What is Orange?
Our creative response was ultimately intended to capture the experience of experience. While our work with Hannah and Helen was exceptionally varied, a continuing theme of our meetings was the notion of experience or what it means in context to sensation, sharing, and the artistic process.
We wanted encapsulate a few of the themes they shared with us:
- Childlike Sensibility
- The 5 Senses
- Organic vs. Synthetic
- Participatory Culture
We wanted to create a response that would necessitate the involvement of the class and our partners. What is Orange? presented participants with five golden lunch bags, which are meant to evoke the same childlike sensibilities of the crinkly, cellophane packaging of candy and relies on the nostalgic presence of something like school lunch. Making each bag the same, labeled with only the word orange, we meant to provide participants with an equal choice, a self-contained environment, and something to guide their understanding of the bag’s contents. We asked each participant to describe orange on a piece of paper. Much of Big Rock Candy Mountain was informed by asking children about their conception of food objects, asking them to experience it, and then share in this experiences. We wanted to employ these methods to see what kind of results we could yield. We then had participants open their bags, experience their contents, and again write down their descriptions.
The bags respectively contained:
- A citrus-scented candle
- A plastic orange
- A real orange
- An orange-colored crayon
- And orange-flavored lozenges
Descriptions were then placed on the table along with the objects and bags. The responses were as follows:
- Glowy
- Warm
- Mouthwater Sweetly
- Acidic
- Warm
- Tasty
- Hot
- Rhymes with Blorange
- Plump
- Porous
- Waxy
- Bitter
- Sweet
- Sweet
- Tangy
- Crunchy
- Bitter
- Hot
- Sun
- Divots
- Tang
- Fake
- Prop
- Hard
- Round
- The color orange drawn across the page in crayon
There are several repeats in descriptions, between participants and objects. The piece was meant to draw attention to sensorial experience and the multitudes of ways an object can be experienced. The piece also intended to examine the fact that we can derive the same kinds of experiences from both synthetic and natural objects without prioritizing one or the other. We also wanted to show the value of being able to define something in so many different and still completely valid ways, opposing the rigidity that can be forced upon us through certain institutions, education, adulthood, and so on. (A major take away from our experience with Hannah and Helen).