FOREST SENSORIAL NATURE

sensorial nature of the forest

2013, SUBMISSION FOR SCENARIO JOURNAL

The forest is a place of enmeshed memory; it holds a special place in our imaginations.

The forest engages five of our traditional senses, from sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. These
faculty of the senses cannot be neglected in the role of memory making. Here sensorial qualities are
investigated not just at face value, but through the forest fleshes out the causal nature of such
sensorial qualities.

STRIATION
Stroking the bark of wood, such textural quality is generally described as simply variation between
roughness and smoothness. The rough striation of a cracked bark versus the smoothness bare
nakedness of a peeled away bark.

EXPULSION
The smell of a thing is the closest quality of its essence, of thing-in-itself, often revealed through
expulsion of its inner matter. In the forest, the breaking, cracking or burning of wood exposes its
inner composition, its smell into the air.

TINGE
Taste, as probably the most indirect sensory for spatial experience, but is aware through perceptual
framework of other senses. Looking at the woody trees we perceive the tinge taste of bitterness, or
smelling the leafy trees we perceive the tinge taste of sweetness. And such tinge lingers and
composes the spatial atmosphere where we are in.

RUSTLE
Sound, experienced when one element physically strikes the other once or in succession, forms the
principle of sound percussion. The brushing of leaves against each other, a rustle – striking of
branches against each other, a crackle.

DAPPLED
In the forest, the visual quality of light is not perceived through the quality of light itself, but rather
perceived through the existence of obstructions, here being the trunks, the branches, and the leaves
of the trees.