Art and the Senses ed. by Francesca Bacci and David Melcher (review)

Art and the Senses is an excellent sourcebook on the relationship between art and our senses. Comprised of over 30 chapters and coming in at over 600 pages, this compendium is, to my knowledge, the first to broadly tackle sensory perception in relation to artistic endeavors. Indeed, it offers an extraordinary overview of the subject. Moreover, despite covering a broad spectrum of both qualitative and quantitative material, the book is quite accessible to a generalist reader like me. Topics include the neuroscience of sensory processing in the body, cultural influences on how the senses are used in society, interviews with practitioners about their work, artist papers about their projects, and case studies (e.g. a blind artist). The majority of the papers are easy to read, although I did find a few of the articles a bit technical.

Given its length, Art and the Senses works best as a reference tool. One impressive (and appreciated) component is the cross-referencing from paper to paper, a feature too often excluded from anthologies. Readability is further enhanced by a useful index (23 pages), well-chosen illustrations and the book’s overall organization. Early chapters set the stage by examining historical attitudes to and views of the senses. These foundational essays are followed by thematically based groupings that probe current projects and present contemporary research: Early essays cover touch and corporeal senses, as well as the chemical senses of taste and smell. Auditory experience and vision come next. The final chapters offer more of a potpourri, or perhaps a multisensory theme, with articles on synesthesia, multisensory work, dance and architecture. Some topics, film being a good example, fall into more than one of the above categories. The interspersed interviews are a nice touch, as they offer a change in rhythm and tone. These include a conversation between Francesca Bacci and Italian contemporary art critic Achilee Bonito Oliva and two interviews by David Melcher (one with Brazilian artist and photographer Vik Muniz, and another with jazz musicians and educators Greg Osby and Skip Hadden on the mystery of representation).

Since our senses provide perceptual data, I think each reader will experience the essays quite differently, and the content is likely to stimulate both subjective and critical reactions. I found myself fascinated by the way the writing piqued my awareness of my own “body space” and reminded me of my biases. I also liked the way the book’s multisensory focus interfaced with the contemporary interest in networks and interactions in the arts, sciences and humanities. In some cases I found the information from beyond my normal scope spoke to old conundrums. For example, several of the articles about music reminded me that it is easy to simply like music without having any educated understanding of basic musical notation and auditory research. As a naïve listener, I know much of the resonance of music is more opaque to me than it is to others with knowledge of the finer points. Nonetheless, I recognize that musical sounds impact me deeply. Thus, I particularly appreciated the essays on musical topics.

The subtle tension between thinking, knowledge and sensory space often came to mind as I read. This got me thinking about the basic division into exteroceptive and interoceptive senses. I appreciated the examples that clearly expressed the ways in which art is multidimensional. For example, the Alexis Wright phantom-limb photographs, discussed by Siân Ede, offer a means for us to see the missing limbs of phantom limb subjects and to sense how the nonexistent sensations “feel.” The paper on “mirror neurons” hovers around this kind of empathy. Gallese also adds: “Creativity is a distinguished feature of the human condition that I am afraid can hardly be reduced to the functional properties of specific populations of neurons, mirror neurons included” (p. 461).

As a whole, the inclusion of artists, scientists and humanists provides many contrasts and...