vision – Richard Gallon

Restricted vision goggles

Following on from discussion of presenting the objects in an environment that emphasises the sound over the visual, I revisited the snow goggles I had seen on one of my visits to the British Museum.

The Menil exhibit in Houston tries to re-create the limitless feeling of the Arctic where the horizon is hard to determine and it’s easy to get disoriented by the blinding snow. For centuries, different Inuit cultures have used “snow goggles” to help them see in such a bright white environment. The narrow slits constrict the wearer’s field of vision and reduce light to the optic nerve. Similar goggles are still used today.

https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/18-upside-down-arctic-realities

Research Workshop – Critical Thinking

A couple of sketches for the final ‘We Are Here’ presentation, with contributions from the Critical Thinking workshop group. The concept of presenting the objects in a dark space would help enhance the audio content.

Also useful for the final show piece is this Scientific American article about the brain compensating for the loss of one sense by enhancing others.

Super Powers for the Blind and Deaf.
The brain rewires itself to boost the remaining senses. If one sense is lost, the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused — they get rewired and put to work processing other senses. Brain imaging studies show the visual cortex in the blind is taken over by other senses, such as hearing or touch

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf/

This blog documents the development of the interactive audio project, We Are Here.

We Are Here is about the time capsule that was returned to Earth by an alien civilisation in response to these original Voyager records. It is a ‘message in a bottle’ from an extraterrestrial life form. Who sent it? And why?

A series of interactive sculptures (Space Rocks) using sound to tell the story of their planet of origin. They are a message sent back to Earth in response to the launch of the Voyager Golden Record.

The final installation uses Arduino microcontrollers connected by LoRa (Long Range) digital wireless data communication, placed in specially-designed 3D printed shells.