By Madeline Schwartzman '83, Adjunct Professor of Architecture
Black Dog Publishing, London, 2011
See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception is an explosive and timely survey that explores the relationship between design, the body, technology and the senses. Get ready to say goodbye to unconscious sensing and embrace cyborgs, post-humans, mediated reality and all manner of cutting-edge sensory interventions like seeing with your tongue or plugging your nervous system directly into a computer. Astounding experiments with interaction design, cybernetics, neuroscience, art and architecture illustrate how we see and sense, and how artistic interpretation can undermine our fundamental perception of the world and ourselves. The book presents the work of key innovators in this field from Haus-Rucker-Co.’s mind-bending headgear to Rebecca Horn’s mythical wearable structures, Stelarc’s robotic body extensions and Carsten Höller’s neurally interactive installations, as well as the work of artists who have emerged in the last five years, like Internet sensation Daito Manabe, Hyungkoo Lee and Michael Burton. Imagine yourself wearing solar-powered contact lenses that augment reality, LED eyelashes and goggles that allow one to communicate with electric fish, all created with the purpose of transforming and provoking the wearer’s sensory experience. Madeline Schwartzman brings together this unique collection of images with provocative chapters and thoughtful descriptions of the concepts informing the work in this book.
