A sensuous experience 🧠

Some personal reflection

Our perception of the world takes a myriad of external inputs that are processed by the brain, and then reconstructed in a way that makes sense to us individually. Hence our experience of light, sounds, smell, taste touch are different to each other.

Often in the absence or reduced capacity of one or more ours senses, we find that others will 'compensate' for the loss in input. When we don't use certain senses, they can also become less sensitive. 

The way our senses interact can also produce very interesting effects:

• Touch something with your fingers without looking at it; how does the material feels on your fingertips, and does it feel different when you can see it with your eyes? 

• Taste something while breathing through your mouth only; think about how the food feels on your tongue, or the flavours you taste compared to breathing through your nose

• Listen to the sounds around you with closed eyes and think about the different qualities you can discern, like how loud or how far away the sound is

In our daily lives, our senses also interact with each other in predictable ways:

• How often do you become distracted by a sound or a sight and become unaware that you have dropped something?

• How often do you do something with your non-dominant hand and have a very different experience of doing a routine like brushing your teeth?

• How often do you do something at a different speed, make something on a different scale, or attempt a certain amount of repetitions of an activity or task to see what the effects are?

In all forms of creative activities, there are opportunities to challenge yourself by experiencing things in a different way. The following are examples from hanakami, and I encourage you to discover them in other forms of art.

For the visually curious

How often do we take a closer look at nature and admire the beauty that lies deeper within? Our tendency to overlook things things that appear to be simple in its appearance makes us ignorant of the hidden wonders of the natural world waiting to be discovered. 

Most of the petals that you will use for hanakami are no bigger than the size of your hands, which allows you to examine its details when held close to your eyes or a lens. Zoom in further to discover details that can't be revealed by normal vision, and take time appreciate the beauty and contrast at each level of detail. Admire the colours, patterns and textures that reveal themselves in a new light when observed from a closer distance.

For the tactilely sensitive

We know that our hands are one of the most sensitive parts of our body because of its high density of receptors that are used to detect various physical inputs (based on the cortical homunculus model).  

The fragile flower petals require equally delicate methods and techniques for working with them. From your hands to the fingers, and then from the finger tips to the fingernails, each part of your hand needs to work in sync to manipulate the petals. This ensures that they stay intact while being folded and put under stress.

We can also use our fingertips to work out if the petals are too dry and brittle to fold, or if it contains too much moisture and needs to be drier so the crease you fold will stay in place.

In origami there is actually a technique called wet-folding that uses special types of paper and chemicals to alter the physical properties of the paper. In hanakami, water is used to control the physical properties of the petal to change its pliability, or its ability to flex and bend.

For the olfactorily inquisitive

We often describe certain scent as being floral, but if you think about it carefully, there are actually a lot of different types of smells that fall under this term. The scent or smell of flower is made up of a combination of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, and they exist for a variety of reasons that serve particular purposes in nature.

Here are the different categories of flowers used in floral fragrances:

• Green / spring or vegetal flowers

• White or sensual flowers / solar flowers

• Powdery flowers

• Spicy flowers

• Roses

• Atypical flowers

The connection between smell and our memory is an interesting one to ponder, and there are some biological reasons why individually we have such strong memories for certain smells.

Take in the scent of the flower when collecting and preparing the petals, and also while you are making the origami models. The perfume of the rose petals or the fragrance of the frangipani add to the unique experience of hanakami, and the combination of tactile and olfactory stimulation is something you have to experience to understand.

For the auditorily analytical

It is not often that one would associate sound with the practice of origami, but if you ever get the chance to listen to the sound of the paper as you make various folds and creases, you'll see that there are particular sounds generated from the surfaces and structures of the paper interacting with each other.

In origami models where you need to perform a number of pre-creases, and then collapse the model into a particular structure or shape, the sound that is generated usually has a distinct tone and quality that reflects how well the creases have been made. To experience this for yourself, why not try to make the primrose model in the Experiments and ideas page.

For the gustatorily insatiable

There are plenty of edible flowers, but this origamist has not tried figure out which ones can be used in origami, nor has he tried to sample his own creations (yet). However, there are many other forms of edible origami you can try, from crane croutons for your salad and sugar origami cranes.

What else?

How about the feeling of time passing by quickly or slowly, or the emotions that you feel, or the memories that are triggered? Our mind offers us a glimpse into the interconnection of not just the world around us, but also how we experience things in our own unique ways.