Many influential contemporary studies focus on the perception of objects and “real things,” such as perception and visual imagery. They do not examine: - the nature of cultural practice - the motivation for creative and imaginative activity - why art is important to people who are blind This presentation examines two people with visual impairment and their teacher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and their experiences of viewing paintings. Hayhoe, S. (2017) Blind Visitor Experiences at Art Museums. New York: Rowman &amp; Littlefield

Hayhoe, Simon

English

In this presentation I (very briefly) discuss the findings from my 2017 book,Blind Visitor Experiences at Art Museums. In doing so, I address the questionin the title of this presentation through the experiences of visitors with visualimpairment at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and philosophiesof exclusion. Through this process, I argue that there is an extra dimension tounderstanding the visual arts. This dimension can act as a bridge between theawareness of artworks through perception and an understanding of theircontents beyond perceptual knowledge. This bridge between awareness andnonverbal knowledge is described as an ambience that is provided by theenvironment and context of knowing artworks. This ambience is felt inmuseums, galleries, and monuments and is made possible by the visitor’sproximity to artworks.In this presentation, I also argue that ambience is still there when individualperceptions of artworks are lessened or removed altogether by the impairmentof museum visitors.In the process of examining blindness in the museum, this presentation alsoquestions the work of two traditional viewpoints on knowledge about visualart in the museum. The first viewpoint is given by the art historian ErnstGombrich, who wrote on an educational understanding of art and the role ofthe museum. The second viewpoint is given by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,who wrote on the role of art in the museum as a symbol of cultural distinctionand artistic tastes

