Try This With Your Eyes Closed Zip
George
Museums disable me as a viewer. Everything, from the artworks to the explanatory texts, assumes a subject who uses their visual sense as a primary way of knowing, and I am a nonvisual learner who requires a different frame of reference. Sometimes I will participate in a touch or audio tour, but I feel like these programs are misguided since they offer me an experience that is a derivative of the privileged visual experience of art. Contrary to their purpose, access programs do not make museums more accessible to me; they subjugate the ways in which I learn and govern my participation in contemporary art.
While it allowed me to feel my surroundings without having to get on my hands and knees, the white cane worked more like a surrender flag than the all-seeing eye that I hoped it would be. I would wave it around, thinking that it would reveal a worthwhile path to follow, but instead its reflective white tape would catch the eye of someone who desperately wanted to grab my arm and help me to cross the street. The white cane entrusted a sighted community with my care when all I needed was to be supported in learning through my nonvisual senses. Feeling the social and cultural distance between me and the visual culture that had become so alien, I ordered a bunch of aluminum canes from a manufacturer in Manitoba with the hope that I might unpack the troubling dynamics at play and invent a more suitable system of access.
Stumbling upon the term nonvisual learner allowed me to recognize the value in my process of gathering a sense of place and was the catalyst for a body of work that realizes disability experience as a liberatory space. The first project in this series is Blind Field Shuttle (2010), a perceptual tour in which up to fifty people can walk with me with eyes closed through urban and rural spaces. In an exchange of trust, participants line up behind me, link arms, and agree to shut their eyes while I safely guide them to a destination of my choice. After using their nonvisual senses for a prolonged time, participants begin to recognize looking as one of the many ways to engage with and interpret a place. They realize the opportunities for learning and knowing that become available through the nonvisual senses.
This opening of my experience, and the ways in which I continue to make relationships and approach learning, is the result of having to establish a system of care and support for myself throughout my life. When I set out to investigate a topic, either through experiential research or a creative gesture, I will often invite others to join the process, as I appreciate learning exchanges that are mutual and interdependent. This approach has helped me find a strong community of allies and mentors that I continue to draw energy from and who have been integral to the progression of my thoughts around art and disability.
By taking on projects such as Mobility Device and Blind Field Shuttle, I came to realize my way of being in the world as a mode of orientation that has the potential to uncover entire unseen bodies of knowledge. This inspired me to consider everything from how cultures might have evolved if the origins of communication had centered on the tactile sense to what a typical museum experience for the nonvisual learner might be. I condensed my thinking on these topics into an article for a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly and drafted a list of interventions that would reframe access in the museum as an open creative process. Near the end of the article, I offered my services as an access coordinator to any institution that would have me. The Guggenheim Museum eventually responded to my provocations and invited me to conduct The Touchy Subject (2013), a series of one-on-one, eyes-closed touch tours with visitors. Participants felt their way through the museum, laying their hands on the building itself and objects from the collection for which I had arranged touching privileges. The project proposes a possible end in which the viewer uses their tactile sense as a method of interpretation and the museum serves as a site for sensorial discovery. It is a gesture that destabilizes visual primacy by expanding what is currently known as visual culture.
Have you ever tried to hit a golf ball with your eyes closed? This might seem like a crazy question, but there is great value in trying. I tried this very thing two years ago and I can tell you that the first attempt was anything but successful. I did make contact, but the results were well below my expectations.
Let me set up what happened. I was struggling to make solid contact and no fix was in sight. I was hitting the ball off the heel and then off the toe. There was no consistency in my swing, weight shift, arm movements, or follow through. You name the swing challenge and it would find its way into my game.
So, I was on the range and had set up my practice time as per normal. I started with my 7 iron and started with half swings. As I progressed to full swings nothing worked and I hit many poor shots. I am sure you can sense my frustration.
With nowhere to turn, I placed a tee in the ground and pulled out my driver. At first, I starting swinging it with no intent to hit a ball. I started at the horizontal level like a baseball bat. As I moved my club back and forth, I slowing lowered it until I clipped the top of the tee.
