An ordinary day following the same routine. Suddenly, I can’t see. If before image was everything, now it is nothing! So now “sounds” have smell and “wind” has flavor. All senses become confused and Earth stops! What’s happening? Is it the end of the world?
The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, in his book “Essay about blindness” (1995) which became a movie in 2010, turned everything into a wild and hostile world with a blindness epidemic.
We grow up and we are raised to value what’s visual. Colors, clothes and make-up seem to have more value than thoughts. So, suddenly, all these concepts of life are dead. We can’t see anymore, so checkered t-shirts with flowered pants and yellow shoes are ok. If it is hot, we can walk nude on the street. After all, who will see? Now, what matters is the essence and the script.
Essay about Blindness
Ok… But in the Woody Allen’s movie, “Directing in the dark” (2002), the main character “Val Waxman” is directing a movie of his own with a nonsense plot. Waxman discovered that he was blind in the middle of the film making and hid this information in order to not lose the movie direction. He compared himself to Beethoven, the deaf composer.
However, it’s necessary much more to really feel image and recognize differences in colors without sight, just with touch, and Allen knew that. So, everybody realized that the director was blind, the film became weird, and the always funny boy, Woody Allen, made the story into a Hollywood satire.
After all, how many films don’t seem directed by blind directors, or better, as Allen could say, by “cinematically illiterate”?
Woody Allen in “Directing in the dark”
The characters created by Saramago and Woody Allen were afraid of being blind and would do everything to see. But something completely different happened with Val Kilmer in the movie “At the first sight” (1998), a movie based on a real story. Kilmer’s character, however, just discovered that he preferred the darkness after having seen the sunlight. Blind since his childhood, he had the opportunity to see for the first time after years. This is possible because he got a congenital cataract that had developed from early years, and thanks to medical research, it is now possible to treat and cure this disease.
Therefore, imagine people in their 30s or 40s, who practically have never seen in their lives, having the opportunity of see. Something so desired and considered a real divine miracle for all! Isn’t it?
Well… No! And I could call it “a matter of point of view”. Life for those blind people became chaotic! For those who were always blind, the light cuts their eyes, the colors disturb, the movement unbalances.
At first sight
Working with graphic design makes me value image and the sense of sight. Everything has become visual and colors essential! Seeing, associated to this eminently visual-centric society in which we live, is the most highly-stimulated sense we have.
Most of the time, I forget that I can work and explore the others senses. Due to the “Compensation theory”, the visual disability can enhance the capacity of other senses, mainly hearing and touch. Therefore, being able to see or becoming blind forces us to reinvent our life.
With this, I propose a challenge: Design with no regard to sight, thus exploring the other 4 senses. Or, as a friend of mine would say: explore the organoleptic sensations… Have you ever thought about this before? After all, we see with eyes, but not solely with them!
Window of the soul