A SENSE OF RAIN
4th August 2022
I’ve always loved the rain, which is beneficial living in Norway and growing up in Ireland. But even I might have reached my limit this long wet summer in Trøndelag. This week I am dog-sitting at a friend's cabin. I brought some rainwear prototypes I am designing to user test in the forest. It has been the perfect weather to document and reflect on all the sensory details. Last night we had a thunder and lightning storm. It is my favourite weather. The sky darkens, the invisible tension and electricity envelopes you. You wait for its almighty release. Then, the orchestra crescendos and the scent of petrichor fills the air. It is a truly multi-sensory experience.
Rain gives me a new perspective on my environment. A window pane, previously invisible by its inherent transparency, becomes a percussive instrument. The once hard ground beneath my feet becomes a soft bed of splashes and squelches. Water droplets dance and glisten on the edge of objects that had once faded into my surroundings, alerting me to new possibilities.
In Oliver Sack’s ‘The Mind’s Eye’ (2010) he refers to John Hull’s memoir in which he describes how the rain could "delineate a whole landscape for him, for its sound on the garden path was different from its sound as it drummed on the lawn, or on the bushes in his garden, or on the fence dividing the garden from the road”, increasing Hull’s sense of intimacy with nature.
“Rain has a way of bringing out the contours of everything; it throws a coloured blanket over previously invisible things; instead of an intermittent and thus fragmented world, the steadily falling rain creates continuity of acoustic experience … presented the fullness of an entire situation all at once … gives a sense of perspective and the actual relationships of one part of the world to another. ”
Our world is always transitioning. Our relationship with our environment, our belongings, ourselves and each other is always in flux. The intense auditory experience of walking in plastic rainwear can be overwhelming for some of the participants that I have met in my research. Coupled with the tactility and lack of breathability, it becomes an even more intense multi-sensory experience as the rain starts to bounce off the moving plastic. As the intensity of the rain increases it becomes necessary to put up your hood. For some participants this is a beautiful transformative moment. Within their unpleasant sensory experience emerges something beautifully pleasant as the hood blocks out the exterior world. They go inwards, grounding themselves. They are soothed by the rhythmical pitter-patter of the rain as it dances around their head.
Last night, I ran outside barefoot in anticipation of the storm. When I came back inside the dog was cowering behind a chair and then ran towards the stairs to tell me she wanted to be carried up to bed. I held her in bed with me to calm her down. The rain beat off the roof above our heads. The rhythmn lured me into a deep sleep. When I awoke, well-rested, I found the dog under the bed, not so well-rested.
She refused to join me for a morning walk, so I found myself wandering alone in the forest. I listened to the murmur of light drizzle on my raincoat in harmony with the early birdsong. I was now more conscious of the discord of my arm hitting off my coat pocket as I walked and the unpleasantness of my damp cuff licking my wrist. Drinking my morning coffee I contemplated how the same elements can cause such different sensory experiences for different people (and creatures): and the contrasting influence it has on our well-being.
I long for everyone who wears what I design to have an increased sense of intimacy with nature. An intimacy that supports their well-being. I know there are so many more diverse lived sensory experiences that must be included in my user testing. I know that the harmony lies in what Hull described as creating relational perspectives through the senses. But there are multitudes of simultaneous relational perspectives that must have the possibility to be amplified or dimmed to assuage personal sensory preferences. I’m overwhelmed by the thought of how I can possibly design for this and the realisation of how much more there is still to be explored in my design process.