My goal for this creation was to present emotions in a unique way than how they are typically perceived. In the process of developing a topic for this exploration, a long day in my classroom combined with practices shared in Chapter 3 of Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein birthed the topic of disgust. Ancient physicians tasted bodily fluids of their patients to use for diagnosis (p. 40). In considering their understanding of observing through the use of all the senses to achieve an accurate diagnosis, I wanted to portray a sensory map that explained possible triggers for all areas of a single emotion.
Through my understanding of the chapters for this week and my exploration of disgust in a way that would peak an introductory understanding for my students, my definition of perception would be the ability to experience through multiple senses and understandings. This new understanding impacts my topic area by presenting the complexity of emotions through the perceiving multiple feelings at one time. Putting concrete examples of senses to more vague emotions (such as anxiousness or excitement) would help my learners dive into a deeper understanding of perception that requires some thought and true observing and experience.
Compared to Tennessee Williams’s practice of reading aloud his work throughout his writing process- as a tool to assist his “inner ear” to understand the presentation of his scripts- there are multiple sensations that can lead to multiple results for certain reactions to emotions. Using disgust as an example, there is a response reaction for different disgusting sounds, tastes, touches, scents, and visuals. They all may be extremely different as well, based on the person experiencing them. The response of one person to the smell of hard-boiled eggs may be rooted in disgust, but at the same time a different person could perceive that scent to be nostalgic or bring a sense of happiness.
Despite my wishes to present a sensory map that is rooted more in experience than basic visuals, doing so with “disgust” in mind proved to not be ideal. Thus, in creating my sensory map, there is more of a root in visuals that trigger each idea of the targeted sense with the exception of the sense of hearing. Because most of the senses in this map are combined with a specific visual, there is room for the viewer to imagine their own understanding of disgust through what is presented, which was based heavily around my own understanding of disgust and how I perceived it. In addition I based this around what I assumed my students’ understanding of disgust and how I thought they would perceive this emotion.
Click the button below to explore my sensory map of disgust.
Root-Bernstein, M. & Root-Bernstein R. (2001). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Mariner Books.
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