This weekend we went up to Central Park for a picnic and decided to give the model sailboats a try. We got boat 73 which was already in the water. There was a light wind so we set out to tack across the Conservatory Water using only two little joystick controls and our limited combined knowledge of sailing. I was surprised by a lot of things. Firstly, the boat only moves when there’s wind. Now everyone knows that about a sailboat, but somehow as soon as the wind dies down it does nothing to quell the overwhelming urge to wag the rudder like a tail, hoping to see some movement out in the water. Secondly, it’s very tough to judge the angle of the boat from the shore. Everything has to be done visually since the wind we feel on the shore is not the same as in the middle of the pond. Also all other sensory feedback is missing. The proprioceptive feedback from the angle or speed of the boat that one would feel aboard is entirely absent. In a lot of ways this reminded me of many multimedia exhibits. That sense of watching something move in three dimensions, but being totally divorced from a certain richness of sensation was quite familiar.
Eventually, we got the hang catching the wind and steering the boat in reverse when it was heading towards us. However I never gained the feeling of sailing or lost the uncomfortableness reminiscent of computer “3D” multimedia. Maybe the three dimensions of space aren’t all we need to really have an authentic experience. Maybe that can only come from the five dimensions of sensation.