I continued this process for a bit, continuing to clip the top of the tee. Then on a lark, I closed my eyes and the magical clicking sound of the club meeting the tee continue. Thinking this was cool, started to experiment by swinging harder; as I did, the clicking sound disappeared. I missed the tee or sent it flying; my swing was out of its normal tempo and plane. Slowing everything down, I started regaining my swing and the clicking sound was back. Remember, this was with my eyes closed.
Then I decided to try and hit a golf ball off a tee with my eyes closed1. At first, I hit some balls with my eyes open. I did not swing hard and focused on making contact. Now to build on success, I tried hitting a ball with my eyes closed. To my surprise, I was making solid contact. My swing, as long as I tried not to hit too hard, was back and my confidence was slowly starting to return. After about 10 balls, I felt the reason for my poor contact was eroding.
Feeling confident, I pulled out my 7 iron again. After going through the same process, I experienced the same results. Albeit, not as crisp at first because I hit the ground before the ball, but overall, I was very confident with how things were progressing. After a medium bucket of balls, I went back to the proshop and bought another bucket. When I returned to the range, I started my practice from scratch and was elated with the results.
There are many avenues open to improving our golf swing. I happened to stumble on hitting the ball with my eyes closed and now realize that this is nothing new. It was a new concept to me and I am happy to find that I was on the right track all along. Have you ever hit a golf ball with your eyes closed? If so, how did it work for you?
I helped me realize that I was over swinging with my eyes open. By trying to hit the ball with my eyes closed. I relied on muscle memory and force myself to slow my swing down. Then I found my tempo and started to get my only swing back. I know it sounds strange, but it seemed to have worked. Have you ever tried hitting a ball with your eyes closed?
June 21, 2004 at 05:35 PM My friend tess plays with her eyes open, and it's the creepiest thing in the world... She has this totally blank look on her face, it's really scary. I don't really care as long as they sound good, Most of the time I play, my eyes are closed.
June 21, 2004 at 06:02 PM Playing the violin with my eyes closed helps me emote and helps the emotion flow from the image in my mind through my fingers and into the violin, then out of the violin. I take every possible moment to play with my eyes closed, however, it is quite hard when you do not know the piece you are playing totally by memory yet.
June 21, 2004 at 08:06 PM I've noticed when I close my eyes when performing I get and feel more emotion in the piece. BUT PLEASE - DON'T MOVE AROUND WHILE PLAYING/PERFORMING! IT DISTRACTS THE AUDIENCE AND TAKES AWAY THE FEELING OF THE PIECE!!
June 21, 2004 at 08:32 PM I don't think it's great to play with your eyes closed. It definitely doesn't help me. I prefer keeping my eyes open, and I really can't think of many people who play with their eyes closed all the time.
And, here's a reason why you shouldn't do that: one of my old teachers told me a story about a girl who played an entire concerto with her eyes closed, never opening them all the way through. She moved only slightly, but she kept on consistently doing it, and by the time the concerto was over and she opened her eyes, she was facing the back of the stage with her back to the audience. Not a good idea.
June 22, 2004 at 12:13 AM I always play with my eyes open, but it's one of those things where I'm not actually seeing anything, and I get all possessed looking and such. I've been told it's kind of creepy, I guess I should start closing them. Heh. My feeling is that if it sounds good, it's not entirely important how the player looks. As long as they're not doing a Bell interpretation, complete with the Matrix moves.....
June 22, 2004 at 12:19 AM i fully agree with you, i think a degree of movement is actually necesarry to facilitate really balanced bowing. Watch any great violinist and you will see how they shift their weight around to aid with different bowing things. Even violinists we think of as relatively still like heifetz really move quite a bit. I love watching oistrakh move about, what a genius.
June 22, 2004 at 02:31 AM Yup I have that creepy open eyed look going on, too. But the thing is my look is creepy because my eyes get all squinted and when the music is louder I open them more...lol once I played Shostakovich's Eleventh string quartet and one of my friends told me that the look on my face and the music had um...creepy results...:)
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