Experiences of perception

We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus.

- Janet Murray, 1998 

Art does not render the invisible, but makes visible […] it suffices to provide the appearance for one sense to produce the illusion that the whole thing [is] there in flesh and blood […] the rendering of a part does not fail to suggest the presence of the whole.

- Stefan Beyst, 2005 

How would the painter or poet express anything other than his encounter with the world?

- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as cited in David Michael Levin, 1993

Lived experience

The qualities of hapticity, visuality and cross-modality permeate the folds of sensuality, eroticism and mystery. These qualities, like swirling incense, cross the folds of our lived, phenomenological experience, caress our psychic folds and intermingle. They stimulate our senses, awaken our inner pulsions, and evoke unspoken memories and hopes of passion, making them rise to the surface. It is in this way that we experience our worlds, real and imagined, through our senses and ourselves.