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        Citation for published version:Hayhoe, S 2020, 'Why Do We Think That People who are Visually Impaired Don’t Want to Know About theVisual Arts?', Paper presented at Normal Now!, Stokholm, Sweden, 29/10/20 - 29/10/20 pp. 6.<https://www.su.se/ike/english/about-us/events/normal-now-art-and-dis-ability-in-a-digital-world-1.517024>Publication date:2020Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordLink to publicationPublisher RightsUnspecifiedUniversity of BathAlternative formatsIf you require this document in an alternative format, please contact:openaccess@bath.ac.ukGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.Download date: 11. May. 202129  OCTOBER,  2020Department of Culture and AestheticsNormal Now!Art and Dis/ability in a Digital WorldWelcome to the international symposiumNormal Now! Art and Dis/ability in a Digital WorldWho counts as normal, and how can we ask this question so that the answersgive us keys to a more inclusive society? Warmly welcome to discuss thistopical question with internationally leading scholars and artists working onthe theme of bodies, technologies and norms – a central theme in a digitalworld where images govern who is included and who is excluded. Thissymposium presents diverse challenges to the image of normality – the imagethat identifies us as normal or not – so that we may confront stereotypesabout what we can do and be.The impetus of the symposium is a commitment to a topic with pressingsocietal relevance: understanding and transforming the ways in which notionsof normality emerge in our cultural expressions and experiences, at a timewhen diversity is increasingly at stake. Art mirrors and drives these processes,as it originates and circulates in a media landscape dependent on codedstandards that pervade global infrastructures as well as our most intimaterelations. For this reason, and many more, we need to consider the conditionsand consequences of how we imagine the normal, how we give theseimaginings power in the form of images – and how such images affecteveryday activities and identities in the 21st century network society.Anchored in a project on blind photographers, the symposium responds to thisneed by sharing new knowledge together with individuals who define agrowing field and by making that knowledge available to a broad audience.The invited speakers form a cross-disciplinary practice and research front,situated predominately in the United Kingdom where the project partiallytakes place. With a range of perspectives and practices – including film, dance,comics, the art museum, textiles, performance and photography – they offer aunique opportunity to connect social, technical and bodily aspects ofnormality at the intersection where art meets science.About the organiserVendela Grundell Gachoud’s work as a researcher, teacher and artist focuseson photography with critical perspectives on seeing and being in a digitalworld. Driven by societal concerns about the integration of technics andaesthetics, she works in international interdisciplinary settings from her baseat Stockholm University (PhD 2016). In addition to teaching in advancededucation, presentations at conferences and workshops, and scholarly artcollaborations, her work features in over thirty exhibitions and twentypublications since 1998 – following a transition from dance that informs anin-depth multisensory approach throughout her work.2 NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDReducing Social Stigma ofBlindness through MediaThis paper outlines the dissemination of my project on blindness, stigma andmedia. The project consists of three feature documentaries portraying theeveryday lives of blind artists (a painter, a musician and a writer),underpinned by publications about disability, media and stereotypes. Thework aims to deconstruct stigma through raising awareness of existingstereotypes and providing examples of alternative representations through myown film practice. In addition, the films intend to raise the self-esteem of blindpeople through awareness of mediated stereotype threats, as well as toempower them to consider art practice as a vehicle for recreation orrehabilitation. The films have five target audiences with different sets of aims:visual impairment groups, clinical workers, researchers, media practitionersand the general public. Each screening is accompanied by audience surveysand focus group discussions. This paper analyses some of the preliminaryaudience research data and evaluates the established partnerships withorganisations from different target audience groups, considering pathways forimpact within the ingroup and the outgroup.Catalin Brylla teaches and researches in the areas of film spectatorship,cognitive media theory, stereotypes, representation, disability and gender. Hispractice-led research aims for a pragmatic understanding of how audio-visualand narrative representation impacts on society’s understanding ofmarginalised social groups.Catalin BryllaLecturer in Film and TV,Bournemouth University.3NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD’Not Your Tick-box!’ – Negotiating theComplex Intersections betweenDisability, Creativity and AcademiaDr Tanvir Bush will talk about her journey from documentary film-maker tosensory photographer, writer and now Research Fellow on the D4D Project(Disability and Community: Dis/enfranchisement, Dis/engagement, Dis/parityand Dissent www.d4d.org.uk. She will explore the impact that coping with adegenerative eye condition (R.P. -retinitis pigmentosa) has had on hercreativity, political engagement and self-awareness. By examining some of theableist tropes she has had to wean herself from and by finding how integral asupportive and activist disabled community can be, she hopes to open adiscussion into ableism versus activism in the Academy and why, post Covid19, we need a new paradigm for inclusive research.Tanvir Bush is a photographer, filmmaker, novelist, researcher in creativewriting. Associate Research Fellow, D4D. Founder and co-chair, Empathy andWriting Research Group; co-founder and co-chair, Disabled Staff Networkand Disability Action Group, Bath Spa University. PhD in Creative Writing,Bath Spa