Sascia Pellegrini

This research proposal investigates a phenomenology of time through the lens of William James's  specious present, which also connects to Husserl’s philosophy of the sensual perception of objects and  Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. This research aims to delineate time as a subjective,  multifaceted space between the metaphysical and the sensual, where what we usually refer to as reality,  and what lies hidden behind it, can be investigated. The study of time is necessarily a study of the  different species of time, and forms of perception. It is intimately linked to phenomenological reality:  as human beings, we too are time; everything we do has a temporal horizon; all our ideas about the  world and ourselves are temporal in nature.  

This  practice-based research will therefore attempt to find whether different aspects of time relating to the  five senses can be isolated, scrutinized, and experienced first-hand, amplifying time/space through  performative exercises and practices such as, but not limited to, extended exposure to silence, white noise, darkness, light, thirst, aromas, fabrics. The questions that propel this research are: will  continuous exposure to acoustic white noise for a period of twenty four hours change the perception of  routine actions? Will it modify the relation with the space in which it takes place? Will it eventually  engender an alternative sonic habitat?   

Moreover the perception of time will be investigated through a critique of previous artistic  research by, among others, the film makers Andrei Tarkovsky and Maya Deren, Butoh artist Kazuo  Ohno and dance choreographer Merce Cunningham, composers Alvin Lucier and John Cage, writers  Jorge Luis Borges and Marcel Proust; all of whom link conscious and unconscious, mental and  somatic, as well as objective and subjective perceptions of time, space and self, albeit in different ways  and in different media.  

Names of Supervisors: Natasha Lushetich, Dominic Smith