Circle squared: an interactive environment

Circle Squared by David Lyons and Raz Ullah, brings together large-scale projected motion graphics and a dynamic soundscape to create a playful, digitally interactive artwork. The sounds are drawn from heightened and abstracted recordings of the printmaking process, and these – along with the changing CMYK colour palette – are triggered by audience interactions with sensors and projectors within the installation.

Double blind test series

Braille is a communication tool in decline, in America by 80% since 1950, and in the UK to the extent that only 1% of blind people are now thought to read Braille.1, 2 There are a variety of causal factors, including the phasing out of Braille instruction due to the educational mainstreaming of blind children and the resistance to learning Braille by those who lose sight later in life.3Braille is a writing system of raised dots that allows blind people to read and write tactilely. Each Braille character comprises a cell of six potentially raised dots, two dots across and three dots down. It is designed only to communicate the message and does not convey the tonality provided by visual fonts.However, in his book Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin, observes that: “Braille is interesting and beautiful, as abstract visual and tactile decoration, intriguing and indecipherable to the nonreader ” and continues; “…braille could be decorative for sighted people.”4I assert that the increasing abandonment of Braille frees it from its restrictive constraints, opening it to exploration and experimentation, and that this may result in Braille becoming dynamic expression for the sighted, as well as the partially sighted and blind.Printmaking is well suited for this exploration. Printmaking processes and techniques can result in prints aesthetically compelling to both senses of sight and touch. Established approaches, such as flocking, varnishes, puff-ink, embossing and die cut, combined with experiments in new techniques in laser cutting and 3D printing, create visually and texturally vibrant prints.In this paper I will detail my systematic investigation of sensually expressive printmaking concentrating on the issues surrounding Braille as a printmaking design element paying particular attention to the approaches and techniques used not only in producing its visual style but to those techniques used to keep it integrally tactile.

Testing times

The paper describes the experimental genesis of a series of prints that examines how sight influences perception, designed to engage an audience of varying visual abilities.