I like to touch
things.
I’ve been running away from museum guards
since I was a student.
(Nowill 1995,
76)
I
started to work on the tactile art project when I was a finalist in the Visual
Arts Department, Keele University. It
occurred to me that the very concept of visual arts presupposes that its
audiences are sighted people. Most
visual art works produced are based on the idea of being seen. Although some interactive art works involve
‘touching’, they are essentially for the sighted people. In this sense, visual arts have an
exclusionist tendency.
Of
course, it may be felt that there is nothing that can be done about it. However, ‘visual’ does not necessarily have
to mean ‘seen by the eyes’. For
example, when you hear a sound, you may visualise an image in your mind. Therefore, in collaboration with some
visually-handicapped persons, I developed some ideas and did some experiment on
how it is possible to experience ‘visual arts’ without seeing them.
The
first series of my tactile sculpture was titled Rosetta Stone Series, which contains three sculptures.
Rosetta Stone I has a text saying
‘Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes’, which was quoted from Panchatantra. This text was written on Hardwick stone in the Braille, Moon, and
alphabet.
Rosetta Stone II has a subtitle, for museums and art galleries. It is a glass piece with a text saying
‘Please do not touch’ in the Braille, Moon, and alphabet.
Rosetta Stone III (silence) has some
light bulbs installed inside of the stone ‑ we cannot see the light from
the outside. However, when you touch
it, you can feel the warmth of the light ‑ you can ‘see’ the light with
your hands.
After
the Rosetta Stone Series, I have been
working on several small-scale tactile sculptures which represent an object
that you cannot touch, e.g. wind, sea, and night dreams. This project will be exhibited in Potteries
Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, in May 2001.
In this
project, I place much stress on ‘touch’, which, as Milligan (Magee and Milligan
1995) and Brenson (1995) point out, is neglected to a great extent in our society
(see also Doyle 1997). By emphasising
the importance of ‘touch’, I am trying to criticise the dominant policy of the
museums and art galleries, which normally do not allow their audience to touch
their exhibits (Doyle 1997).
Moreover, by working on this project, I wish to make a statement that
the blind do know a lot about the world even though they do not see it (see
Milligan and Magee 1995). The blind can
experience the world via touch, hearing, smell, and so on. And sometimes they know more than the
sighted.
And, I
hope my project will play some part in making the sighted understand the blind,
and vice versa, just as the real Rosetta Stone made us decipher an alien
language. This is because, by trying to
understand each other, the blind and the sighted can move towards creating one
community where both parties have equal rights, as Milligan suggests (Magee and
Milligan 1995; see also Doyle 1997).
Indeed, if we do not
give the blind an equal right because of their lack of sight, this is a clear
case of discrimination against the blind.
Milligan (Magee and Milligan 1995) calls this discrimination
‘visionism’, by which he means an exaggeration of the differences between the
sighted and the blind, with a one‑sided emphasis on the advantages or superiorities
of the sighted over the blind.
Visionism is evil, just as racism, sexism, and nationalism. Therefore, although the practical usefulness
of seeing and its power to provide an aesthetic pleasure cannot be
underestimated, the blind should be included in the audience of visual
arts. By making my work tactile, I hope
that my audience will realise that it is possible for the blind to understand
‘visual arts’, and, that we therefore should make visual arts more open and
accessible.