Scholar wins Fulbright award to study how blind people visualize art

Kes: This sounds so exciting that I may have to plan a trip to NYC to participate in this study.

Posted to the Art Beyond Sight mailing list:

Dr Simon Hayhoe, visiting academic in LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, has won a Fulbright All-Disciplines Scholar Award to study blind and visually impaired people's understanding of paintings in galleries and on the web, as part of a visiting fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The research project, which will start in July 2011, intends to survey and interview English speaking people of all ages who are registered blind and who visit the Metropolitan, in order to discover:

* their strategies for conceptualising paintings
* the problems blind and visually impaired museum visitors encounter whilst visiting the Metropolitan
* whether blind and visually impaired museum visitors 'picture' images
* how blind and visually impaired museum visitors imagine paintings'
subjects and compositions
* what understanding blind and visually impaired museum visitors
have of visual concepts discussed in the composition of paintings,
and in particular: tone, perspective, and colour

The research will contribute to a new book on arts, blindness and technology, and will help to inform arts teachers and curators in the UK
and US, as well as future web developments for people wanting to make paintings accessible to blind and visually impaired people through the web.
For more information on the project, email Dr Hayhoe at s.hayhoe@lse.ac.uk
<http://uk.mc272.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=s.hayhoe@lse.ac.uk>.

The Man Who First Said 'Cyborg' Fifty Years Later

Kes: Very awesome post on Clynes coining of the word cyborg--my own definition sticks pretty close to the original: cyborgs are humans who adopt technology in order to survive and thrive in a harsh environment.

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Alexis Madrigal
SEP 30 2010, 2:49 PM ET |
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/the-man-who-first-said-cyborg-50-years-later/63821/

We're gathered here today to celebrate Manfred Clynes. Fifty years ago, he coined the word "cyborg" to describe an emerging hybrid of man's machines and man himself. The word itself combined cybernetics, the then-emerging discipline of feedback and control, and organism.

The word appeared in an article called "Cyborgs and Space," in the journal Astronautics' September 1960 issue. Just to be precise, here's how the word was introduced:

"For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term 'Cyborg,'" wrote Clynes and his co-author Nathan Kline, both of Rockland State University.

From that catchy description, it might not have been immediately apparent that Cyborg was destined to become the label for a profound myth, hope and fear specific to our era. But Clynes knew from the beginning that the phenomenon he'd identified was deeply important.

I reached him at his home in Sonoma, California, where the 85 year old is working away on perfecting Beethoven's last quartets.

"I expected the word cyborg to survive," Clynes said, although he realizes it has been emptied of some of its original meaning. "It's interesting in the history to see how a word can have a life of its own."

Tim Maly's incredible
project to catalog 50 responses to the word cyborg
http://50cyborgs.tumblr.com/
ends with this post -- and the breadth and depth of the contributions is a testament to the vigor of the word's post-Clynes life. But his original conception is still important, and captures something that I think has been lost in our current definitions.

Here's the thing: For most of us, cyborg ends at the human-machine hybrid. The point of the cyborg is to be a cyborg; it's an end unto itself. But for Clynes, the interface between the organism and the technology was just a means, a way of enlarging the human experience. That knotty first definition? It ran under
this section headline: "Cyborgs -- Frees Man to Explore."
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