THE NEWS

LIVING

SUNDAY JULY 20, 1997. PAGE 27.

* SENSORAMA LOOSENS CHAINS THAT BIND THE MIND

MICHELINE CHI CHASE

Everything introduced into the human understanding passes through the senses. . . Our first philosophy teachers are our feet, our hands, our mouth, our ears and our eyes. To substitute those with books is… to belive everything and know nothing -Rousseau.

It all started when Hector Fernandez began to wonder how blind people dream. "How do you experience, what do you visualize, when you´ve never seen? He asked himself. So he and a friend blindfolded themselves and spent two days experiencing Mexico City thought its smells, sound, and textures.

"We found out that when you´re blindfolded everything is transformed - space, size, color - your capacity for creativity grows a lot," said Fernandez in an interview, "because you have to imagine everying, how things look."

Struck by the potential of the experience, Fernandez began to think about how it could be expanded on, and soon he and his friends tried to convey a similar idea through a radio program. Playing with such ideas as broadcasting music from a bathtub or blindfolding people in the radio station and giving them foods to eat, Fernandez soon realized he´d hit on something "People related what they trasted and smelled to the songs they were hearing, it worked out really well, so I thought, let´s do something with this."

That was years ago. Since then, Fernandez has founded Sensorama - a kind of sensory perception machine that fully creates a different atmosphere for spectators to be inmmersed in. Blindfolded, Sensorama´s visitors reconstruct in their imaginations their environment, through what they touch, taste smell and hear.

The firs project was a recreation of the four elements, installed in small rooms built in a forest. Each of the sensorama´s four rooms was outfitted with sensations pertaining to one of the four elements - the walls of the Earth room, for example, were built to feel like the walls of a cave while the Water room was filled with miniature, motor-powered waterfalls. Guides led participants through the sets almost silently, indicating what they should touch or taste. Sensorama´s creators had no idea whether the firs installation

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would be well received by audiences, but visitors lined up every weekend to enter the Sensorama, and the four elements project lasted eight months.

One of the visitors, Leticia Lopez Orozco, was especially impressed. A coordinator of cultural events at the UNAM, Lopez Orozco wanted to propose a Sensorama project during a conference on educational services to be held at the Museo Dolores Olmedo.

"She said she loved the Sensorama we had already done, and asked me what could do with art," remembers Fernandez. "So I thought, okay instead of just looking at a painting first you could feel it. You could touch it, taste it and smell it (blindfolded), and finally see the painting at the end. "The result was Sensorama´s second project: a sensorial recreation of Diego Rivera´s painting "La Canoa Enflorada" set in Xochimilco Participants were blindfolded and led though a set containing the mariachi singers, sope venders and abundant flowers typical of Xochimilco´s canals "In the end people said, "I was there" It was just as if they had really been to Xochimilco", said Fernandez.

From then on, things gained momentum, and Sensorama installed exhibits - delving into everything from the history of chocolate to the sound and smells of an abstract painting - in the Museo Soumaya, the Museo Franz Mayer, San Ildefonso and the Museo del Templo Mayor, as well as in other cultural spaces part of Sensorama´s appeal to museum directors is its versatility: interesting for adults and entertaining for kids the installations reach a wide range of audiences.

A Sensorama only changes when it is designed specifically for children younger than five, in which case the guides have a much more active role: they explain to children exactly what they´re about to enter and what will happen to them. The children are told that they can take off the blindfold at any time if they feel scared.

"Some kids are so imaginative at that age that they don´t even need to be blindfolded," Fernandez laughed. "They might tell you, the best part was the Apache at the beginning, and you´re like, what apache?

"Kids react differently depending on how they´ve been brought up he added. "Some parents are really open and let their kids everything: some hit their kids everytime they touch something they´re not supposed to. What´s important to us is that they explore, that they try everything" Fernandez hopes the Sensorama could eventually be used in education.

"I thing that when you learn something thought the emotions, rather than the intellect, you remember it longer, "he says. "I mean, imagine you come to class and instead of lecturing you like usual about in history, they blindfold you, you hear a cassette, and suddenly it´s like you´re in history in the times of Zapata for example."

But exploring the senses in the classroom is just one of Sensorama´s future goals. The group also hopes to build small sensorial "boxes" throughout the city, where people could stop for a few minutes to experience nature. People would insert their hands into the box and touch water, they would hear the sound of waves, and eventually see a picture of the ocean.

The group would like to have a fixed space, like a movie theater, where different Sensoramas could be installed monthly. And of course. Sensorama intends to continue its presence in museums, perhaps even creating an entire art museum based on the senses one day "Basically we just want everyone to understand that they are capable of imagining and creating, "Fernandez says.