This video, Cube with the Sound of its Own Printing, is a 2014 update on Robert Morris’s Box with the Sound of its Own Making. I’m posting this work in response to our day of sensory pairings, as we ideated beyond sight.
Day 4: It’s Thursday night at ITP. Georgia Krantz (art historian, accessibility advocate) is challenging the Lab to design an experience for the blind and low vision community.
Consider the full spectrum of our audience! she says. It ranges from the seeing, to those with partial sight, with deep blindness, and with or without visual memories. “We see through our brains…” not merely through our eyes. As designers, what can we do to help our audience “know” with the mind, pulling from other senses?
Splitting up to design, Team HiFi/LoFi gets to work:
- “Architecture sound vibration. Echo. Clicks.”
- “Air currents. Jets of hot and cold, carving up the space like a sculpture. …like an Air Jacuzzi!”
- “Run your fingers along the strip of Braille, and as your fingers move, a step-by-step animation moves in sync…with audio!” —>> I’m loving this one, and how it’s equally expansive for two types of visitors. Those who can’t access Braille get a chance to experience its content and rhythm. And those who do get added dimensionality from the animation’s background audio, which keeps time with them as they read.
- “Use wearable speakers with beat sync to create a location-aware dance party for people with low sight” – like silent disco turned inside-out.
Our group goes two ways. For HiFi, the goal is to marry every sensory experience in the room with at least two others – ideally ready for a full spectrum of audience sight, hearing, and mobility.
an immersive room that equally favors sight, touch, and sound. The diff. Textured colored floors w parabolic speakers pic.twitter.com/exhVifDgEt
— caroline sinders (@carolinesinders) July 10, 2015
Georgia’s response: Great. She recommends a bit of untextured neutral space on the floor between sections, to help clarify location for people relying on touch.
LoFi decides to deconstruct the artists’ process in a gallery space – using the sounds, smells, and materials that accompany work creation as the centerpiece for an interactive exhibit.
Georgia’s response: Great idea. She hears from blind and low vision collaborators that Museum audio tours focus too exclusively on descriptions of the final object – they want to know how it was made, with what materials. What actions were taken in its creation?
Which comes back to Cube with the Sound of its Own Printing!