blindness

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with blindness

Art Documentary

A Powerful Documentary Captures the Life and Work of Artist Yvonne Shortt Who is Legally Blind

Retinitis pigmentosa is a rare genetic disease that breaks down the retina and causes vision loss as it progresses. Like many with the condition, Yvonne Shortt was diagnosed as a child when she realized that her sight was different from those in her family when they wandered into dark movie theaters or looked at the stars at night, and she struggled to do the same.

Now legally blind as an adult, Shortt cultivates a visual art practice that involves shaping figurative busts from clay, moss, grasses, and other natural materials. “I make a face of a little girl, and I make that face for hours until I feel her breathing. I thought, if I can’t see, will I have that connection with it?” she says of experiencing her vision slowly diminish. “But there’s the tactility, the wetness of the clay, how it dries. I realized that I can still make objects even with my eyes closed.”

Filmmaker James Robinson dives into Shortt’s story in one part of the documentary series Adapt-Ability, produced by The New York Times. The film chronicles how Shortt experienced the progression of the disease and offers a simulation of what the world looks like from her body as she gradually loses clarity and her peripheral vision. Robinson explains:

Unlike the stereotype of the blind living in a lightless world, Ms. Shortt, like most other legally blind people, lives a nuanced existence between those who see well and those who can’t see a thing… She can see some things some of the time, depending on various factors, including the amount of ambient light, her distance from the object and the object’s location in her field of vision.

Although the condition has necessitated life adjustments like the use of a white cane, Shortt has come to understand her limitations as a benefit to her art, her other senses, and her ability to find compassion for those around her. (via Laughing Squid)

 

Art Design

Unseen Art: 3D Printing Classical Paintings for the Blind

“You can look but you can’t touch.” That’s one of the first rules of museums, which house priceless works of art. But what about the community of blind and visually impaired who use their sense of touch to experience the world? The Unseen Art Project is an initiative to make art more accessible and inclusive by using 3D-printing technology to create replicas of masterpieces that can be touched ’till your heart is content.

“There are many people in the world who have heard of classical artworks their whole lives but are unable to see them,” says Marc Dillon, a Helsinki-based designer who wants to make works like the Mona Lisa touchable. In order to make his vision a reality, Dillon has recently established a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. He hopes to raise enough money to create an online repository where artists can contribute 3D data of artworks and anyone with a 3D printer will be able to print it out.

With the price of 3D printers drastically coming down in recent years, Dillon’s project has the potential to “touch” a large population of people who have an interest in art but have never been able see it. As the campaign points out, “It would be a revolution to get blind people going to art galleries, people hate them because there is nothing there to touch!” (via The Creators Project)