Reading Blog – Nov. 26th

Reading Blog – Nov. 26^th

Smith, Mark M. Sensing the past : seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching in history. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2007. Print.

Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, add touching are the basic senses of human. The core question in the reading is, how the senses changed through the history? What roles have the five senses played and how do they affected our society?

We experience these senses in our everyday life without doing anything. We usually just receive the senses through our organs. In page 117, Smith wrote that most historians and museum curators think that the sensory recreation for the past is both not possible and desirable. But I think what these historians and curators mean is to build a program that is only base on senses. For example, use only sounds to present the American history. Maybe it will become the head line of the news but it is not a way to operate a museum. But there are some commercial values in senses. There are shops that sell different smells in bottles. The shops are selling scents like, holy water, wet garden, dust, fire place, and even warm spring. The shop does not only sell the scents that exist. Some scents such as Italian kiss and California love are also in the list of choice.

I think what Smith means in the book is that a history documentary is best in language format, speaking and writing. An official documentary of history in smell or hearing is just not the way to do it. Looking carefully into the current museum program design, we can find out that there are installations of senses

        Smith points out that some scholars begun to insist that sensory history should offer a usable way to help the history “live”. They are hoping to find a better way to present their research and findings to the publics. I believe this is the correct way of the sensory history but it seems impossible to do. The ultimate question is how we recreate the senses in the past. All the materials that can help identify the senses are not exists anymore. Do the people in the past recognize the color like us? Different space-time background, different society, different understanding of fact and standard can make everything so varied. With the help of advanced technology we might be able to reach the goal but how to translate and express the senses objectively will be a big challenge.

        As for my object exhibition, this reading gave me a new direction of conducting it. I am thinking about put the top hat on a turning plate and surround it with some spot light. This design can reveal the unique glossy surface of the hat.