants’ experiences and reflections in a workshop at DeSForM, the 10th Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement. The article highlights the participants’ engagement with one of the exploratory activities, Puzzling Pieces, that was in the process of being developed. The unique ways in which the attendees translated theoretical multi-sensory design perspectives into activities for heightening multi-sensory awareness and consciousness of sensory interactions suggest that this activity may be a useful tool for finetuning the sensory design process.     

The “Feeling of Knowing,” the Psychedelic Sensorium,and Contemporary Neuroscience

ABSTRACT

Noetic insight involves direct access to knowledge beyond that which is available through the five senses or through reason. It typically has to do with sensing the interconnectedness of all things, and is informed by a feeling that one knows but without knowing how. Psychedelic substances constitute one vehicle for the production of noetic experiences. Using a biopsychosocial approach, this article explores the shifting contexts for the enjoyment and analysis of noetic experience in twentieth-century American popular and scientific culture, beginning with the psychedelic revolution and culminating in the “quantum computer” turn of brain (and mind). It emerges that the ‘feeling of knowing’ may be a sensory ability after all, and a key to understanding many other forms of anomalous cognition.     

Making sense of HIV/AIDS: Pascal de Duve and the sensitive historian of education1

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s historians, in general, have increasingly engaged in critical analyses of the emergence and development of what has come to be known as ‘the HIV/AIDS pandemic’. Historians of education have also become interested in the role-played by education in the history of HIV/AIDS. Although the existing educational histories have successfully examined the multiple and far-reaching power structures that helped shape the educational responses to the disease, I will argue that their focus on ideological and geopolitical power structures runs the risk of losing sight of the crucial and often sensorial responses of individuals who have played a part in the educational history of HIV/AIDS. One such individual is the Flemish philosopher Pascal de Duve, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1989. De Duve’s particular approach to the disease clearly illustrate the importance of the senses in how people attributed particular meanings to HIV/AIDS. Knowing that this approach would prove surprising to both his readership and to his wider television audience, de Duve employed sensory experiences and modes of communication (for instance, gesture) to educative ends. I conclude that an intersensorial approach to the past will render historians of education more sensitive to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS.     

Researching the Senses as Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Research in the growing field of sensory studies has begun to identify the sensory aspects of experience, particularly in our engagement with material culture. What is yet to receive much attention is how the senses are acquired and used by individuals and communities, and how they inform action. Adopting barth's argument that cultural phenomena are most productively examined as different kinds of knowledge, this article argues that the senses can be examined as any other knowledge source. This article demonstrates the value of examining the senses as knowledge through an account of learning to hear medically. This example is taken from a broader ethnographic study of the aural practices and experiences of ninety-two musicians, doctors, adventurers, and Morse code operators. It argues that hearing is learned, specialized, and specific to the places we go, the people that surround us, and the things that we do. To seek out the sources and value of this taken-for-granted aspect of our experience, it argues that the senses can be analyzed in terms of their foundations, their acquisition, and practice.     

Teenagers' Multisensory Routes for Learning in the Museum

ABSTRACT

In this article I draw on a study of sensory aspects of teenagers' use of digital media, how these sensory aspects are incorporated in emerging learning strategies, and the implications of this for the same teenagers' engagement in museums. My focus is on how an ethnographic approach that attends to the senses may enable a critical review of prevailing pedagogical ideas in museums. Recent developments in museum education have led to large investments in state-of-the-art technology to produce interactive, multisensory exhibits. However, the question of how teenagers respond to these campaigns remains rather under-researched. This article shows how habitual use of digital media in teenage everyday practice incorporates learning to appropriate other people's experiences and ideas through a configuration of vision, touch, motion, and imagination, thereby enhancing non-representational learning qualities such as affect and sensation. The implications of this sensory approach open up routes to differentiate pedagogical settings in museums that on a superficial level apply the same educational technologies, but since they are based in different sensorial belief systems, different conditions for learning unfold in their use. In developing this analysis I argue that through ethnographic attention to the senses we might advance theories of learning within museum education.     

Retrospective Book Review: Teaching a Methods Course in Social Work with Groups

SUMMARY

Eight years after its publication, Teaching a Methods Course in Social Work with Groups serves as a reminder to social workers of group work's historic roots and its value as a method of practice with diverse populations. The author shares her experiences in utilizing the teaching text in her work with MSW students and students of the arts who facilitate activity-based groups in community settings. Citing examples of students' experiences in group work facilitation, the author touches on the constraints emerging group workers face in translating social work skills and values to practice. The author's retrospective review of the teaching text underscores its continued importance in the field of social group work instruction.     

