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Imagine you have clay on one hand, and a vessel on the other one, what is the main difference between them? If you thought of the human approach, maybe you are not right, but at least you agreed on what this exhibition proposes. Human beings find techniques as approaching tools with materials, and in all cases, transformation is an inevitable resultant aspect of this relation. A material can change due to many aspects, not necessarily because of human intervention; nevertheless, humans are the only agents whom modify it with a purpose. They have the capacity of transforming the material according to a special need, having as a result their culture and why not themselves, reflected on the object. In fact, every culture has it’s own necessities, aspirations, ethics and constructions, so conceiving millions of possibilities of transforming a material, should not be surprising.

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Moreover, these techniques can proceed because the human being had a priori relation of recognition with the material.  The body uses it’s own techniques to distinguish  agents and practices of an interaction, and that is why, he appeals to senses as the forthcoming tools to the environment. He sees, smells, touches, tastes, and hears (most recognized senses), to find out how is the world that surrounds them. Then, the senses guide the techniques of transformation, making a material turn into an object capable of responding to this personal and cultural necessity. In fact, every object counters to sensorial needs (which might start a discussion because the intellect might be considered as a sense too), or at least it evokes them; but, what about synaesthesia and the possibility of involuntary responses in other sensorial paths?

 

Exhibitions are not only cognitive spaces; they are sensorial experiences where the whole body and mind responds to a rush of stimuli. People are capable of feeling textures, only through sight, create images by touching or even taste thru hearing. That is why not only digital museums are all about, trying to evoke senses through others generating stimuli perceived differently by the audience. It is a double game trying to perceive with one sense, what was transformed with another one, willing to evoke a determinate sensorial pathway. And that is this exhibition’s purpose, to evoke sensorial experiences throughout other senses. Nevertheless, always remember objects do have a whole process, which makes them what they are; they were the result of a technical procedure thru senses, to induce other ones. As Stephen Greenblatt would argue, they are not only wonder, they are resonance too and they are just the media to understand a whole context.

 

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CLAYING, Modelling Senses, tries to demonstrate how through sight and hear you can perceive every sense evoked by the objects (sight, smell, taste, touch and hear), how does synaesthesia works. Moreover, it utters how these characteristics were conceded by the technical intervention of the human being that gave every material a sense of object. It starts with the Clay, ready to be moulded, and it shows the human being’s capacity of transformation based on this material, not raw because it has it’s own story. Then it will be the Cyprus Ceramic Bell whom will try to be heard, the Helmet Perfume Vase that is willing to smelt, the Indus Valley Seals to be seen and the Chimu Water Vessel, to be tasted.  

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