The Amplification of Sense

The research behind this book consisted of first-hand experiments designed to call attention to, inspect, and elaborate on questions related to perception of the various species of time (mechanical, integral, physical, psychological, cyclical); space (as a field of human perception); and the human body (as a sensuous temporal object). Using my own body as a field of investigation, I designed four experiments to understand how the senses relate to time and its (peri) perception. Situated within the conceptual- performative framework of an extended intermedia composition, each of the four experiments focuses on one specific sensory experience (sight, hearing, touch, etc). Each also creates the conditions/situations in which sensory input can be enhanced and elongated in time.

Alongside the physical experiments, the work of filmmakers Andrei Tarkovsky and Maya Deren; butō choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata; writers Jorge Luis Borges and Marcel Proust; and composer Alvin Lucier – widely considered as artistic expositions of human (temporal) perception – was used to scrutinise the human perception of time and changes that may be imposed on the subjective flow of consciousness.

My temporal experiments in film, dance, literature, and music relied on the feedback of my own body to explore the perceptual field. I consider this method of ‘sense amplification’ to be the book’s main contribution to research into the phenomenology of temporality.