Chapter 9: (Un)Boxing the Senses: Curricular Practices of Sensory Ethnography

As I looked toward my chosen path in Central Park, from where I stood in Freedman Plaza that housed Tatiana Trouve’s Desire Lines to the Wien Walk,¹ I felt somewhat lost in that I didn’t know what to expect on my short walk, and I didn’t know what to focus my senses on. As part of a field assignment for a course in sensory ethnography, I engaged in this walk to consider ways in which sensory experiences of place could be collected, experienced, performed, and materialized as affective responses of defamiliarization that would disrupt everyday assumptions, habits, and engagements.

What sense do I privilege? Sight? There were many things to look at: signs, people walking, people sitting, people talking, people working, vendor booths, trees, snow, puddles, objects on the ground. Sound? The cacophony of an urban area was complex: construction noises, vehicles moving along Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, car horns, people talking, people walking, birds chirping, carts rolling on the cobblestones, the music coming from the clock. Smell? No particular smell stood out to me in the Park, which is strange since I am always affected by the smells walking along the city streets. I passed two food carts, but I didn’t smell either one. I passed through the zoo, but didn’t smell any animals. The only smell that stood out to me was fresh, of the cold humidity of melting snow.