This panel is a rough representation of a human hand, which I chose because one's own hand
is one of the most clearly recognizable objects. A person with new sight, however, can
not recognize her own hand, except to realize that her hand is in front of her and must
correspond to the light shape that she sees. It is the tool which the blind person has
used to experience the world thus far, but it is just as vaguely recognizable as anything
else.
Another, even more problematic object is the mirror, which a formerly blind person at
first finds to be useless. For one, they are unable to distinguish different faces, often
assuming that all people must look alike (though they clearly recognize that faces
<i>feel</i> different). Furthermore, they cannot tell the difference between an image of
a person, a reflection, or an actual person; the same goes for most other objects.
Context clues like shadows are not yet utilized by the person.
Here, obviously, the shattered mirrors are rendered unusable by the barrier of the
turbine, and are interspersed with pictures of people. A person might very well look at a
display such as this and assume that one or all of the other faces they see is their own
face.
The freely-swinging lights, reflected off of the halogen above, are meant to add a false
sense of motion to an otherwise neutral backdrop; the viewer would almost certainly
interpret these glints of light, rather than the monochromatic canvas, to be tangible
objects.
I chose to paint the canvas in such basic tones, incidentally, because color is one of the
few aspects of vision which people can quickly train themselves to learn. But even so,
this new skill can prove to be more a problem than a benefit; for instance, a patient
might see an orange cat and then assume that every other orange thing that he saw (e.g., a
pumpkin) was also a cat.
Blind persons do not form 'mental pictures' of objects as most people do; one girl who had
handled dogs at many times was nevertheless surprised to learn its actual structure (four
legs, tail opposite the head) upon seeing one. This means that perspective is a
mind-boggling concept, and most astonishingly, that the person assumes that similarly
structured things must look the same.
Here, we have loosely-defined sketches of a tree, a person, and a candlestick. Most
people would be able to feel by touch how completely different these objects are, but
blind people, having no concept of sight, will many times assume that they should
look the same because of their similar structure. They are surprised to learn how
different appearances can be, that surfaces rather than general form can have the greater
visual impact. These sketches are an homage to this distorted perception.
Yet another allusion to the problems of depth perception and space, the spheres hanging in
front of the viewer fade into the circles drawn on the page. It is an effect which fools
no one accustomed to sight but would most certainly confound a person with new sight. As
I have pointed out above, perspective would simply convey a larger circle instead of a
closer one, and shadows might as well be taken for an empty space as a shaded surface.
