We have become a visual society, televisions, tablets, posters, books, views and most of the things that are entertaining us are visuals. In fact we have a very visual language. Our stories delineate tales. We describe how everything looks like before anything else. We ask how does he/she/it look like. We value the look of everything enough to make do with how they look. Therefor we have sophisticated ways of narrating our visions. We can easily tell how something looks enough to get the exact visual in others mind. the better the narrator, the better the painting in mind. Luckily My partner in this project Kelt was a great narrator.
It all started when we decided to put the tie to cover our eyes before we arrive to the sex museum. We wanted to get used to describe what we were seeing. Kelt was the first volunteer to get his eyes tied. While tying his eyes people started staring at us, looking at us as if we were creepy but because there it is New York they just went back to their own business. When the tying was done we started walking really slowly. So slow that I bet no body has ever walked that slow on 5th avenue before! However Kelt was not feeling comfortable with walking fast even though he was sure that I was guiding him well and he was not going to hit anything. I didn’t had to guide him to move for the people coming trough us since they were already moving away from us. maybe because they knew how hard it was to guide someone who could not see or because they didn’t wanted to take the risk of a blind folded guy crashing to them. Hardest parts were crosswalks where we j walking was no longer safe and steps timing of the steps were extremely hard to describe to a person who could understand speed.
After a while we changed the roles. He tied my eyes and we started walking. I felt like I was not going straight. I was constantly scared of crushing to something. Even noise appeared much more vivid and they became my primary guide. I heard a lady asking Kelt weather she could take a picture of us. Kelt calmly told her she could and I was stressed to know that some woman who I have no first impression of was taking my photograph. As we walked on, I started to relax. I was calmly walking and letting Kelt guide me. I even started to walk fast after some time. While we were on a crosswalk Kelt told me to run and I asked is it not green light and he sad no cars are coming! I thought I was going to die even though there was no noise of any car. I took the tie of in a rush and I my heart was beating twice as fast. When I took the tie of what I saw was Kelt laughing at me instead of any cars coming towards me. I was both happy and angry. Happy to be alive but angry to have fought I was going to die. I once again understood the importance of sight and not trusting anyone.
When we got to the Sex Museum we were amused by the huge gift shop of such a small place and the variety of strange and funny objects existed there.We bought our tickets and went in. This time it was first my turn to tie tie my eyes so I did. Not knowing anything inside made me really curious about the work there. Kelt was giggling and saying I don’t know how to describe these at first but he finally found one to describe. I stood right in front of it while Kelt was describing it. He told me there was 3 postcards verticaly placed on a black rectangle frame. the first one is vertical but the downer two are horizontal. On the top one there is a woman who is laying on a table and a man standing in front of her. they are facing each other. One of the feet of the woman is on the ground while the other one is on the shoulder of the man. There is a bottle of wine behind them on the table. They are in a small room. In the middle postcard it is not the image side. It is a classic postcard look with lines and the square to put the stamp. the bottom image is two nude girls on a black couch in a room that has a small window in the very right. Light is coming trough the window. One of the girl is sitting backwards and the other is sidewards to face her. they both have short dark hair and extra couple of pounds. The woman who is sitting sidewards is holding a bottle of wine that is facing the back of the other woman.
I visualized all that he said about this pice. He kept on describing to the slightest detail. The more he talked image settled down more. In the end when I opened my eyes. I felt like I already have seen it. It came as no surprise except from some patterns and some shapes he didn’t describe. Even though it took 15 minutes to know the image I would know in 30 seconds If i could se, the process was amazing. If he never described it, I would never think about how the woman hair curves were moving or how the couch looked soft.
We walked most of the museum and went to a room full of tents that had different art works inside them. After seeing one of them we decided to tie Kelt’s eyes there. We went in to one of the tents. It was quite dark inside but I was still much more privileged than Kelt who had no sight. The room was full of torsos and faces in 3-D that spotted to give the feeling of skin when touched. I described him what we had all over us and made him touch the faces and torsos after while telling him with part of the human body he was touching. I t took him so long to understand when I was not telling him but with even the slightest clue he found it right away. When he opened his eyes. He already knew how the place looked like from my descriptions and his sense of touching.That was enough lack of sight for a day for both of us. We had so much fun but it was also stressing and scary.
Our visions connect us to the world. Even thought it is only one of our senses we can not feel safe when it is gone. We could go through days and weeks without smelling, most of us do every winter, we could find our way without touching or hearing but without seeing,everything becomes a obstacle. Even with someone describing you where to walk or what is the art work infant of you. You are never hundred percent sure.
