FA7P42 - Reading Notes on Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Marks, L.U., 2002)

Marks claims ”cinematic perception” is "synesthetic," which is when "the senses and the intellect are not conceived of as separate (13)." This means that people who have synesthesia find that two or more of their senses merge, for example people feeling a crunchy texture in their mouths when they walk on snow. The animatic documentary An Eyeful of Sound (Moore, 2009) discusses people's experiences of living with synesthesia and combines these with vibrant animated sequences that evoke the meaning of synesthesia.

Marks describes synesthesia as "our own bodily way translating information among modalities" that "is a kind of embodied thinking that can be accompanied by a translation program acting on a database (149)." An example of this is The Very Nervous system "detecting light" as "it operates fans (150)."

Marks suggests people may feel a "sense of excess in conversation when (they) become aware that what (they) are saying has a sense that excess it (xv)." An example of this is when someone asks, "Will you pass the salt?" and the person who is being asked thinks the other person means, "I am leaving you." The latter statement is more emotionally intense than the former question.

The sense of smell can be used in various creative ways such as "fragrant online marketing, mood control for office workers and neo-smellorama movies (114)." One more traditional example of fragrant marketing is scented sections of perfume pages in Avon catalogues that customers can rub and smell before they decide to purchase the perfume. In terms of "mood control for office workers," an air freshener could be used in the workplace to disperse smells to calm workers down when they are feeling stressed such as lavender or lemongrass. I might consider an electric air freshener for the sensory screening of my animated documentary The Five Senses of Asperger Syndrome to disperse the scent of lavender to the audience. An example of a 'neo-smellorama' movie is Polyester (Waters, 1981) where its theatrical viewers were given 'scratch-n-sniff' cards that had numbers on them and whenever a number appeared on the screen the audience would scratch the coresponding number and smell it An image of the card is shown on page 124. These smells on the cards can be described as “symbolic smells (124)” because each symbol on the card is associated with a smell.

Marks perceives smell as "the most mimetic of our senses, because it acts on our bodies before we are conscious of it (115)." Memetic means that something can imitate something else.

Charles Sanders Peirce created a semiotic system that uses signs he calls 'Firstness' and 'Thirdness (2002: 115).' Expressions such as "the stink of rotten cabbage" is an example of 'Firstness' because it is an obvious example of how something smells while 'Thirdness, defines more abstract signs such as 'duck' or a Pringles crisp "stands for an idea" of a crisp rather than the taste of one. In contrast may people associate Pringles with ducks because when people place two Pringles crisps inside their mouths it makes them look as if they have a duck's beak, thus making this a term of 'Thirdness' in its own right.

One example of a sensory experiment is one where “a test subject may smell wintergreen and say, “Life Savers (122).” The experiment implies that the subject might not know about the smell of wintergreen itself but might still be familiar with the Life Savers brand, which is a brand of mints in the USA. In addition to the test subject it is argued the majority of consumers think of brand names such as Life Savers, Starbucks and Ivory when they smell mint, coffee and soap respectively (122). If this were my case I would associate these smells with more generic items.

Marks suggests people would sometimes have individualised memories of when they first smelt a particular scent (122). A personal example of mine is a shot in my MA major project that depicts me as a child who is sniffing lavender in my grandparents’ front garden and me visiting them when I was a child is the earliest memory I have whenever I smell lavender. The smell of lavender also evokes a memory for J in her Smell Movie because her great grandmother grew it (143).

Marks claims “haptic images invite a multisensory, intimate, and embodied perception (133).” The final outcome of my film is going to have a multi sensory dimension to it.

Marks describes a subject only known as J lighting a cigarette in her car and bursting into tears. J lighting her cigarette gave her “the clearest memory of her grandfather,” who also smoked (142) and died when she was seven (141). While the smell of cigarette smoke evokes memories of J’s father, it evokes memories of my grandmother who used to smoke and died from lung cancer as a result. I perceive the smell of cigarette smoke as a negative aspect of my senses in my film because I dislike the smell.

While the book has some interesting discussion of synaesthesia, I feel that it has more emphasis on smell than any other sense despite having the word 'touch' in the title.

References

Marks, L.U. (2002). Touch: Sensous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: Regents of the University of Minnesota.

Moore, S. (2009). An Eyeful of Sound. Available at: https://vimeo.com/11649675 (Accessed 20th June 2016).

Polyester (1981). Directed by John Waters [Film]. USA: New Line Cinema.

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