University. Focus: visual impairment, disability, the impact ofcreative writing on well-being and resilience, empathy, accessibility.Tanvir BushPhotographer, filmmaker,novelist, researcher increative writing,Bath Spa University.4 NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDTanvir Bush: Bubblehead (2007). Copyrights courtesy of the artist.5NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDWhy Do We Think That Visually ImpairedDon’t Want to Know About the Visual Arts?In this presentation I (very briefly) discuss the findings from my 2017 book, Blind Visitor Experiences at Art Museums. In doing so, I address the question in the title of this presentation through the experiences of visitors with visual impairment at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and philosophies of exclusion. Through this process, I argue that there is an extra dimension to understanding the visual arts. This dimension can act as a bridge between the awareness of artworks through perception and an understanding of their contents beyond perceptual knowledge. This bridge between awareness and nonverbal knowledge is described as an ambience that is provided by the environment and context of knowing artworks. This ambience is felt in museums, galleries, and monuments and is made possible by the visitor’s proximity to artworks.In this presentation, I also argue that ambience is still there when individual perceptions of artworks are lessened or removed altogether by the impairment of museum visitors.In the process of examining blindness in the museum, this presentation also questions the work of two traditional viewpoints on knowledge about visual art in the museum. The first viewpoint is given by the art historian Ernst Gombrich, who wrote on an educational understanding of art and the role of the museum. The second viewpoint is given by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who wrote on the role of art in the museum as a symbol of cultural distinction and artistic tastes.Simon Hayhoe is a Reader in Education at the University of Bath, UK. He is also a Centre Associate in the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics, an Associate of the Scottish Sensory Centre, University of Edinburgh and Temporary Advisor to the World Health Organisation.Simon HayhoeReader in Education,University of Bath.6 NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDNoemi Lakmaier: Cherophobia (2019). Photo: Doris Antony. Copyrights courtesy of the artist.The Body in RelationIn her live art and performance practice Lakmaier uses her non-normative,disabled, queer, female body as both subject and material and inserts it intoand juxtaposes it against other bodies, spaces and objects of the everyday, thuscreating strange, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory situations.She is also an experienced existential-phenomenological psychotherapist inprivate practice where she works with clients from all walks of life, all gendersand sexual diversities. Her approach to psychotherapy is based in existentialphilosophy engaged with the question of what it means to be human.Her artistic and therapeutic work, as well as her research aim to challenge theCartesian mind-body divide, sees people of fully embodied beings alwaysalready in relation to each other and the world we find ourselves in.In this presentation, Lakmaier will introduce her art practice through the lensof existential phenomenology with reference to the philosophy of MauriceMerleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. She will show images of her work overthe past 15 years and talk the audience through her thinking and itsdevelopment. Like all her work, this presentation too will be an experimentand an exploration.Noemi Lakmaier is an artist with a site-responsive, live and installation-basedpractice. MA, Winchester School of Art. Existential-phenomenological psycho-therapist. Focus: the body, non-normativity, relations between the individualand its surroundings, identity, perception of self and other in contemporarysociety, gaze and voyeurism, everyday materials, psychological implications ofpower, control and insecurity, belonging and otherness.Noemi LakmaierArtist with a site-responsive, live and installation-based practice.  MA,Winchester School of Art.8 NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD‘Learning Aesthetics from People who areVisually Impaired’ (LAPVI): Using VisualResearch Methods to Better Understandthe Language of TouchFunded by a British Academy Small Research Grant I worked closely with MySight Nottinghamshire (a regional charity in the UK) leading a project called‘Learning Aesthetics from People who are Visually Impaired’ (LAPVI). The 24month project started in October 2018 and took a sensory ethnographicapproach, using a multi-method framework, which included filming sensoryethnographic interviews with people who are visually impaired (to discussobjects they particularly appreciated through touch), leading into sensoryworkshops with people who are visually impaired, with textile designstudents, and with non-design students to select, discuss, and then answer abasic questionnaire about which materials each participant considered‘beautiful/appealing’ and/or ‘useful/purposeful’.One area I would particularly like to discuss is the potential for furtherresearch using visual research methods working with people who are visuallyimpaired. This perhaps sounds paradoxical in relation to visual impairmentand blindness but I believe has significant potential through ‘embodiedsimulation’ (Gallese and Guerra, 2020), which is closely related to empathy, toprovide greater insight into learning aesthetics from people who are visuallyimpaired, including learning more about haptic criticism and tactile dialoguethrough what has been termed the ‘language of touch’ (Haug 2016; d’Evie andKleege, 2018).Kevin Hunt is a senior lecturer in Design Culture and PGR Tutor for theSchool of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University. Focus: cross-sensorytransfer between diverse media, sensory engagement within art and design,sensory ethnography and empathic design, alternate ways of seeing/sensing,creative mapping of the lived and material environment.Kevin HuntSenior Lecturer in