Synaesthetics

While Cohene's earlier works sometimes made the spectator feel like a voyeur onto an intimate relationship, her new works draw us into the action, offering us a seat in the therapist's office. Comprised of two video installations depicting two different therapy sessions, "I Know You Know" takes psychoanalysis as the inspiration for its format, but the dialogue that unfolds between the therapist (or analyst) and patient (analysand) also concerns itself with one of psychoanalysis's fundamental questions: the problem of freedom-our desire for it, and the complicated, sometimes violent, repercussions of attaining and exercising it. In the first video, Hate You (2014), a female analyst appears on screen, reacting to and conversing with her female patient, who is represented only through the audio track provided by a pair of headphones. The second set of videos, That's Why We End (2012-14), show the same composite female analyst, this time treating a male patient who struggles to remember a recent dream. In both scenarios, the viewer is being asked to take the position of the analysand: to not just submerse ourselves into Cohene's cinematic narrative, but to relate to it as another composite character. Looking beyond her usual source materials (movies she saw or could have seen as a child), the new works draw from the catalogue of films mentioned in Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books from the mid-1980s, a list of more than 230 movies that the French theorist often wrote about from memory, sometimes mistaking details or recalling the wrong character or dialogue from his time in the movie house. Cohene immediately saw the links between Deleuze's idiosyncratic research process and the tenets of psychoanalysis, where the patient's memories and associations, however partial, can be interpreted as symptoms of larger, unconscious psychic processes. Deleuze's approach to film is in many ways mimicked by Cohene's, insisting that our interpretations of cinema are just as-or perhaps even more-significant than the script's original intent. Working in this way not only allowed Cohene a greater variety of found footage to work with, but also freed her to experiment with media outside of the screen, producing sculptures, a painting and even choreographing a dance piece performed throughout the run of the exhibition. "Trying things I've never done before, like making a painting, became a theme for this body of work without me realizing it," she says. Then, among the Hollywood starlets, and the references to French film theory and psychoanalysis, there are always elements of Cohene's installations that are distinctly personal. Her scents, for instance, are custom-made combinations based on her own smell memories. The nebulizer in Like, Like contains, among its ingredients, amber, bergamot, black pepper, Lenor "April Fresh" fabric softener, neroli and a smell derived from a tiny patch of Cohene's childhood security blanket. In You, Dear(2014), the enormous cluster of onyx grapes at Oakville Galleries, it is the Smell of Real Ass(TM)-a specialty scent Cohene learned of from a friend in Japan-that provides the acrid undertone to a combination of cumin, Cyprus, frankincense and aluminum. "Every detail has tobe accounted for," she says. "The goal is to overwhelm the viewer's senses in order to make sense of them.

Synaesthetics and Laurence Sterne’s Fiction

This essay investigates synaesthetic effects in eighteenth-century literature, during the sensibility vogue, with a specific focus on Laurence Sterne's two novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) and A Sentimental Journey (1768), alongside a set of illustrations that feature elements related to sentiment, feeling, and the complex interaction of touch and sight. Sterne was not a synaesthete in the modern sense of the word. If a shortcut in defining synaesthesia m..