Sonic Envelopes

ABSTRACT

This article examines ways in which an individual's experiences of spatial environments are informed by physical and psychic perceptions of sound. It explores how sonic images, memories, voices, spaces and events constitute “sonic envelopes.” These aesthetic figures are developed out of the late-nineteenth-century writings by the philosopher Henri Bergson and from contemporary audio-walks by the artist, Janet Cardiff. Each shows that sound, space and time are embodied in the individual's powers of sensory perception. Bergson and Cardiff's sonic envelopes may therefore enable reevaluations of the relationships between sound, space and time that connect the individual to his or her environment.     

Slavery by another name: Apprenticed women in Jamaican workhouses in the period 1834–81

Hitherto, the historiography of Jamaican slavery has ignored the period of Apprenticeship which lasted from 1834 until 1838 when Jamaica changed from a forced labour to a free labour economy. The purpose of this article is to show that the period deserves studying as it was 'slavery by another name'. It does this by examining the experiences of apprenticed women in the island's workhouses. The disciplinary regime that the women faced was similar to that exercised on the estates prior to 1834 and was enforced by a similar set of officers. It is shown that the disciplinary regime served above all the needs of the local planters. It not only safeguarded their economic enterprises but also enabled them to regain some of the arbitrary and proprietary power they had lost after 1834. The planters therefore fiercely combated attempts by the colonial governor and the Colonial Office to change the disciplinary regime. They only lost their fight in March 1838 when the British parliament issued an Act in Aid which allowed the colonial governor to legislate against abuses in the workhouses. It is argued that the planters were able to stay in control of the workhouse for such a long time because the Apprenticeship System depended upon existing administrative, judicial and legal systems.     

Odorous childhoods and scented worlds of learning: a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives in Western Europe (1900s-1960s)

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives which featured (non-)formal schooling, analyzing these as belonging to (a) scented and more generally sensed world(s) of learning. Working with photographs as sensory objects of affect, and using as examples Belgian and Luxembourg open-air schools and associated sanitary and social welfare provisions, the paper explores issues that have gone under-researched in sensory scholarship internationally: those of precise educational purposes, methods, processes and effects of sensory engagement, particularly pertaining to “smell”. Sensory practices and experiences and uses of senses generally are thereby traced in/as “situated, embodied” movements inextricably “enmeshed” with symbolism. The paper argues that while the educational goals underpinning the initiatives investigated and the approaches and practices characterizing these have changed, some (un)intended effects still have an impact today, for instance through Forest School as given shape in the United Kingdom. The concept of “odorous”, or rather “sensuous childhoods”, is proposed to denote ways that particular target groups have come to be imagined as in need of explicitly sensorial health and outdoor education.     

Sensuous stories in the Indian Ocean islands*

Abstract

Providing examples from the islands of the Indian Ocean Region, this article focuses on the multisensory nature of storytelling and listening. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in the region (1998–2016), the author proposes a sensuous epistemology that turns on listening to “sense”. She reveals that storytelling can be a profoundly sensuous experience that elicits emotional and physical responses in both the teller and listener. The sensuous quality of stories enable the listener to fully encounter politically inscribed, complex social experiences. Ultimately, the article advances a notion of listening as sense-work, thereby deepening sensory scholarship’s recent, politically reflexive analysis on listening to hear.     

Experiences of Caregivers in a Dementia Simulation Program

Abstract

Objectives: Simulation-based training has been used in health care to increase clinical knowledge and skills and understanding the experience of others. There is a lack of research in exploring experiences of caregivers of people with dementia in a dementia simulation program and its potential benefits on caregivers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore experiences of caregivers of people with dementia who participated in a dementia simulation program, called Dementia Live?.

Methods: Fourteen caregivers were interviewed after participation in DL, and thematic analysis using NVivo 11 software was used.

Results: Three themes emerged, including: (i) the Dementia Live? as an eye-opening experience; (ii) the perceived benefits of the Dementia Live? on themselves; and (iii) recommendation of the Dementia Live? to other caregivers.

Conclusions: Dementia simulation programs such as the Dementia Live? may help caregivers to have more empathy, understand better about the behaviors and feelings of people with dementia, and to use strategies that can help when working with people with dementia. Further experimental research is needed to examine effectiveness of the dementia simulation program on caregivers and people with dementia.     

