Intersenses

EDITORIAL© 1999 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 1–4, 1999 1 Intersenses Most forms of art are traditionally linked to one of our senses—music to hearing, painting to sight—but if we examine how art affects us beyond the original stimulus this sense provides, the correspondence between art and the senses becomes more complex. For example, Berenson wrote about the power of imagery in paintings: I see two men wrestling, [but] if my visual images do not turn into kinesthetic images . . . I shall not be more moved than if I heard someone say, “Here are two persons wrestling.” . . . Tactile values and movement , these are the essential elements in the art of drawing, and a painting is valid (apart from the idea or the subject) only if it determines in us sensorial ideas of touch and of movement [1]. Thus, at least some paintings contain what can be called “kinesthetic images.” Furthermore , the hands of a painter do not need to be guided by his sight while he is painting: they can “see,” so to speak. Conversely, the eyes of the beholder of a painting have the impression of touching the texture of the paint [2]. In science, similarly, abstract formulas refer to an initial scientific intuition that is often of a kinesthetic nature . Einstein complained of the extreme difficulty he encountered in translating into words and formulas his scientific thought, which occurred to him in terms of images and muscular tensions [3]. As French biologist Jacques Monod has noted: “Every scientist probably realizes that his reflection at the deepest level is not verbal: it is an imaginary experience made in terms of shapes, forces, interactions” [4]. Composers at the Music and Informatics Laboratory of Marseille (MIM), conducting research on the ways electroacoustic and instrumental music are perceived, determined 19 different ways in which portions of music progress in time to convey specific dynamic impressions or meanings. These researchers called these different ways temporal semiotic units (USTs) [5], with the word “semiotic” indicating that the units convey meaning, and the word “unit” implying that, like an atom, it does not retain its meaning if subdivided. The researchers provide a precise morphological description of each UST, along with a name for each that evokes its meaning, for example, “turning,” “falling ,” “contracted-extended,” “impulse,” “gliding” (en suspension in French) and “heavily.” Clearly, each of these names also evokes a kinesthetic image. UST terminology can perhaps provide an approach to music similar to Bachelard’s approach to poetry using the four elements of alchemy—art, water, earth and fire (which Bachelard considered to be as significant to poetry as they are meaningless to chemistry). This comparison is particularly appropriate if we note that, according to Bachelard, these elements correspond to specific motions: Imagination is above all a kind of spiritual mobility, the greatest, quickest, liveliest type of spiritual mobility . When one studies a poetic image one should systematically study its movement. . . . Very often the mobility of an image is specific. . . . One could have for each image a holograph, so to speak, which summarizes its kinetic aspect. . . . [6] According to Jean-Paul Sartre, mental images are actually impressions of movement perceived as images [7]. Coming back to the correspondence between UST terminology and the four elements, “turning” can evoke a whirlpool or whirlwind and can thus be linked to water or to air; “impulse” can evoke jumping flames and is thus linked to fire; “gliding” evokes the air; and “heavily” clearly evokes the earth. If we now look at examples in paintings: those of Paul Rubens, with their fluid composition and trans- 2 Editorial parent colors, can be linked both to the UST “turning” and to the element water; those of El Greco, with their quick, colorful, upward strokes like flames and compositions that lead upward, evoke both the UST “impulse” and the element fire, as do the strokes of Hans Hartung’s paintings. Jean Dubuffet’s use of thick and heavy paints and earthy colors evokes the UST “heavily” and the element earth; and the paintings of Giovanni Tiepolo and James Turner, as transparent and as seemingly weightless as air, evoke both this element and the UST “gliding.” Note that time...