Exploring Animation and Virtual Reality to Represent the Perceptual-Experiences of Art-Practitioners with Sight-Loss

OVERVIEW

Whilst the sighted generally imagine people with blindness as living in darkness, only a small percentage of people have total vision loss and many visually impaired persons have some perception of light, form, movement, and shape. As mental images can be generated without sight, the ability to see is not necessary for the creation of visual art. This practice-based PhD project explores animation and virtual reality to represent the creative practice of artists with sight-loss. Using virtual worlds to enable sighted users to understand another person’s perceptual-experiences, this inductive research adopts an interpretive approach incorporating the strength of case-study to compare abstract concepts of blindness to actual lived experiences. The methodology will apply qualitative techniques, to understand the methods artists with sight-loss use and how visual impairment shapes their practice. Responses will be evaluated, by analysing the data to create an immersive animation, viewed, and experienced in virtual reality.

Keywords:

• virtual reality
• animation
• visual impairment
• blindness
• perceptual representation
• sensory

Acknowledgement

Andrea McSwan began her PhD at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) in September 2018. She is supervised by Fraser Bruce, and Dr. Caroline Erolin.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea McSwan

Andrea McSwan is a PhD researcher with a background in film set design and 3D animation. She is currently undertaking a PhD to explore animation and virtual reality to represent the perceptual experiences of art-practitioners with sight-loss. Her research interests lie in animation, visual effects, virtual reality, and film. Twitter: @andrea_mcswan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-mcswan/