Have you ever wondered how the world appears in a blind person’s mind?
People often have misconceptions about blind people and how they perceive the world. One common belief is that because they can’t see, their imaginations are limited. To challenge this notion, we collaborated for a project with Kézzelfogható Art Foundation that supports visually impaired people with art therapies to maintain their social integration.
All journeys start somewhere
Art can be a bridge between blind and sighted people. AI opened a new platform for art and creativity, and it created a particularly interesting opportunity: to create visual content by words.
The Blindjourney
We introduced artificial intelligence (Midjourney) as a new tool to seven artists who have been blind since birth. This provided them the opportunity to create images for the first time in their lives by their words and impressions. Using AI, they depicted significant venues from their lives based on their experiences, perceptions, memories, and emotions. Seven artworks were created, forming a unique Blindjourney experience in Budapest: first, the artworks were showcased on citylights, transforming the city into an open space gallery.
To amplify their impact, we placed the artworks at the exact venues that inspired them, integrating the surroundings into the experience. This allowed people to instantly discover another point of view and brought them closer to blind individuals. Each citylight presented the artwork alongside a moving, personal quote and the prompts from the artist.
The journey continued
Citylight artworks invited viewers to an interactive charity exhibition, where the Blindjourney artworks were complemented with immersive sounds recorded on-site, and tactile artworks of each venue (created by the same artists), allowing visitors to experience the complete ‘Blindjourney’ in one place, at the heart of the city. The opening was a fundraising event where artworks could be adopted by donation. During the opening, one of our blind artists created an 8th artwork about the exhibition venue live in front of the audience. The project’s website includes basic tips on how to approach and help blind people in everyday situations, and also functions as a micro-donation platform.
A behind the scenes note: the artists also created tactile artworks of the AI-generated images, and the results revealing intriguing parallels between the two.
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