[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] photography, books, Flex, dance, sound, sculpter

[Lisa Yayla]

PHOTOGRAPHY FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED
http://jvi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/3/109
from 1991


http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/23/d611231401119.htm
excerpt
. Trejo also conducted a photography workshop in Mexico last December 
for the visually impaired. Hats off to the socially conscious Trejo and 
others of his ilk who have made the Chobi Mela a success.


http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2006/11/636767/
excerpt
Library introduces digital textbooks for the blind

The General Science Library of Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 22 introduced 
three digital textbooks and 240 embossed illustrated books intended for 
visually impaired people.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061030/ENT/610300307/1025/LIFE
Planar Abstractions-Paintings from the Perspective of a Blind Painter, 8 
a.m.-5 p.m. today, Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually 
Impaired, 7000 Hamilton Ave., North College Hill. Exhibit of works by 
Margie Stocker in celebration of Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month closes 
Friday. 513-552-3860.

http://rodeo.cincinnati.com/getlocal/gpstory.aspx?id=100138&sid=102798
Clovernook Exhibits Work of Blind Artist Margie Stocker
*The Enquirer*
Price Hill resident Margie Stocker began painting and working with 
ceramics five years ago—shortly after she became completely blind.
Her work will be on display through Nov. 3 at the Clovernook Center for 
the Blind and Visually Impaired in North College Hill. The show, titled 
“Planar Abstractions--Paintings from the Perspective of a Blind 
Painter,” features 12 of Stocker’s paintings.
“The paintings exhibited in this show are recent explorations of mine,” 
Stocker writes in her artist’s statement. “These paintings are 
completely two-dimensional in nature with only the existence of flat 
spaces. The endeavor of creating something completely two-dimensional 
that I would never actually see was a challenge and a thrill at the same 
time–rather daring for me as a blind artist.”
... Her sculpture titled “Don’t Drink the Water!” won an honorable 
mention at the American Printing House InSights Art Competition last spring.

Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired is located at 7000 
Hamilton Ave. For more information, call 513-552-3860 or visit 
www.clovernook.org.



http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_46529.shtml
excerpt
In particular, Baker wants to help people with low-vision. The research 
team hopes that one day people with visual impairments can benefit from 
assistive mobile devices. Baker suggests that visually impaired people 
undergoing therapy could potentially benefit from virtual mobility 
training by learning to navigate unfamiliar locations from the safety of 
the FLEX system before embarking off into real world environments.


http://www.dailypost.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3707204&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=
excerpt
According to Mrs de Vries, Rentia's saying that her favourite school 
subject is art shows just how far she has come.
"Imagine having a blind person saying their favourite thing is art."

http://www.budapesttimes.hu/index.php?art=2115
excerpt
Since 1991 CandoCo has developed from a weekly workshop to one of the 
world’s leading integrated dance companies, which also includes deaf and 
blind dancers. Whilst touring new works throughout the UK and countries 
such as Macedonia, Brazil and Singapore, teaching has remained integral. 
According to senior dancer Pedro Machado, CandoCo remains one of the few 
companies where the dancers do the teaching, rather than having a 
separate education department. The company aims to introduce integrated 
dance in countries where there have so far been few such possibilities. 
The first workshop in Hungary two years ago was described by critics as 
striking success that demonstrated how great the need for such 
encouragement is.




http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_4625322
San Rafael man directs audio exhibit at the Exploratorium
Rick Polito
Marin Independent Journal
Article Launched:11/08/2006 02:40:17 PM PST

Everything you ever heard about sound didn't end at your ear drums.

If you were listening, you'd know that.

And Thomas Humphrey really wants you to listen. The San Rafael scientist 
is the project director behind the Exploratorium's new "Listen: Making 
Sense of Sound" exhibit, a sprawl of audio experiences designed to help 
visitors understand that hearing is more than just sound waves.

"What we're trying to do is not think about sound but to think about 
listening to sound," Humphrey says.

The audio inclined can play an instrument they can't hear, hear a 
concerto of car horns, play "audio pong" or test their stealth skills 
tiptoeing across a gravel path. The array of some four dozen kiosks and 
sound booths lures visitors into a sensory landscape they take for 
granted. "We think of ourselves as a visual culture, but there is a 
tremendous amount of information that is coming in through our ears," 
Humphrey says.

Hearing is woven into every activity. Conversation isn't just words - 
it's tone of voice. The sound of footsteps helps us navigate a crowd.

Our ears tell us where we are in ways we never stop to notice.

Donning a contraption of funnels and hoses that effectively switches 
ears left to right, Humphrey explains that the interplay between the 
eyes, the ears and the brain is so fundamental we don't think about it 
until its altered by, say, switching ears left to right. "The difference 
between what my eyes see and my ears hear creates this confusion," he 
says, donning the reversed "ears."

Playing with all these audio intersections is what "Listen" is all 
about. The exhibit began as an idea three years ago. Humphrey and the 
Exploratorium brought in an assortment of audio professionals, "expert 
listeners," musicians, physicists to sound out the essentials of 
hearing, and, more importantly, listening.

You might be a better listener than you think.

Working with a Tamalpais High School auto shop teacher, exhibit 
developer Eric Dimond has created an installation that will teach 
visitors to believe in their own hearing, in a rather unexpected way.

Using the sawed-off front end of a Toyota sedan, Dimond and the shop 
team at the Exploratorium have created a tangle of engine trouble that 
can be deciphered by ear. Dimond says mechanics and customers do a lot 
of audio communication that goes way beyond words with people mimicking 
squeaks, buzzes and assorted engine noises. "You are an expert listener 
for your car," he says.

Another station explores the emotions of listening with a sequence of 
people recalling sound memories - a baby's cry, an explosion - and 
recalling how that sound is forever linked to an event. Other stops in 
"Listen" offer chances to manipulate sound and explore the audio world 
experienced by the blind or hear what deaf people hear after receiving a 
cochlear implant.

