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Stumbling in the Dark: Facets of Sensory Perception and Robert Wilson's ‘H.G.‘ Installation
Abstract
The ways in which we receive and perceive what we taste, hear, touch, and smell all serve as potential resources for our understanding of an artistically mediated event. Though some modes of perception are more usually associated with the visual than the performing arts, the development of forms of Live Art has begun to challenge our understanding of how the conventions of theatricalizing experience can be modulated. Using methodologies drawn from a phenomenological perspective, Stephen Di Benedetto here examines the way in which Robert Wilson's installation, H.G., presented at the Clink, near London Bridge, in 1995, triggered a journey in sensory perception for its spectators, and served as an exemplar of the ways in which the full range of sensory resources can be ‘theatrically’ deployed. Stephen Di Benedetto, having received his PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London, for his thesis on Playwriting as a Visual Art, is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at the School of Theatre, University of Houston, and is now actively engaged in research on the body in contemporary Live Art and new Irish and English playwriting.
... It must be said that visual inputs follow the same sensitive pathways along the connections between the posterior cerebral cortex and the limbic system, but they are not limited to the visual sphere. This is demonstrated by the effect of so-called "sensory tunnels" [11], live art installations in which lights, sounds, touch and smells are simultaneously used to create atmospheres that blend multiple sensory effects [12], strengthening and consolidating the plasticity of the cerebral interneural connections. The threedimensional cinematography itself with its special effects -the footage of a pilot in grazing flight on a steep mountain between peaks and deep canyons that lead the viewer to experience his own sensations -causes vegetative, vestibular and gastrointestinal effects with the annoying sensation of seasickness [13]. ...
Where performance practices have become interdisciplinary and hybrid it is clear that not all writing for performance is rooted in the conventions of dramatic writing, even to the extent of being overtly 'postdramatic'. In teaching contemporary playwriting, dramatic techniques may remain significant, but other starting points are useful to examine in relation to texts that have their roots in visual, musical or dance practices. This article proposes that site-specificity may be a useful pedagogical tool in facilitating a writer's route into engaging with visual and spatial principles of composition.
The focal point of this article is sensory perception in terms of action and experience. Perceptual constructs are both physical and cognitive acts that carry meaning in themselves, thus being a vital element of expression in performance making. Liora Malka Yellin's theoretical discussion here draws on J. J. Gibson's information-based model of perception and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, relating aspects of their thought to that of theatre practitioners and their practice. At the centre of these reflections are references to the shifts undergone by Butoh since its beginnings in the 1960s, and an analysis of Shijima, a dance-theatre work by the Japanese group Sankai Juku, based in Paris. This analysis of the perceptual constructs embedded in the configuration of bodily movement directs attention to what can be called corporeal narrative. Liora Malka Yellin is a Lecturer in Theatre and Dance Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts and the Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts at Tel Aviv University.
Robert Sowers begins this book by questioning our conception of the visual artspainting, sculpture, and architectureas autonomous, archetypal entities that can be defined independent of one another in terms of their materials and techniques. He cuts through the limits of categorization we have come to accept to lay the groundwork for a coherent theory of the relation between the visual arts. He proposes that we treat the pictorial, the sculptural, and the architectural not as palpable physical "things" but as activitiesthe basic forms of visual expression employed to create such distinct artifacts as paintings, statues, and buildings. By defining the expressive function of each art, Sowers helps us to understand what we mean when we speak of the sculptural qualities of architecture or the pictorial qualities of sculpture. The world of visual art then is a structured whole, a world in which the arts can meet, merge with, and mutually reinforce or swear at one another, often in unexpected yet compelling ways."
Non-Theatrical Space as Metaphor: Some Speculations on H.G
- Eli Rozik
Visual Discovery Through Art
- E H Gombrich
Blood on the Tracks: the Performance Work of Franko B
- Lois Keidon