ABOUT THE SERIES
The fall 2016/spring 2017 VASD Program lecture series will present a variety of perspectives highlighting the extraordinary aspects of the most common element of our humanity: the senses.
Sensual experiences are simultaneously ordinary and mysterious. They constitute and construct our everyday life – allowing us to navigate, understand, and interact with the world – and are delicately complex, malleable membranes bridging our inner selves to the exterior environment. But the senses can also be deceived, altered, heightened, distorted, damaged, and augmented, affecting our interpretation and perception of reality, self, and environment. Advances in science and technology, as well as the enigmatic occurrences of clairvoyance and intuition, expand empirical knowledge beyond the corporal limitations of the traditional five senses.
Contemporary artists, scholars, and designers are creating and studying ways to stimulate and satiate the multifaceted senses, influencing our interactions and knowledge of the world and of our selves.