Module 7: Sharpening Your Senses, Exploring the World of Color

Ang Aking Pandama, Ang Mundo ng Kulay

written by Pia Arboleda

Motivating Activity: Pets & Perception

Let’s begin by exploring our senses through familiar connections, like pets, and then broaden our understanding of perception.

1. Pets and Sensory Experience

Share your experiences with pets and how they engage our senses.

• Ask the students: Do you have a pet?
• Practice Responses:
  • May pet (alaga, aso, pusa) ako. (I have a pet (pet, dog, cat).) (May – there is something, I have a pet)
  • Wala akong pet / alaga. (I don’t have a pet / animal.) (Wala – none, I don’t have a pet.)

• Ask students if there is a problem with this picture.
• Ask students to describe their pet.
  • Si (name of pet) ang pet (aso, pusa) ko.
  • __________ at ___________ siya. (He/She is [adjective] and [adjective].)
  • Hindi siya _____________. (He/She is not [adjective].)
• Guide Questions:
  • Why do we give children pets?
  • What lessons can we learn from taking care of pets?
  • How would this experience differ if we just gave children virtual pets and have a babysitter care for these virtual pets?

2. Synesthesia: Blending Senses

Explore the fascinating concept of synesthesia, where senses intertwine. We’ll discuss common metaphors and personification related to our senses.

• Discuss the relevance of becoming attuned to our senses.
  • How has the fast-paced lifestyle affect the way we think, create, and live?
  • Introduce the concept of “aesthetics,” “synaesthesia,” and “anesthesia.”
• Show some examples from a haiku:

Autumn evening now
Flowers chimed
A peal of fragrance.

• Ask students to imagine:
  • Ano ang lasa ng Lunes at Byernes? / What does Monday and Friday taste like?
  • Ano ang kulay ng tunog? / What is the color of sound? Think of a sound and describe its color.

---

Processing Activity: The Deprivation of Senses

This section explores the significance of our senses by imagining a world without them.

1. Sensory Deprivation through Story

Before discussion, let’s understand the context through a story.

• Play “Two Friends, One World.”

• Guide Questions:
  • What happened in the story?
  • What are the differences and similarities between Antonio and Francisca?

2. The Value of Touch: A Philosophical Exploration

Consider the importance of the sense of touch and its connection to the human experience.

• Discuss the movie Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders. In that film, angels live forever but they had no sense of touch. Ask if students are willing to give up their sense of touch in exchange of immortality. 

• Guide Questions:
  • Ask if students are willing to give up their sense of touch in exchange for immortality.
  • Would you like to live forever this way?
  • Or would you give up your wings to become human and gain all your senses?
  • If you were to choose a sense to give up, what would it be?
  • If you can gain another sense like spider sense or a super power, what will it be? Why?

3. What Does Emotion Taste Like?

Explore the abstract concept of synesthesia with emotions.

• Invite students to imagine the following: Ano ang lasa ng damdamin? / What does your emotion taste like? Give an example.
• Example: Ang lasa ng paghihiganti / the taste of revenge. At first revenge tastes very sweet and you cannot get enough of it. It is like eating a chocolate cake by yourself. The first slice is very satisfying, and you want to eat another slice. But by the time you get to the third slice, you cannot help yourself despite knowing that it is excessive. And then you feel guilty for eating all that cake, and all of a sudden, it is sweet no longer. That is what revenge tastes like.

4. Sound and Color: A Poetic Exploration

Read aloud this excerpt from Lyall Watson’s Gift of Unknown Things, exploring the concept of colors for sounds.

I was playing this game with the crabs when I saw Tia, the tiny dancer, shaking a sleeping mat out the door of the house of her uncle. We walked together down the beach, and a small and mottled heron flew up at our feet. Every time it took flight it uttered a sharp, broken “kew” sound on a descending tone.

“Puchong laut,” said Tia, and laughed gently. “He sings a green song.”
“Why green (berde)?” I asked her.
“That is his color. His voice is like a sharp new leaf or a thorn.”
“Not brown (kulay kape)?”
“No, of course not. Brown is the sound of katak.”
Katak was the local toad. The idea was beginning to grow on me.
“What makes a black (itim) sound?”
“Buffalo. And thunder.”
“White (puti)?”
“The sea where it touches the sand.”
Now I was really hooked.

Tia was giving me these examples without hesitation, as though she were used to hearing sounds in color. I thought of the tawny roar of a lion; of the scarlet scream of a macaw; of the deep bronze boom of an important bell, and of how the little ones that tinkled tended to be silver.

” ‘Tia,’ ” I said her name clearly. “What color is that?”
“Pink (kalimbahon) when you say it, like an orchid. Paman Abu makes it yellow.”
“And ‘Abu’ ?”
“Sometimes blue (asul), sometimes brown. It depends.”
“On what?”
“The one who says it, and if the person feels friendly.”
She was clearly getting a little impatient with all this talk about something so obvious, but I couldn’t leave it alone.

“All sounds have colors?”
“Astaga! You did not know?”
“No.“

“How can you listen to talk or music without color?” Her eyes were full of pity. “When the drums talk, they lay a carpet of brown, like soft sand on the ground. A dancer stands on this. Then the gongs call in green and yellow, building forests through which we move and turn. And if we lose our way, there is always the white thread of the flute or the song to guide us home.”

Lyall Watson’s Gift of Unknown Things

5. Class Participation: Colors of Sounds

Share your ideas about the colors of sounds based on the excerpt.

• Ask students to recite answers to the following:
  • What are the color of sounds?
  • What sound is puti (white)? Example: Puti ang sound of a strong waterfall.
  • What sound is itim (black)? Black ang ___________________
  • What sound is pula (red)? Pula ang ________________________
  • What sound is dilaw (yellow)? Yellow ang _______________________
  • What sound is asul / bughaw (blue)? Asul / Bughaw ang ___________________

---

Culminating Activity: Explaining Color Without Sight

This final activity challenges you to explain the concept of color using all your senses, without relying on sight.

Task: Explain Color to a Visually Impaired Person

• Read an excerpt from Two Friends, One World:

“Look Antonio:
Red is the color of the sky when the day and the night meet.
Blue is the color of the sea where the cold fishes play.
Yellow is the color of the sun that makes your cheeks burn, that dries your tears, the same color as the mango that makes your lips sticky and your tongue happy.
Green is the color of the leaves that whisper when the wind blows.
And the wind that makes us laugh, that moves our hair, that makes our clothes fly, not even I can see.
See?”

• Ask students to answer this prompt: Explain the concept of color to a person who is visually impaired. Use your different senses.
• You may not say the color to describe something, for example “an apple is red”. You may say, “red is the heat on one’s cheek when they are angry.”
• Refrain from abstract concepts such as “red is strength”. You may use multiple descriptions to describe one color or use multiple colors that share one description.