Spectatorship, Participation and Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia

Although historically artists from Kandinsky to Hockney have responded to the mixing of the senses known as synaesthesia (Dann, 1999), MTS affords exciting, new opportunities for fine art scholarship. A new area of study even within its native discipline of neuroscience, MTS is a condition in which the synaesthete experiences a subjective tactile sensation on his own body when he watches other bodies (or even objects) being touched. The manifestations of this condition are highly suggestive in relation to artistic, as well as cinematic, theories of spectatorship. My research will transport MTS from the confines of the discipline of neuroscience and introduce it to specialists in other fields and to a general audience in order to explore its powerful potential as a metaphor for empathic, reciprocal seeing.

Building and expanding on an established, interdisciplinary network of academics, this fellowship will challenge assumptions implicit in fine art's 'social turn' by offering new models of how apparently 'passive' spectatorship of visually arresting images might also be socially engaged. In particular it will focus on how the recent turn toward 'the social' in contemporary art can be enriched and deepened by recent turns in two other fields: toward 'embodied spectatorship' in film aesthetics, and toward 'embodied cognition' and the implications of 'mirror systems' in psychology/neuroscience. I will deepen these ideas through two intensive workshops with five diverse thinkers: Jamie Ward (University of Sussex), a leading MTS researcher, Laura U. Marks (Simon Fraser University) and Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam), both central proponents of 'embodied spectatorship' in film theory, and Catherine Wood (Tate Curator of Performance) and Claire Bishop (The Graduate Center, CUNY), both nuanced critics of 'the social' in contemporary art. I will theorise a new kind of art viewer based on these conversations, articulated through a fine art film (collaborative in its process, ultimately authored by myself), and through an edited volume that gathers a spectrum of critical positions to support my argument. In addition to authoring a chapter of the edited volume, I will direct and edit the work of the others, including writing the introduction. The edited volume will create a cross disciplinary analysis of the role of both social and aesthetic empathy within contemporary fine art spectatorship, pulling from current research in neuroscience, film theory, and art theory, and reaching scholars in all of these fields, as well as art world professionals, such as curators, critics, and artists. Moreover, this volume will represent a methodological departure in my research activities, closing the gap between artistic research and natural science which was opened in my previous artistic research on synaesthesia (funded by the Wellcome Trust).

My methodologies will span a variety of approaches: the neuroscientific (which sees the condition as an 'objective' phenomenon), the ethnographic (which looks at 'subjective' accounts) and the aesthetic and artistic (which bridges these modes through an examination of the senses). Critical to the methodology of this research is active engagement with real MT synaesthetes. These conversations will produce the first ever ethnography of MTS, which will include personal stories, life experiences and anecdotes, especially those pertaining to questions of spectatorship. These in-depth interviews will enrich and challenge current theoretical discussions by directly feeding into my own and others' scholarly contributions to the edited volume as well as to the fine art film. MT synaesthetes will also appear as actors in my film, realising their own stories. This short artist's film represents an important manifestation of my artistic research, as an artist-filmmaker who works consistently with the tactile nature of the film medium and its socially transformative potential.

The dissemination plans are designed to bring together leading research with public impact. This fellowship will reach audiences beyond the academy, including (1) synaesthetes, (2) art professionals, such as curators and artists, (3) art-going audiences, and (4) the general population. It will prompt these audiences to question their assumptions about empathic seeing, and the social role this kind of seeing plays in the larger culture.

The edited volume and fine art film will be the primary means of dissemination to both academic and public audiences. I will seek to publish the edited volume with MIT Press or JRP Ringier and to distribute it to art gallery and fine art bookshops internationally as well as through academic channels. Whilst the edited volume may appeal to more specialist audiences, it will also be distributed in conjunction with the first exhibition of the film, around which I anticipate substantial media response, including radio interviews (for example, on The Material World, BBC4). Maureen Seaberg, synaesthesia expert for 'Psychology Today' (top American psychology magazine) has offered to feature the fellowship findings, written for a mass audience of non-specialists. VS Ramachdran, who will contribute a chapter to the edited volume, and who was named by 'Newsweek' magazine as one of the 'hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century', will discuss the volume with interested press. Indeed, this media experience and training represents an important aspect of my leadership development within this fellowship.

The art-going audience reached will be wide and international. Building on my previous experience and artistic reputation (see CV and Publications List), the film will premiere at a solo survey exhibition of my work in a major public gallery, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. I am also in dialogue with curators at the Whitechapel Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery, London. The fine art film will be exhibited in leading public art galleries, in the UK and beyond, in the years following the fellowship, thus addressing the broadest possible audience and furthering my fine art network. The film will address a refigured sense of fine art spectatorship in both its form and its content by enacting MT synaesthetes' stories whilst prompting in its audience alternating sensations of empathy and distancing. Moreover, the film process will take as its subject matter the question of spectatorship itself, creating a self reflexive product that invites its viewers to reflect actively on their own experience of spectatorship. The conceptual and affective complexity generated by the film will be anchored by a traditionally narrative 'backbone' thus facilitating accessibility to difficult ideas.

I will also disseminate the fellowship findings through the project's website, including podcasts and transcriptions of MTS interviews, through public lectures and screenings, in academic contexts (conferences, guest lectures, and within the Ruskin itself) and in fine art contexts (gallery talks and conversations). The innovative critical use of MTS interviews will ensure widespread interest in a growing community of synaesthetes (connected by national and international associations, and online communities). I will also present a paper at the UK Synaesthesia Association's annual conference in April 2015, ensuring primary impact both among synaesthetes and the scientists who study synaesthesia. My aim will be to demonstrate to these communities the ways in which this rare condition has widespread resonances well beyond the field of neuroscience. The newly highlighted social importance of MTS perceptions will, I hope, empower MT synaesthetes to share more of their experiences with interested academics and with the public. Far from viewing their condition as any kind of hindrance, then, the MT synaesthetes touched by this fellowship may appreciate the gifts of their way of seeing.