Cartographies of Human Sensation – Jonathan Reus and Sissel Marie Tonn

Cartographies of Human Sensation
Jonathan Reus and Sissel Marie Tonn
Orangerie, May 29 – August 15, 2016

Cartographies of Human Sensation presents a series of instruments that adjust the wearer to the environment through meta-sensory perceptions of bio-metric signals (translated by supported sound synthesizers) and radical body extensions. While the extensions change the relationship between the body and the environment through alienation, the instruments make the wearer more attuned to psychobiological responses to transient events. Together they form the tool for a metasensation, reflexive feeling.

Why New Cartographies? When we experience a natural landscape, we experience a set of sensations: the wind that touches our skin, a multitude of views, smells and sounds that we weave in our impression of a certain place. We are culturally trained to be more sensitive to some events rather than others, which for example manifests itself in the way we map the world. Maps are seen as static objects in the Western world but in other cultures maps and images of space are often more interactive, tangible and temporary. The developed instruments offer the possibility of a continuous mapping of the relationship between body and environment, so that perhaps a different understanding of space and time can be created.

As the project unfolds, we will develop a deeper understanding of how the body moves through time and space and constructs the subtle and unconscious processes that form our experience.

During the exhibition, a program will be developed in which participants will take the instruments on prepared walking tours. The tours are ongoing conversations with participants, evolving over time and at different locations. They are site-specific and offer participants a unique opportunity to reflect on the way they perceive the environment.