In design, we overwhelmingly privilege our sense of sight and, and for good reason – an MIT study indicates that half of the human brain is devoted directly or indirectly to vision. In his influential work “The Eyes of the Skin”, Juhani Pallasmaa writes

“In Western culture, sight has historically been regarded as the noblest of the senses, and thinking itself thought of in terms of seeing. Already in classical Greek thought, certainty was based on vision and visibility…Plato regarded vision as humanity's greatest gift, and he insisted that ethical universals must be accessible to 'the mind's eye'.”

That said, our other senses connect us emotionally, viscerally, and physically to the world around us.  Our sense of smell, for example, is physiologically centered in the limbic system which regarded by scientists as playing a major role in controlling mood, memory, behavior and emotion. It is often regarded as being the old, or primitive, part of the brain, because these same structures were present within the brains of the very first mammals. This is why a smell can trigger a whole-body memory of some childhood event more powerful that any words or sight. This is known as “odor-evoked autobiographical memory” or the Proust phenomenon, after French writer Marcel Proust. In his famous novel In Search of Lost Time, the narrator dips a madeleine cookie into a cup of tea and is transported back into time as long-forgotten memories of his childhood come flooding back.

This studio encourages students to question how the juxtaposition of multiple sensory exposure defines our experiences and our memories of those experiences and how such sensory information can trigger responses that engage us beyond the rational mind. Through the graphing of sensory impacts on activities, investigating how poetry and art affect us through visceral experience, and exploring examples of synesthetic and multisensory design, students will develop projects that innervate common actions and activities with new meaning. Students will design devices, interactive installations, and products that allow users to experience the world through previously unfelt sensory connections.