2016-2017
Detail of Braille on Rounded In A Gourd, Elongated In A Pipe | ceramics | 2017
As a consequence of the research from 2013 to 2016, my ceramic sculpture surface was a gathering of slightly raised dots. The colors of these dots were different depending on the intended color glaze combination but they looked unordered at first sight. Thus, I advanced this decorative method by adapting Japanese Braille code as orderly colored glazed-dots. However, a Braille letter is a grid of 6 raised dots (2 dots wide and 3 dots high). Those letter blocks are lined up to build a word. That’s why writing on an 'organic shape' with a complex curved surface is confused. To solve this problem, I bevel the shape’s surface to arrange more flat surfaces for writing Braille on.
Based on my experiences of forming in clay, I must often depend not only on visual ability but also on tactile sensation, for instance to adjust the evenness of the shape’s surface or to check the clay’s wetness. In the end, the artwork wholly becomes a piece of visual art when being exhibited. This interesting transformation has caused me to question how visual-impaired people who must depend entirely on their tactile sensation to “view” the artwork would respond to it.
For sighted people like me, an image retrieved from a visual perception is more attainable than from a tactile perception. It might be explicable that the cognition has been already developed much through ocular information from milieu. The cognition acquired from tactile experiences merely facilitates bodily feelings. On the other hand, working as a volunteer at a kindergarten for visual-impaired and blind children in Kyoto Lighthouse – the Center for Vision Impairment in Kyoto City - from March to August 2016, I did spend time explaining to these kids the purpose of the objects they are grasping by their hands and questioning about. I found it difficult to describe those things as well as their functions in plain words based on my visual experiences.
During my childhood, a term ‘do not touch’ was a rule that I had to constrainedly obey while being frequently surrounded by various types of artworks because of my parents’ business. Despite my comprehension of the ‘hands-off policy’ in visual art thus far, I began seriously concerning myself with tactile sensation when my Dad started losing his eye-sight in recent years. This personal involvement has greatly impacted my awareness of visual against tactile ability.
In this scene, special tours of ‘art appreciation by touching’ in various museums of arts around the world have created a revolution for the visual-impaired people by offering them a chance to transfer the physical feeling of artworks by hand into an emotional insight ‘seen’ by their minds’ eyes. Despite the traditional aesthetic value of fine artworks is the visual appreciation, we have sound art these days, hence, I also question how fanciful an artistic interaction could be attained from tactile experiences within visual aesthetic.