104 Olfactory Translations and Interpretations Raewyn Turner Rhythmic vibration is essentially harmonious sharing. This sharing is universally present in musical sound, colour, light and weight, patterns of plant growth, ebbs, tides and calendric rhythms, as well as our own bio- rhythms, breathing and heartbeat. (Doczy 1981) Performance Research 8(3), pp.104–112 © Raewyn Turner (2003) From the time of the Renaissance we have developed technologies to extend the sensory capa- bilities of the body. Believing that we will find the truth about reality as we delve ever deeper into the physical matter of it, we have embraced technolo- gies to measure, see, hear and smell beyond our bodies’ capabilities. The Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft has been gradually transmitting to Earth the new pictures and data from its flight over Io’s north pole: We’ve had wonderful images and other remote sensing of the volcanoes on Io before,but we’ve never caught the hot breath from one of them until now. Galileo smelled the volcano’s strong breath and survived. (Frank 2001) The senses have evolved to furnish reliable knowledge of the world and contribute to our per- ception of a whole reality which is based on corre- spondences and woven from many fragments as well as inner connections. The correspondences that we make are to capture and assume regularities in a changing whole, but the pattern that we perceive is composed from a complex entanglement of patterns. Thinkers like Gian Battista Vico, Henri Bergson, Claude Levi Strauss, and others, show how the human sense of reality is constantly being woven out of every centimetre of fabric at its disposal, whether that be the stuff made of materialist, evidentiary objects, or the stuff made of dreams. (Grech 2002) I believe that cultivating an awareness of feeling and sensation as a powerful evaluation of the environment would give more awareness of our minds’ construction of reality. What we are experiencing and feeling in an environment would become as valid as the rational assumption that only what is visible, measurable, and quantifiable has the power to ‘explain’ why things are the way they seem. In a recent discussion with an eco scientist he expressed the need for a recognition of the perceptual analysis in his work: As a scientist I evaluate the health of an environment by measuring isotopes in the soil, although my perceptions are far more accurate and complex.When I enter an environment I look at the way the wind blows over the lake, the ways the animals move, the look in their eyes, the space between the trees, the ways the birds fly, the smell of the air,the feeling of the place. Our view of the world is shaped by memory, language, culture and anticipation, and is of our times. While our sense of sight dominates in the