Sighted Touch Investigation:
First I lead my partner, blindfolded into a 3-storey high covered courtyard, and deliberately sat him on a bench that was 2 inches too high. With his feet dangling, I documented the space:
Then I took him to a bench that was 2 inches too short, with an overgrown woody planting looming from behind.
Blind Folded Touch Investigation:
My partner lead me by the arm to the space. Even through the jacket, I am sensitive to the touch of another human being, especially another man. Even though I know I am safe, I am on alert.
I know that we are in the orchard commons. My 32 year-long develloped internal map of UBC is inescapable. It’s the same 3d model that lives in my dreams. It’s a physical conceptual space.
Drawing from the blindfolded drawing exercise, I tried to use my senses to draw the sensation through form as I would use shade values on paper to draw form, but this time at a scale far beyond the palm of my hand. This ventured into the diagrammatic, and scaled between 1:100 ish and 1:500 ish. This made me wonder what the spatial limits of human sensory perception are…
At Home Exercise:
As I was writing it became clear that sensing the environment included an emotional overlay… and though it presents itself as “reading the marks left by others”, I realized this was actually a way of reading the self I projected into the marks left by others. Much in the way that when we dream of another person, it is not in fact that person entering our dreams, but rather the part of ourselves that this person represents. In this sense, the textured experience through sight is about an extension of self into the environment.
