"Exploration 1: SOCIO-TECHNO INTERFACES"

Hello, my name is Zena Kirby, I recently had the opportunity to welcome a local artist named John Olson into my advanced art history classroom to present some truly profound art education technology. This engagement was not just any typical lecture from a professional to a classroom full of eager students. Instead, this interaction was focused around one student in particular named Clara who is completely blind. How could this be? How would this professional artist be able to connect visually to this student? I had these and many other questions prior to meeting with John, but after my initial meeting with him everything made sense and I was astounded with what he was able to accomplish.

Eight years ago John started a project that allows visually impaired humans to engage visually through feeling, so that feeling becomes seeing and seeing becomes feeling. He prints famous works of art through a 3-D printer so that a visually impaired individual can experience the painting through their sense of touch. He makes portions of each painting hollow and in these spaces he incorporates sensors, which are each connected to a curator narration that speaks about each section that the person is experiencing with their touch during their examination of that piece of art. It took him those eight years to figure out what needed to be done in order to achieve the extensive functions of each painting. I remember seeing an introduction to this project years ago back in 2015, but to see how far the project has come and the amount of time John has invested is fascinating. What an amazing way for something to thoroughly become one with the painting.

This medium is finally becoming available in selective classrooms for visually impaired students. To have the ability to permit my student to fully immerse herself into art exactly like non-visually impaired students made me realize the way technology has progressed and changed over the last ten years. When I received my class roster for this year a couple of months ago, I was over joyed for this new exciting challenge of having to teach my passion of art history to a student who is visually impaired. Fortunately the High School I teach at, North Hunterdon High in Annandale, New Jersey has always been up to date with the latest technology. I have been teaching advanced art history for the past six years at the same school and never have had such a unique and gratifying opportunity previously. However, during my Undergraduate studies in Art Education at The College of New Jersey I was fortunate enough to work with a new 3-D printer.

I’ve attached a video for you to watch, which will show John’s visit to my classroom, illustrate his process, and show exactly how he is changing the world one classroom at a time. The impact of this process has redefined my student’s identity by allowing her to communicate through critique and transcend obstacles that previously precluded her from experiencing art fully and completely. With this technology, visually impaired students can now explain and express their thoughts and reflections of each brushstroke and texture like never before. Feeling Mona Lisa’s nose and learning of who this person might be through feeling, is an amazing experience. The impairment disappears, allowing everyone in this world to fully have an understanding in famous works of art by masters of the past and present.

Having this technology available to the world and especially my classroom has brought about a renewed sense of optimism and with it new possibilities for students like Clara to identify themselves with other artists and students that have no impairment at all. High school students are at a tough age as they define and refine their own identity, confidence such as that which this technology will help foster will have many positive benefits. For me, nothing is better than seeing Clara experience art like feeling Manet’s Olympia and engaging with the extreme vertical tail of the black cat and the velvet curtains that drape in the rear to allow for the background to be distinguished from the nude model in the foreground for the first time.

When art educators and historians like myself who are teaching art history have to incorporate the computer, the general rule is to express the size, the textures, the amount of paint and so forth for each painting. This new technology enhances those abilities allowing for art to come to life three dimensionally not only for visually impaired students but for all students who have only ever experienced art two dimensionally. Not having any impairment myself, it is exhilarating knowing when a new print is arriving for us to feel and experience in a way that a computer screen or a wall mounted canvas could never allow.

This new interactive way of experiencing art with my students in 3D does change the way I lecture on certain works of art. For example, when introducing the famous “Sunflowers” by Vincent Van Gogh, I lecture more on the historical background of who Van Gogh was and allow Clara to run her fingers over the painting with students gathered around her so the class may learn through her interactive experience with that painting. This way, not only are the students receiving lecture from me, it allows them to learn from one of their peers.

The very nature of art history is to give background and contextual information of what was happening during the time when a specific piece of art was created. This is followed by teachings about the artist and finally dissecting the work of art fully to have students completely understand it in its entirety. With all that being said, I feel that John Olson’s process of making art come alive by printing it three-dimensionally and adding sensors really allows for communication technology to take over the need for lecture of some of the art we study. It further allows for another avenue of learning instead of listening to me lecture repeatedly.

References:

-http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/3d-printed-classic-paintings-allow-the-blind-to-see-fine-art-for-the-first-time-a6750186.html

-http://www.iflscience.com/technology/3d-printing-brings-paintings-and-photography-blind-people