Making sense of the senses
A curator is in a cage at the Singapore Art Museum. Granted the "cage" is delineated by green laser beams but it effectively prevents visitors from walking right through the "bars".
Titled , this is the work of Chinese artist Li Hui, who suggests that people imagine boundaries where there are none, relying on faulty perception rather than material reality.
"Light is something we can't touch, but yet it can turn into something that can obstruct," says Li, 37.
"An amazing metaphor for how we live in society," adds Dr Susie Lingham, the art museum's director.
is among interactive artworks by 11 artists from Singapore and the region that make up "Sensorium 360º: Contemporary Art and the Sensed World", now on at SAM until October 22.
The exhibition spans the fields of art, phenomenology, philosophy and cognitive psychology - of music, gastronomy and perfumery - to explore heady questions of how we experience the world and how these sensual experiences, in turn, shape who we are.
In dealing with aesthetics, artists and viewers tend to forget that the senses mediate in the receiving of these aesthetics - something the group show highlights. "These artworks will literally invade your senses," says Lingham.
There is, for instance, Filipino artist Tad Ermitano's , which comprises a camera that projects a live video feed of visitors on a wall. The feed has a seven-second delay, so there is a time lag before the video image replicates your movements.
Ermitano, 50, calls it an "anti-mirror": "If you allow yourself to identify with the image, then you feel a sense of frustration … that the body you identify as your own is leading an independent existence," he says. "It disrupts how the brain works."
Likewise, Singaporean artist Eugene Soh's scrambles the way one sees the world and one's self. A participant dons modified video goggles which stream live CCTV images of the wearer's immediate surroundings. The images are in three modes: "God view", or an over-head perspective; "vice-versa", from a second player's perspective; and "lizard", which gives only lateral vision. Wearers then navigate a maze marked on the floor. The effect is strangely like being a character in a computer game.
"I wanted to get out of our bodies," says Soh, 27. "You feel like you're remote-controlling your body. You have to send your body sets of instructions like 'Turn left'. Some people just stand there, afraid to move. I tell them to just trust what they see."
"Some people may ask: 'Why are you dealing with things that are being dealt with in the Science Centre?" says Lingham. "But these are artworks."
There are touches of whimsy in this "Sensorium", though. Vietnamese artist Bui Cong Khanh's drawing-photography installation, , evokes his Vietnamese-Chinese heritage through Hoi An Chicken Rice. To complete the experience, Food For Thought, an eatery in the museum's annex, has the dish on its menu for the duration of the exhibition.
Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak's 60 organza-and-fibre breast-shaped sculptures, collectively titled "noon-nom", invite visitors to wade in and cuddle up - underscoring the importance of the sense of touch from infancy.
Most intriguing of all, however, may be Christina Poblador's , which blends perfume and sound into a hybrid notation. The Filipino artist, who goes by the nickname "Goldie", selects songs and translates the musical notes into 10 olfactory notes (the perfume industry uses terms such as "top notes" and "base notes"). These blended smells are lined up in test tubes: visitors can get a whiff of the scents while listening to the song-inspiration on headphones. Then they head to a "scent bar" where they can use essential oils to replicate those songs in scents on a paper strip. "It's like jazz," the 27-year-old says of her art. "When I work, I base it in the moment, while listening to the song, instead of according to a strict formula."