Introducing Sensory Studies

ABSTRACT

Color serves a variety of purposes in society from identifying groups to conveying symbolic meanings to providing aesthetic pleasure. More subtle effects of color can be found in the environments that human communities construct around themselves. At Doon School, an elite boys' boarding school in northern India, color is intimately associated with the students' activities, social relationships and sensory experiences. It defines their status and shapes their everyday lives. The uses of color at the school are consistent with a wider social aesthetic emphasizing restraint, logical thought and the training and presentation of the body. Many of these values can be seen to have their origins in the school's colonial history and postcolonial aspirations.     

Portions of paradise: aromatic landscapes in Chilean urban gardens (1671–1897)

ABSTRACT

The present essay identifies the smellscapes of colonial and early Republican Chile through the reconstruction of botanical aromas in private urban gardens. Using archival documents in the Chilean National Archives, the Franciscan Archives of Chile, the Judicial Archives of San Juan Province and the Historical Archives of Mendoza we identify the botanical contents of enclosed gardens and orchards in upper-class homes. In contrast to previous studies that have linked the bad odors of early modern Latin America to infirmity and poverty, our purpose is to consider the place of pleasant aromas as part of a garden typology in which the garden is a reconstruction of paradise. Through our analysis of inventories and appraisals we identify continuities in botanical contents and structure between private Chilean gardens and prototypes in Moorish Spain. Our data confirms that the aromas of roses, jasmine, and citrus were a feature of the elite Chilean garden alongside native plants, and the resulting pleasant sensorial experiences imparted a paradisiacal ideal adapted from Moorish-Spanish antecedents. Ultimately, we interpret the fragrances of such private gardens as performances of power that gave presence to the hidden sites where elite Chilean networks were forged, and thus served as ephemeral signals of social exclusivity.     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.     

Learning to make sense: interdisciplinary perspectives on sensory education and embodied enculturation

ABSTRACT

In this introductory essay we examine through a ‘temporally inflected lens’ some of the complex entanglements of learning, senses, and sense making; body-sensory experience and practice; and culture and society. We thereby aim to bring into dialogue inter-/multisensorial approaches to education as a project and praxis and processes of ‘enculturation’, which have always, in one way or the other, involved ‘embodied’ learning (and imaginaries thereof), rather than mere ‘mental processing’. We first situate the ‘turn’ to the senses, across a range of disciplinary fields, brought on by a growing interest in ‘modes of meaning-making’, including the visual, aural, audio-visual, material, bodily, and spatial. Secondly, we investigate the explanatory potential of enculturation and embodiment as seemingly entangled notions. From this, we derive the concept of ‘embodied enculturation’ for the study of situated, historical entanglements of sensory learning and education. We link this proposed research paradigm to incisive scholarship on ‘cultural learning’ through sensorial lenses, after which we tease out six key questions or concerns emerging from a review of relevant, recent research. These key concerns help to contextualize state-of-the-art ‘sensuous education scholarship’ introduced in the final section of the article and elaborated further in the ensuing contributions to this special issue.     

From Emplaced Knowing to Interdisciplinary Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In this article, we discuss how experiential and unspoken ways of knowing produced through a video-based approach to sensory ethnography can be made meaningful and relevant to the applied practice of design and engineering scholars. We advance discussions of sensory ethnography by interrogating and making explicit the analytical processes that turn the sensory knowing of the ethnographic encounter into convincing accounts of everyday realities whilst engaging new sensitivities and ways of seeing that in themselves contribute to cross-disciplinary knowledge. We argue that through a more self-conscious appreciation of how and where experiential categories become applied knowledge the value of a sensory ethnography approach in design-centered energy research can be realized.     

Social Workers' Personal Death Attitudes,Experiences, and Advance Directive Communication Behavior

Abstract

This research surveyed 29 social workers to examine their personal death attitudes and experiences in relation to their advance directives communication practice behavior. The study measured death attitudes on 5 dimensions: fear, avoidance, neutral, approach, or escape acceptance of death. Participants' personal experiences with terminal illness and death were also assessed. Advance directive communication practices were operationalized as 7 phases: initiation of the topic, disclosure of information, identification of a surrogate decision-maker, discussion of treatment options, elicitation of patient values, interaction with family members, and collaboration with other health care professionals. Findings suggest that social workers' advance directive communication behavior differs by practitioners' death attitudes and experiences. Implications for social work education and professional development are discussed.