“In recent research, vision is responsible for 80% of the human perception capacity. Vision is the absolute path to perception, information and communication, as well as to the establishment of ethical and aesthetic values in our society. Said the Philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Things that please when seen are considered beautiful.” This project tries to counter this maxim in some way.
During three months in 2002, we held a series of sensory workshops – experimental laboratories that connect memory and imagination with sound, touch and smell to build a new perception of space – with a group of 15 blind adults, students at the Benjamin Institute Constant, in Rio de Janeiro.
For these workshops we took bottles with everyday smells, as well as cardboard boxes containing, each one a different material and recordings of everyday sounds, from which the participants developed associations of imagination and memory, connecting a certain odor or a certain sound with a place or situation experienced or imagined. Then we asked what they saw. Without using pencil and paper, they made drawings (narratives) that described texture, weight, size, light, time, temperature and even colors and elaborate descriptions of things, always the way they “saw”. In order for these “drawings” to become visible to other people, these descriptions were recorded on video.
If, on the one hand, the lack of vision represents “incapacity” for people in general, on the other, it is often perceived as a more complex sensitivity, a kind of talent for “seeing” things differently. Based on this paradox and the stimulus promoted by the sensory workshops, we developed a series of videos with the participating group, which sought to express a critique of the generalized way in which society perceives and stigmatizes them.
The installation features three sober pieces of furniture, replicas of the map library that has existed for 153 years in the Geography Room of the Benjamin Constant Institute. The original piece of furniture was donated by Dom Pedro II to the Institute while it was still called “Imperial Instituto do Meninos Cegos”. The replica features 245 drawers each containing a high-relief map of a region of Brazil, used by blind people to learn the national geography. Visitors can open the drawers and experience the geography through touch. Inside one of the drawers, an LCD monitor displays videos that document the workshop process at the Benjamin Constant Institute, highlighting a surprising discussion about the mirror.
Behind this map library, you can see a video projection, which presents four different points of view of the same scene: a young blind girl, dressed as the Priestess of the Tarot deck (She who sees life), reads aloud on the stairs from the National Library of Rio de Janeiro, texts in Braille by Homer and Borges, writers who were also blind. Together, the videos question the meanings of what we call blindness and vision.”
Dias and Riedweg
“In recent research, vision is responsible for 80% of the human perception capacity. Vision is the absolute path to perception, information and communication, as well as to the establishment of ethical and aesthetic values in our society. Said the Philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Things that please when seen are considered beautiful.” This project tries to counter this maxim in some way.
During three months in 2002, we held a series of sensory workshops – experimental laboratories that connect memory and imagination with sound, touch and smell to build a new perception of space – with a group of 15 blind adults, students at the Benjamin Institute Constant, in Rio de Janeiro.
For these workshops we took bottles with everyday smells, as well as cardboard boxes containing, each one a different material and recordings of everyday sounds, from which the participants developed associations of imagination and memory, connecting a certain odor or a certain sound with a place or situation experienced or imagined. Then we asked what they saw. Without using pencil and paper, they made drawings (narratives) that described texture, weight, size, light, time, temperature and even colors and elaborate descriptions of things, always the way they “saw”. In order for these “drawings” to become visible to other people, these descriptions were recorded on video.
If, on the one hand, the lack of vision represents “incapacity” for people in general, on the other, it is often perceived as a more complex sensitivity, a kind of talent for “seeing” things differently. Based on this paradox and the stimulus promoted by the sensory workshops, we developed a series of videos with the participating group, which sought to express a critique of the generalized way in which society perceives and stigmatizes them.
The installation features three sober pieces of furniture, replicas of the map library that has existed for 153 years in the Geography Room of the Benjamin Constant Institute. The original piece of furniture was donated by Dom Pedro II to the Institute while it was still called “Imperial Instituto do Meninos Cegos”. The replica features 245 drawers each containing a high-relief map of a region of Brazil, used by blind people to learn the national geography. Visitors can open the drawers and experience the geography through touch. Inside one of the drawers, an LCD monitor displays videos that document the workshop process at the Benjamin Constant Institute, highlighting a surprising discussion about the mirror.
Behind this map library, you can see a video projection, which presents four different points of view of the same scene: a young blind girl, dressed as the Priestess of the Tarot deck (She who sees life), reads aloud on the stairs from the National Library of Rio de Janeiro, texts in Braille by Homer and Borges, writers who were also blind. Together, the videos question the meanings of what we call blindness and vision.”
Dias and Riedweg