Photographers have background music to their photos; poets have visual verses or performance poetry, while some artists make art to music. [break]
Even the pop culture of music videos where music is accompanied by short visual vignettes demonstrates our need for a multisensory approach to art. The human psyche, with the aid of technology and fast-paced urban lifestyle, has moved into a phase where the mind has taken a more of a multitasking approach. The human mind needs a collection of different forms of media, a kind of art that works with all senses to create the feel and experience of art now.
Packaging isn’t a very new concept, businesses couple their products with artistic packaging, composers and singers twin their music with album arts and music videos, and poets pair their work with illustrations.
In this urban age, packaging concept has taken a slightly different turn, however, with artists finding inspiration in other forms of art, or artists aiding viewer perception by other forms of art. Photographers in Kathmandu have started joining the multimedia bandwagon and have already started up with their personal websites and have started preparing multimedia slides for their exhibitions.
“We live in the era of television where sounds and visuals have shaped the way we relate to information or perceive it,” says 30-year-old NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, founder/director of photo.circle, a photography platform for Nepali photographers, adding, “I think people are experimenting with different forms of art because it’s so accessible. Multisensory works of art are an exciting development but it still poses challenges for older photographers who aren’t familiar with these new artforms.”
Like lines that guide the direction of the eye in a photo or a painting, the added music or visuals also tend to work as a guide to perception. A brief visual poetry search on YouTube will land you with hundreds of poems mixed into short films, creating visual representations of poetry. Performance poetry as well mixes body language and vocal tones, giving a third dimension to poetry.
“For me, it was a way of doing something differently,” says Rajan Kathet, 23, who created visual poetry in his years at Kathmandu University. He is currently working as an independent filmmaker. “It’s in my nature to experiment, and since technology has made all these different forms of art so accessible, it’s easy for me to try to create something different. It’s an experiment to blend different arts altogether and take something simple and recreate it in different ways,” he adds.
The accessibility and the ease of use of these new forms of art also come into play while creating a multisensory package. Photographers of previous generations may not be aware of the various new methods in use these days to create these packages, whereas younger ones love experimenting. The young artistic souls tend to want to not get restricted to one form of art only and branch out into different forms of art.
“When I went to art exhibitions or art shows, I kept seeing the same crowd,” says Milan Rai. At 27, he is a live painter, painting to live music in front of people and is currently working as the art director for Ekphrasis, an event that aims to bring different forms of art together under one roof.
“I wanted to get people from different walks of life to experience art and get artists from different fields to contribute to one event. Art is a tool that brings people together and has the unique ability to connect artists, even from different fields, and this harmony is what helps artists build on. This is why we share, or we try our hands at different things and create pieces of art with more depth,” he adds.
Multisensory packages tend to come to life but it does put more pressure on artists as multidisciplinary art knowledge comes into play. Photographers need to know how to write, painters need to learn about music, and writers need to learn about art and design. Fortunately, as the education system is moving more to a multidisciplinary teaching-learning system, artists may find new horizons with multimedia packaging.
In this sense, the future does look bright for multisensory art, with more artists specializing in different fields. And with print mediums internationally crashing down, artists are focusing more on digital mediums to portray their works; and it is with digitalization there emerges the possibility of multisensory art package.
“More and more artists focus on storytelling these days,” says NayanTara, adding, “Art has stopped being static, and artists nowadays focus on telling stories through their photos or their art, and without a multisensory package, storytelling isn’t possible. And I think that because of technology and Internet, this packaging culture is already taking its course.”
Art is no longer restricted to print and seems to be moving more and more into society. Art is turning more interactive and a multimedia package is one way of portraying art with other forms of art to accompany it.
Critics opine that multisensory packaging as a tool to kill individual interpretation because it is unconsciously guided. It gives artists the unethical right to feeding images into viewers’ minds, controlling their interpretation of their art. All in all, nonetheless, multisensory art does seem to give a different dimension to art, and viewers seem to love it as well.
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