DesignCulture and PGR Tutor for theSchool of Art & Design,Nottingham Trent University.9NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDDance, Disability and Dichotomies ofNormalisation: Candoco on ‘Strictly’Dance artists with disabilities are frequently subject to media representationsthat transmit myriad ‘messages’ about the work that is being performed.Historic representations of performers with visible disabilities have tended tofocus on the ‘freakery’ of difference, whereby disability is rendered spectacleand the subject of voyeurism. In this context, this presentation will focus onone particular event; UK dance company Candoco’s appearance on atelevisual spectacle; Strictly Come Dancing on November 28 2018. It willexplore how their appearance open questions about temporality, andspecifically crip time (Kafer 2013), how disabled performers have beeninserted into a predominantly non-disabled event, and how that eventsimultaneously reveals and masks the political, ethical and aestheticdimensions of differing temporalities that shape disability performance. Iexplore how their performance is a reminder that diverse and atypical bodiesshould prevent us from essentialising particular ways of moving and beingmoved, thereby avoiding deterministic models of the body, both biological andsocial, which marginalise embodiments that are perceived as unpredictableand unbounded (Rice, 2014).BBC Youtube link of ‘Candoco Strictly pros and Candoco Dance Companyperform to 'Life on Mars'’; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8LkktRbr_E(accessed 21/11/19).Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer, crip. Bloomington; Indiana University Press.Rice, C., Chandler, E., Harrison, E., Liddiard, K. and Ferrari, M., (2015).‘Project Re• Vision: Disability at the edges of representation’. Disability &Society, 30(4), pp.513-527.Sarah Whatley is Professor of Dance and Director of the Centre for DanceResearch at Coventry University. Founding editor of the Journal of Dance andSomatic Practices. PhD in Dance, University of Roehampton. Focus: danceanalysis, disability and inclusive dance, dance and digital technologies,intangible cultural heritage, somatic dance practices and pedagogy.Sarah WhatleyProfessor of Dance andDirector of the Centre forDance Research,Coventry University.10 NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD“Shapereader” and theCase for Tactile ComicsShapereader was specifically designed for users with visual impairment inregards to the production and consumption of tactile comics. Its interface isbuilt on an expanding repertoire of free floating tactile ideograms (tactigrams)intended to provide haptic translations for all the semantic features, theconceptual functions and attributes of a textual expression. Both theoreticaland practice based, the different Shapereader works challenge able-bodyassumptions and exclusionary access within the visual predominance ethos ofgraphic literature and explore the conditions for synthesizing languagethrough embodied notions of materiality and performativity. Shapereadersituates touch in the general sensibility as a conduit for vibrant artisticexploration and demonstrates that comics can address a diverse readership. Itis a speculative, trans-disciplinary project that promotes an embodied, non-retinal, narrative experience with an ongoing outreach plan that since 2015 inHelsinki, has been unfolding in a variety of formats, contexts andcollaborations.In the present paper, the focus is brought on Shapereader’s earlyimplementation and the first systematic attempt to address the sense of touchin the production of comics. Arctic Circle is a tactile novel, presented as amuseum installation including several work-specific communication boardsdesigned both for sighted and visually impaired visitors. I will walk throughsome of the strategies used to translate concepts and elementary semanticfeatures into haptic formations and explore how meaning significationproceeds through clustering and the use of productive chains of signifiers thatultimately propel the text of Arctic Circle to a structural instability. Theresearch was conducted during the artist’s residency at the Onassis Labs inAthens.Ilan ManouachConceptual comics artist andresearcher,Aalto University.11NORMAL NOW! ART AND DIS/ABILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLDIlan Manouach: Shapereader (2014). Copyrights courtesy of the artist.Ilan Manouach is a conceptual comics artist. He currently pursues a PhD atAalto University in Helsinki (adv. Craig Dworkin) where he examines how thecomics industry is undergoing historic mutations in the midst of increasinglyfinancialized, globalized technological affordances of the XXIst century. He ismostly known for being the creator of Shapereader, an embodied system ofcommunication designed for blind and partially sighted readers/makers ofcomics.Cover photo: Sonia Soberats and Mark Andres: Portrait in Paper (2009). Seeing With Photography Collective. Copyrights courtesy of the artists.Department of Culture and Aesthetics

Why Do We Think That People who are Visually Impaired Don’t Want to Know About the Visual Arts?

        Citation for published version:Hayhoe, S 2020, 'Why Do We Think That People who are Visually Impaired Don’t Want to Know About theVisual Arts II?', Paper presented at Creative Sandpit @ the (virtual) American Museum, Bath, UK UnitedKingdom, 9/11/20 - 10/11/20.Publication date:2020Document VersionOther versionLink to publicationPublisher RightsUnspecifiedUniversity of BathAlternative formatsIf you require this document in an alternative format, please contact:openaccess@bath.ac.ukGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.Download date: 17. Nov. 2020Creative Sandpit @ the (virtual) American MuseumSchedule*Monday 9th November Tuesday 10th NovemberVenueGuestsProf Miriam Langer Katherine Hebert Dr Simon HayhoeBrainstorming sessions1st Brainstorming 2nd BrainstormingArtefacts

Why Do We Think That People who are Visually Impaired Don’t Want to Know About the Visual Arts II?

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Why Do We Think That People who are Visually Impaired Don’t Want to Know About the Visual Arts II?

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