Sensory Translation

While I have been dedicating most of my effort lately to fund-raising for PLEASE TOUCH THE ARTWORK, a large part of the Project for Art Accessibility is also the research I am doing into the resources available at art institutions across the nation.  Through my research I have discovered diverse methods innovative museum educators like Lisa (her guest post is below), are experimenting with to make art accessible to the visually impaired.  


One theme that has emerged in these experimental techniques is that of sensory translation.  By this I mean that the accessibility is achieved by attempting to translate a visual experience into an audio or tactile experience.  Visual description tours, touch tours, and tactile diagrams are some of the tools being implemented at museums around the country that operate on this principle of sensory translation.

While some museums have started to experiment with ways to translate the visual experience into other senses in order to provide options for the visually impaired, PLEASE TOUCH THE ARTWORK aims to exhibit artwork that becomes accessible by its multi-sensory nature, with no sensory translation necessary. The exhibit does not imitate the visual experience in other forms, rather, it replaces it with equally meaningful, non-visual interactions. This is what truly sets it apart from any current effort to increase the accessibility of art to the visually impaired, and what makes it an engaging experience for everyone.  The multi-sensory artwork can be experienced by all the way it was intended to, with no filtering or translating.

A great example of this kind of artwork is the non-visual performance that was given by local artist Fereshteh Toosi at the Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery.  "Viewers" placed their hand through a hole in a screen that physically separated them the artist.  In a 'blind' interaction, the artist presented the 'viewer' with a surprising tactile experience, by massaging people's hands with olive oil and using other food items as props such as mung beans, a canteloupe, and spaghetti. At the end, everyone got an olive or two slipped onto the tips of their fingers.  Toosi's performance addresses critical themes of contemporary art such as viewer/artist interaction, the space of the body in performance art, and the blind trust inherent in the institutional consumption of art objects, in addition to being fully and equally accessible to all.  Both the blind and the sighted can relate to, understand and analyze this artwork with no sensory translation.