The Art and Science of Mapping Perception

Five years ago, a curator, filmmaker and scientist set out on a collaborative journey to discover what it would be like to see the world through the eyes of a child with a rare disease, Joubert’s Syndrome.

The result, Mapping Perception, is an art project spanning a feature film, an art installation, CD-ROM and publication. But, the creators say, over the years of investigation, creation and production, they soon realised the limitations of art, and of science, in exploring one individual’s perception.

‘What started off as a very small idea grew into a much broader investigation into the limits of human perception,’ explains Giles Lane, curator and producer of Mapping Perception, and Co-Director of creative research and development organisation, Proboscis.

‘It shifted into a broader attempt, not just to make a piece of art, but to create something which would have a social impact and encourage people to question their prejudices and preconceptions about what constitutes normal and abnormal, ability and disability,’ Lane emphasises.

The project, a unique collaboration between Lane, filmmaker Andrew Kotting, and neurophysiologist Dr Mark Lythgoe, received funding from a number of bodies including the Sciart Consortium and the Film Council National Lottery Award.

The inspiration behind it all is Kotting’s daughter, Eden, born in 1988 with a rare genetic disorder known as Joubert’s Syndrome, a condition where the lower portion of the brain (cerebellum) is underdeveloped. This causes a number of complications including difficulties with learned motor coordination, speech, breathing and eye movement.

According to Lane, it was difficult to reach any conclusions regarding Eden’s perception.

‘One of the things we thought we would do when we first started the project, was to try and understand how Andrew’s daughter saw the world,’ he explains. ‘We were trying to see, was there a way we could replicate for other people who don’t have her condition, how she sees and experiences the world?

‘We kind of found that was an impossible task. Or, it was out of the bounds of our capabilities,’ Lane concludes.

However, the Mapping Perception installation reflects, to a degree, some of the symptoms Eden experiences. Visitors are immersed in an environment that confuses the five senses, altering their normally narrow perceptive abilities.

The first room, Lane describes, features a series of phrases from the project, but written in symbols, and a collection of Eden’s shoes from the age of one.

The next room is entered through a doorway designed to open the opposite way than you expect, opening into a dark, L-shaped room with a sloping floor. This, Lane explains, shifts people’s normal perception of balance. For someone with Joubert Syndrome, their perception of balance is completely different to someone without the disorder. Lythgoe explains people with the syndrome tend to walk with a stagger as Joubert’s affects motor coordination.

A 40-minute projection screens in one part of the room, while a smell permeates the air along with surround-sound, and visitors find themselves moving through hot and cold areas.

‘The experience of the installation is about shifting people’s normal perceptual abilities and putting them in a place where they don’t function the same way,’ Lane explains.

Lythgoe, who is based at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital, uses Magnet Resonance Imaging (MRI) to investigate brain function and develop possible therapies for children suffering from stroke. He has created a number of works from artist collaborations using the technology over the past eight years.

He also shares Lane’s view that the initial concept to focus on Eden’s experience of the world, ended up shifting back on themselves to create a wider discussion about perception.

Initially, Lythgoe explains, the first part of the collaboration and even the first part of the film, was about ‘shoving disability in peoples’ faces’ to ‘get used to it.’

‘But about halfway through the film, and what the installation focuses on, is back on ourselves,’ he continues. ‘The piece didn’t become about Eden, it became about you and me, about abnormality and normality. It started to focus on the limitations of our own normality rather than shoving abnormality in people’s faces,’ he concludes.

The film, like the installation, is also quite fragmented, filmmaker Kotting notes.

‘It’s a scientific love poem dedicated to my daughter, Eden,’ he begins, ‘There are narratives at work, and numerous disparate dialogues, fragments of sound and image, all congealing to form the semblance of a whole.’

But although art and science may have, in isolation, limited possibilities to re-create an individual’s perception for others to experience, both Kotting and Lythgoe realise collaborative partnerships still allowed the questions to be explored on a deeper level.

‘From the outset, we realised neither art nor science in their own rights had the language or understanding to answer certain questions, such as ‘What would the world look like through Eden’s eyes?’, Lythgoe explains, ‘but the fascination was to try to create a new language or metaphor, with which to understand the world.’

The Mapping Perception installation is at Cafe Gallery Projects, the gallery, by the lake, London SE16 until November 3. Nearest tube: Canada Water on Jubilee and East London lines. Free entry.