John Gurrin is an artist working with photography, video and sound.
The physical construction of our senses is mirrored in our subjective experience.
Sight is the most conscious and intellectual, with smell and taste being the most emotional. Sound exists somewhere in between.
We respond in an involuntary way to smell – this is due to the wiring of the olfactory pathway. The olfactory nerves go first to the limbic system. This system deals with emotion, motivation, and association of emotions with memory. Only after this relay has occurred does the information arrive in the higher cortical brain regions for perception and interpretation. Smell is unique among the senses in its privileged access to the subconscious.
Sight is considered the most complex sense. It also has the least subconscious privilege. It is the most directed sense: we look, we focus, we blink, we shut our eyes. Neither our nose nor our ears can be ‘shut’ without outside interference. Neither can they express directional intention.
Listening is something that most of us do without purpose. Sound is simply ‘there’. Interestingly, when we close our eyes, we may become more attuned to what we are hearing. On the other hand if we put our hands over our ears, our sense of sight is not effected at all. (Many great musicians are blind: Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Art Tatum, Sonny Terry, Ronnie Milsap, Andrea Bocelli, etc. but there is no equivalent body of great painters who are deaf).
Over the past few years I have recorded performances of classical composers such as Bach, Dvorak, Haydn, Kurtag, Mozart, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Schubert, Stravinsky, and Wolfe, as well as works by contemporary classical composers such as Kee Yong Chong, Mario Davidovsky, Philip Glass, Matthew Greenbaum, Gerard Grisey, Arthur Kampela, Ursula Mamlok, Tristan Murail, Tony Prabowo, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Steve Reich. These recordings were made in a variety of concert halls and studios.
Some of the qualities of an image or recording are immediately apparent. Others emerge over time, through repeated listenings or from the experience of living with an image, when it becomes part of one’s daily experience, even peripherally.
This website has no sound.