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The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire (1400-1750), an exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum Contemplates sacred and secular bodies in painting and sculpture, and how our bodies as viewers interact with them, the show is a perfectly timed refresher on the importance of physicality in art.

"Two sonic branding experts explain the thinking behind some of the world's most recognizable sounds. Featuring: Andrew Stafford - Co-Founder & Director at Big Sync Music Steve Milton - Founding Partner at Listen"

THE BOUNCY BEEPS of Pac-Man. The percussive build-up in Legend of Zelda. The effusive gibberish of The Sims. The sounds in videogames tell us to speed up, start over, and of course, to keep playing. But how does one set of beeps so effectively tell you you've gained power, while another indicates your character has died? And how, exactly, does someone create the sound of the Dark Knight punching the Joker in the face? The answer: Genius sound design.

"As visitors strolled through a recent display of Madame de Pompadour's coffee grinder, an 1840s Sèvres porcelain coffee set, tea canisters, sugar bowls and other European decorative arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the scent of roasted coffee beans arose in one room. Bach's "Coffee" Cantata played in the background. Not far away, cocoa pods were not only on display but also meant to be touched. In the final gallery, a tasting station offered two kinds of liquid chocolate, one adapted from an Aztec recipe and the other from an 18th-century French formula. Museums usually aim to offer a feast for the eyes, but this Detroit museum had much more in mind for "Bitter|Sweet: Coffee, Tea & Chocolate," which just closed at the institute. Officials, who used art objects to illustrate how the introduction of those beverages to Europe in the 16th century from Africa, Asia and the Americas changed social and consumption patterns, wanted the exhibition to be a banquet for all five senses."

"Is Jeanne Dielmans' apartment on 23, quai du Commerce in Brussels a haunted house? It might well be. Because the dwelling where most of Chantal Akerman's 1975 masterpiece is set is often eerily deserted, with only the distant sounds of shuffling feet and clanging keys filling its hallways. As the camera waits for the titular protagonist to arrive (or lingers after she has left), the rooms are reduced to echo chambers. Jeanne Dielman is disembodied, a ghost even in her own domestic realm. Her visual absence in these moments represents quite literally the invisibility of her plight: a life lived in the shadows, a fate suffered just around a corner, conveniently out of view for the rest of society."

"In Famous Deaths, you experience the smells and sounds of the last four minutes of someone's life, all while closed inside a metal mortuary drawer. The project developed by scientists and designers with Avans University of the Applied Sciences in Breda, Netherlands, involves curated scents for John F. Kennedy's final motorcade, Whitney Houston's last bath, Princess Diana's fatal ride, and Muammar Gaddafi's violent end."

"The performative sensory environment Displace 2.0 takes place in the building of the recently dissolved platform TAG in the Hague for the 2012 TodaysArt festival. Displace 2.0 puts your sensory experience in the foreground. Groups of visitors progress through the three floors of the TAG building, encountering a series of environments and experience sensory-based actions that intermingle the senses of smell, taste, sight, sound and touch. At first, these sensory modalities are separated from each other, but then they grow over time to cause intense, almost hallucinatory sensations merging to the point of saturation."

Sound by Ernst Karel - "The faces in "Manakamana," a transporting ethnographic film set in a green sliver of Nepal, stare into the camera, out into space and, perhaps, into the great beyond. The faces are sometimes creased and weathered, sometimes smooth as pebbles. A few look etched with worry, as if they were weighed down by a heavy burden, although they may also be seized with fear. That's because for 10 or so minutes at a time, these faces are floating hundreds of feet above a lush Nepali forest in a cable car that takes pilgrims to and from the temple that gives this film its rhythmic title. "

" Ernst Karel is Lecturer on Anthropology, Assistant Director of the Film Study Center, and Lab Manager for the renowned Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. In his audio projects, he works with analog electronics and location recordings, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, to create pieces that move between the abstract and the documentary. Karel collaborates with filmmakers as a sound recordist, mixer, and sound designer. Notably, Karel has worked on key films produced at the Sensory Ethnography Lab including Sweetgrass (2009) and Leviathan (2012), both of which were released in UK cinemas via Dogwoof."

"Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Environments are relaxing spaces that help reduce agitation and anxiety, but they can also engage and delight the user, stimulate reactions and encourage communication."

"THE NEUROLOGICAL LINK BETWEEN TASTE AND HEARING, OR WHY AIRPLANE PASSENGERS LIKE TO DRINK TOMATO JUICE"

"ELECTROCHROMA is a 58ʼ30" audiovisual work that emerged from the manipulation of light to generate imagery as well as using a combination of extended techniques applied to sonic-material sources, including translation of image to sound to create the 5.1 surround audio composition. The work utilizes various analog and digital procedures and a variety of software processes to manipulate the moving image and sound. The workʼs imagery ranges from dark to light monochromatic spheres, shifting dynamics and intensity, including flickering and pulsating patterns, retinal impact, and sensory overloads. The sound composition focuses on timbre, low ends, modulated frequencies, textures, static noises, and electronic sounds moving through space. Other sonic layers were created through the use of electromagnetism, custom electronic sounds, and voices scored for the work and performed in a recording studio by artist Marylea Martha Quintana."

"As ASMR videos have sped across the internet, artists have started making their own versions, inducing shivers with soft sounds like clacking, cracking, scratching, and whispering."

"Let's be blunt: The tongue is really dumb. Unlike the rest of our sensory organs, which are exquisitely sensitive, that lump of exposed muscle sitting in the mouth is a crude perceptual device, able to only detect five different taste sensations. (Your cochlea, in contrast, contains thousands of different hair cells, each of which is tuned to particular wavelengths of sound.)"

"A growing body of scientific evidence now shows that what people taste when evaluating a wine, and how much they enjoy the experience, can be influenced by the music that happens to be playing at the same time. "

"Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we're actually experiencing a memory of that perception. That is, our unconscious minds filter and process the world under the hood, and often make split-second decisions. When we become aware of those perceptions and decisions-that is, once they've risen to the level of consciousness-we're actually experiencing "memories of those unconscious decisions and actions," the authors explained. "

"What unites all the immersive art rooms is the communal sensory experience viewers share together."

"The musician Dessa took a sensory tour in the city with the synesthete LJ Rich. Here is how it sounded"

A presentation of artists exploring sound and materiality: "Materiality of Sound: In this chapter, we will present projects that get closer to the sonic phenomenon directly presented on stage in front of our eyes and hears as a form of scientific and artistic experiment. The materiality of sound, intended as a specific focus on using principles of the physical world to initiate a new listening into the matter, reveals the vibrational fundaments constituting our universe and unfolds the state of inter-connectivity in nature performing forces pervading multiple domains at the same time in the same space."