SENSORIUM TESTS

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  • Artist DARIA MARTIN
  • Technical: 16mm colour sound flm Courtesy Daria Martin, Maureen Paley Gallery et l’IAC Rhône-Alpes
  • Duration: 10'
  • Year of production: 2012
  • Country: United States
In Sensorium Tests, six actors re-enact a real science experiment, testing the reactions of a subject capable of mirror-touch synesthesia. This form of synesthesia causes the synaesthetic subject to feel a contact that he sees being made on another person, whether it is a caress or a slap. In the film, anthropomorphic objects, then a man, come face-to-face with a woman and we try to find out if she feels on her cheek the contact that these diverse elements are subjected to. Fascinated by this empathic capacity rarely considered by artists, who are often more interested in the phenomenon of coloured hearing, Daria Martin has previously consulted many subjects, particularly curious about their sensitivity to films. At the same time, Sensorium Tests show two scientists observing the experiment from a room behind a one-way mirror - a metaphor for the cinematic device.

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DARIA MARTIN

Born in 1973 in San Francisco, USA Lives and works in London since 2002 In her films, often in 16mm, Daria Martin explores the porousness between different artistic mediums such as performance, sculpture, painting, or dance. Scholarly research, daydreams, or even memories dot these films and make references to the history of modernism, which she likes to approach with strong formal elegance. By studying the relationships between humans and machines, she reveals the perception habits acquired by the viewer. Daria Martin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and Humanities from Yale University and a Master’s Degree from UCLA. Her work has notably been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, University of California Los Angeles, New Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne.