THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1998. PAGE 2

WHO´S WHO

LETTING OTHER SENSES TAKE OVER

Hector Fernandez is creator of the "Sensorama" , a series of conceptual art installation which Fernandez describes as the opposite of virtual reality. "in virtual reality, the sense of sight is foremost, " he explained.

"In the Sensorama, you are blindfolded and you other senses reign, letting your imagination run free."

Sensorama is the umbrella name for several projects, all of which entail blindfolding the participant, then leading them through a room where there senses of touch, smell and hearing take over. Fernandez has taken the Sensorama to several muscums in Mexico City since its conception six years ago. In 1997 Sensorama was in Germany as part of a UNESCO ´s 5th annual "Toys for Children´s Rehabilitation." Although the Sensorama can be enjoyed by everyone, one if the main goals of Fernandez is to take it to disadvantaged children in low - income areas. The Sensorama has put on several exhibits that bring famous paintings alive, teach children about Mexican history and show the importance of taking care of the environment - all in a creative and unusual way that gets kids excited and interested.

Could you tell me in your own words what the Sensorama is?

Sensorama is a sense and perception methodology.
What I mean by that is we take concepts and present them in a new and interesting way. OK, I´m going to explain this in a more practical way: Imagine that at this moment you´re blindfolded so you can´t see anything and you enter a room where you hear the sounds of whales coming from one side and the sounds of dolphins from another. Whit you eyes blindfolded, the whole experience is like that of a dream. So What Sensorama does is help the participant´s imagination develop. In this incredibly visual age, what happens when you are blindfolded? When you hear dolphins, you will begin to imagine dolphins. Imagine there are also sounds in the room of falling water… so your mind will begin to imagine a waterfall. Then there are ice sculptures in the room for people to touch, feeling it without seeing it you give it form. In this way you are stimulating your imagination… and not only that, but stimulating your other senses which we hardly use in such an isolated way, without eyesight. So our goal with Sensorama is that those other senses come alive, that the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, the creative side. We want to "hemospherize" the sea, works of art, stories, myths, so that children, especially, can learn in a fun way… using their other senses.

So Sensorama is a concept, and you have several different project/exhibits under that umbrella name?

Yes, Sensorama is the concept. And that concept is to enter these transformed rooms with you eyes blindfolded. There are several Sensorama projects. One project makes art works interactive. This project is called "Iconic Empathy". "Empathy" because you will enter into a relationship with the artwork. You enter the work . . . here, let me explain. For instance, there is a painting by Diego Rivera called "Canoa Enflorada en Xochimilco." So what we wanted to do is create Xochimilco: We created music and the sounds of children playing and the smells of Xochimilco: and you have the feeling that you are getting on one of the boats, all while blindfolded.

How would you capture the smell of Xochimilco?
We brought in a lot of flowers. We even had food there like the sell at Xochimilco on the canals. We had a very good response to it and it was really bringing the work of art alive for the senses. That was the first painting we did that with. We did the same with an abstract work by Siqueiros. Another Sensorama project is called "Sensorama Independientes." These are ideas we as the group thinks up and install somewhere. One example is of the four elements, earth, water, air, fire. Another we are working on now deals with duality. You firs enter the "positive" room, and then the " negative" room. For example, peace vs. war, love vs. hate. You walk through, and live the two things. Another example would be masculine and feminine, life and death.

How will you illustrate through every sense but sight love and hate, masculinity and femininity?

Using symbols and sings, we want to go beyond the classic stereotypes. Getting beyond that., and showing that we all have traits of both sexes. A lot of our other Sensorama projects deal with education and children, and fundamentally with environmental education. The last thing we did of this nature was construct tents representing two worlds. The first world represents how we will leave the world we are living in if we continue to contaminate the way we are doing. We don´t preach… nothing about what is good or bad. We just let the kids enter these tents blindfolded and let them feel for themselves. In that world are horrible smells, jarring sounds like honking horns, smells of garbage. So they walk through this dirty world and then enter the next room, which has the sound of birds and the sea, the smells and sounds of nature. In this way, the kids see for themselves the difference between a clean and polluted world.

We put this up in Naucalpan and it was part of last year´s Scout Week for Education on the Environment. We also do the same kind of projects for kids illustrating myths and history. All kids have to study and memorize history in school. But it really comes alive for the kids the way we present it. Instead of walking in to a museum and seeing before them the myth represented in a static way, with Sensorama they walk and become part of the myth and the rituals, part of history. An example of when we did this was for the Franz Mayer exhibit "La Cocina" last year, We set up a Sensorama installation called "El Cacao para consentidos", connecting history of cacao with the senses. The participant entered, blindfolded and took a trip through the history of cocoa , starting in pre-Columbian times.