Синестезія як специфічна якість професійного алгоритму артиста мюзиклу

The purpose of the article is to reveal the specific features of the synaesthesia of the artist of musical as a creative ability, and its role in the implementation of the professional artistic process in the musical genre. Methodology of the study is transpersonal humanistic psychology and its musicological branches: psychology of art, psychology of the creative process and psychology of musical thinking. The analysis of cultural and aesthetic research devoted to the con- cept of "synaesthesia" is also used. Scientific novelty of the research consists in analyzing of the specificity of synaes- thesia as a projection of the intonational pitch on the professional algorithm of an artist of a musical, in analyzing the ability of the musical artist to synaesthesia as a special characteristic inherent in his/her creative apparatus and stipulated by his/her partial abilities. Conclusions of the research consist in substantiating of the understanding of the synesthesia of the artist of the musical as a special psychological and psychological characteristic of the professional creative process of the artist, which reveals the partial abilities of the artist and realizes the triune nature of his talent, acts as a harmoniza- tion mechanism of artistic expressive means within the character-image as well as a technique of achievement of the musical and intonational resonance of the character-image.Цель статьи – выявить специфические особенности синестезии артиста мюзикла как творческой способности и определить ее роль в осуществлении профессионального артистического процесса в жанре мюзикла. Методологию исследования составляет трансперсональная гуманистическая психология и ее музыковедческие ответвления: психология искусства, психология творческого процесса, психология музыкального мышления. Так- же используется анализ культурологических и эстетических исследований, посвященных понятию "синестезия". Научная новизна исследования состоит в анализе специфики синестезии как проекции интонационного слуха на профессиональный алгоритм артиста мюзикла, в анализе способности артиста мюзикла к синестезии как особой характеристике, присущей его творческому аппарату и продиктованной его парциальными способностями. Выводы исследования состоят в обосновании понимания синестезии артиста мюзикла как особой психической и психологической характеристики профессионального творческого процесса артиста, которая выявляет его пар- циальные способности и реализует триединую природу его таланта, выступает как механизм гармонизации художественных средств выразительности внутри роли-образа, а также как технологический прием достижения музыкально-интонационного резонанса роли-образа.Мета статті – виявити специфічні особливості синестезії артиста мюзиклу як творчої здібності та з’ясувати її роль у професійному артистичному процесі в жанрі мюзиклу. Методологію дослідження складає трансперсо- нальна гуманістична психологія та її музикознавчі відгалуження: психологія мистецтва, психологія творчого процесу, психологія музичного мислення. Також використано аналіз культурологічних та естетичних досліджень, присвячених поняттю "синестезія". Наукова новизна дослідження складається з аналізу специфіки синестезії як проекції інтонаційного слуху на професійний алгоритм артиста мюзиклу, в аналізі здатності артиста до синестезії як особливої характеристики, яка притаманна його творчому апарату та продиктована парціальними здібностями. Висновки дослідження становить обґрунтування розуміння синестезії артиста мюзиклу як особливої психічної та психологічної характеристики професійного творчого процесу артиста, який виявляє його парціальні здібності та реалізує триєдину природу таланту, виступає як механізм гармонізації художніх засобів виразності усередині ролі- образу, а також як технологічний засіб досягнення музично-інтонаційного резонансу ролі-образу

Tangibility: highlighting physicality in interactive installations.

Touch is our connection to our world and, as digital technologies develop, we must find ways to recontextualise touch within emerging digital spaces. This paper discusses the development of 'Tangibility', an installation combining tangible interaction, synaesthetic visualisations, and lens based animation techniques to encourage audiences to explore tactility. It introduces a system of sensual analysis and presents an interpretation of Laban's effort analysis as an evaluation tool for the effectiveness and design of tangible interfaces. It also explores how Kennedy's "Aesthetics of Sensation" can be adapted for synaesthetic visualisations and discusses how materiality within lens based animation techniques creates physicality within an image

Embodied art and aesthetic performativity in the London 2012 handover to Rio (2016)

I discuss the staged performances in the London 2012 handover to Rio de Janeiro as marketable revisions of Brazil’s colonial history that lead to the artistic display of ideal types and ethnic characters for global audiences. Rio 2016’s project was placed in the hands of privileged urban natives (artistic directors) but based upon the aesthetic of socio-cultural marginality (black ‘racial types’, samba dancers, capoeira and Candomblé performers,‘bad men’). Communicating metropolitan Brazil’s attachment to European artistic narratives, the ceremony enmeshed all these types and styles into Rio’s self-presentation as a tourist ‘topos’ that was born out of past global mobilities of humans, customs and labour

Queer in the law: critique and postcritique

Since their inception, queer theories have had a remarkable influence on how we think of law’s effects on social reality. In particular, in the past three decades the debates and polemics that have arisen in this burgeoning subject area have shed a critical light on how the law grants social speakability and political agency to forms of sexuality and types of relationships that become ‘respectable’, insofar as they gain access to legal recognition and state protection. As this access comes at a price, queer theorists acknowledge the importance of legal recognition, but are alert to its costs. This is why they have variously explored the tacit dynamics of negotiation and adjustment that this recognition requires. This chapter homes in on such a notable contribution to the analysis of these tacit dynamics. It commences by illustrating the meaning of the queer as a signifier and why it has become such an important field of study. Although reductive, for the sake of clarity I will look at three lines of the queer lineage (to wit, Freudo-Marxism, radical constructivism and antisocial theories) and will briefly foreground how they think of law and its relation to sexuality. I will then focus almost exclusively on the second line insofar as it captures the ambivalence of legal recognition. To cut deeper into this ambivalence, I will touch upon the same sex marriage debate and will dwell on the heated contrapositions that still surround it. This discussion will tease out the fine line between resignification and assimilation; that is, how claims to legal recognition affect the law in a transformative manner and to what extent these very claims are reabsorbed into a constrictive lexicon that effaces the challenging character of same sex sexuality. The chapter will conclude by gesturing to a more recent version of the queer (postcritical queer theory), one that draws significantly from the second line but innovates it in some significant respects