Visitors can hear how audio enhances a radio play or try their hand at 
eavesdropping on three conversations at once, discovering how the mind 
is able to sort information and tune into specific conversations. "In 
this cacophony of sound, I can focus on one (conversation) because it 
interests me," Thomas says.

Novato sound artist Pamela Winfrey created a jukebox for the exhibit 
that is unlike any other. Every number on the playlist is a song but few 
of them are what the average visitor will call music. The "new music" 
Winfrey has collected - some of it quite old - ranges from a symphony of 
found sounds in a city to songs that use galloping horses and the 
otherworldly intonations of Tuvan throat singing. The Exploratorium 
helps visitors understand that definitions of what is music are 
culturally ingrained. "Your cultural upbringing determines what you 
think is music," she says.

Winfrey says she hopes the jukebox will help visitors follow their ear 
to new music and new sounds they have never heard before. "You realize 
how little you are getting exposed to," she says. "There is tons and 
tons of stuff you are never going to hear."

The accumulation of audio experience is designed to make people think 
about what they hear and really listen. Attentive listening is a rare 
event in modern life. We tune out so much, immersing ourselves in iPod 
experiences to tune out even more. In the course of developing "Listen," 
Humphrey found himself doing just that, stopping occasionally to put his 
conscious mind into the audio interplay of life. "Before working on this 
project, I might have done that with music but I didn't necessarily do 
it with ambient sound in everyday life," Humphrey says.

He noticed sounds he'd always heard but never listened for.

The practice of just listening can change how you hear.

"You hear what you think you hear," Humphrey says. "We're always doing 
it. We just don't somehow acknowledge it."

If people understand how sound affects them and how their brain and 
their background affects how they hear that sound, Humphrey says, they 
might understand themselves and the world around them a little better.

What: "Listen: Making Sense of Sound" at the Exploratorium, Palace of 
Fine Arts in San Francisco

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays

Cost: $13; $10 for college students with ID, seniors and youth 13 to 17; 
$8 for childen 4 to 12; and free for children 3 and younger

Information: www.exploratorium.edu/listen or 674-2893

Special events

Nov. 11 and 12: Scala Meda, an immersive experience of "touch, sound and 
technology" in the Exploratorium's McBean Theater, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 
both days

Nov. 19: A screening of "The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins" at 2 
p.m. in the McBean Theater

Dec. 2: A "Tournament of Noises" in the McBean Theater at 1 p.m. with 
visitors sounding off with odd noises before a panel of judges for 
prizes in funniest, loudest, longest and most surprising

Dec. 2: A screening of "Breath Control: the History of the Human Beat 
Box" at 2 p.m. in the McBean Theater

Dec. 3: Short films on color, movement and sound at 2 p.m. in the McBean 
Theater

Dec. 16 and 17: Sound performances including opera, a hand bell chorus 
and a tuba ensemble

IF YOU LISTEN



http://thesuburban.com/content.jsp?sid=88891220410093966112018814051&ctid=1000001&cnid=1009407
excerpt
Art gives new meaning to 'vision'By Irene Chwalkowski, The Suburban
Sidney Morris, who has low vision, displays some of his sculptures.

We speak of artists as having a vision, and art lovers spend a lot of 
time analyzing the subtleties of light, colour and artistic 
interpretations of an artist’s work. But how often do we give thought to 
the artist’s actual “vision.”

The Montreal Retina Institute held a fundraiser last week featuring the 
work of 34 artists, all of whom are visually impaired or blind.

Event organizer Angela Chen said $25,000 of the proceeds from the 
fundraising vernissage will go to the early intervention program for 
blind children at the Montreal Association for the Blind.

Sidney Morris, 79, took up sculpting seven years ago, because he wanted 
to try something new.

The sculptor, whose vision has been deteriorating steadily as a result 
of diabetic retinopathy, displayed his works at the Montreal Retina 
Institute fundraiser.

Among his creations were a polar bear, a nude woman, a bust of his wife 
Marilyn as a child, a killer whale, a couple, and various abstract pieces.

“I never did any artwork in my life, and all I do, I do mostly by feel,” 
said the former bookkeeper.

The artist’s works were not for sale.

“This is my heritage to my five children and four grandchildren. I have 
to make sure I have enough to go around!” he said.

Morris said each piece took between four and six months to complete.

“You have to look at the piece of stone and see what you can do with 
it,” he said.

“I know my situation,” Morris said. “I understand that I’ll be blind in 
four or five years. I get a sense of elation, of self satisfaction when 
I finish a piece.”

Art lover William Taylor marveled at the skills of painter David Rose.

“To go from taking the pen from the paper, to mixing up the colour and 
then to go back to the right spot on the painting, that’s incredible,” 
said Taylor, who was waiting for his wife and daughters to select and 
buy a painting.

Rose’s works included a very detailed picture of a raccoon and another 
of a wolf. Rose, a member of the Beaconsfield Artists Association, takes 
his own pictures, has them enlarged, studies them using visual aids, and 
then paints using a magnifier.

“Look at the eyes of the wolf — he’s transfixed,” Taylor said. “It’s 
just remarkable.”

Jeannine Choueri, who is legally blind as a result of a car accident, 
said light was very important in her work, and her sunny paintings of 
European village scenes, reflect that approach.

“I went back to who I really am,” said Choueri, regarding her work. “I 
used to draw as a child.”

She said that she now tries to help others to make the same journey — to 
find their passion.

“Art has made me humble,” Choueri wrote in her artist profile. “It has 
sheltered me, it has fed me.”

Sara Peck Colby’s nature series, ripe with bold colours, jump out at the 
viewer.