The Blind Urban Subject, Public Art, Providence, R.I.

Dear blind and visually impaired friends and those that use VoiceOver, for whatever reason: Thank you so much for visiting this website of “The Blind Urban Subject,” a public art work I developed with friends at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design. I myself am legally blind, born with ocular albinism. The exhibit itself is not accessible to the blind, given its nature, and I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, sighted folks need to understand our daily lives. But on the other hand, what’s it all worth if other blind people can’t experience this art in the same way as sighted people? Hell, I made the damn project, and I can’t even use it! This is just the beginning of my long journey ahead for people to understand the blind. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride. Yours always, Daniel.

The TL;DR.

The Blind Urban Subject is an interactive public art and research project that seeks to inspire mutual understanding of the blind and visually impaired in urban life. The work’s construction encourages interaction with four simulations of America’s most common eye conditions through the mechanical transformation of a binocular tower viewer.

The Story.

Daniel, the project's director, was born legally blind with Ocular Albinism. This means he is very light sensitive, is unable to see details or depth, and has rapid uncontrollable eye movements. Last Fall, while unsure of his courses at Brown, he "shopped" a course taught by Professor Lauren Yapp called The City: An Introduction to Urban Studies. Immediately enthralled, he is now an Urban Studies concentrator and Teaching Assistant ofThe City. A unit from this course called "The Urban Subject" analyzes "[one's] sense of self produced by the experience of dwelling in and moving through the city." He started analyzing his own urban environment — the Thayer Street corridor — with a critical viewpoint on his own urban experience. The first step to building better, more inclusive cities is to make the blind urban experience relatable and to build mutual understanding with groups who experience (urban) life differently than most people. That's where the Tower Viewer comes into play.

Daniel brought the idea to creative visionary and engineering student Zoe Goldemberg, who assembled a Brown-RISD industrial design and engineering team of geniuses Gresh Chapman, Hudson Hale, and Yutaka Tomokiyo to make this vision a reality. Rishika Kartik, a disability advocate, visual artist, and co-founder of Blind@Brown, has been instrumental in elevating this project across the national blind community and local Providence community.

We leased the Viewer from the one and only Tower Optical Co. in Norwalk, Conn. in May 2024. We took the summer months to think critically about the project and obtain proper permitting from the City of Providence Department of Public Works; Zoe and her team came together to bring it to reality in September 2024. Along the way, we have been grateful for the many hands who have played pivotal roles in this project's development, of whom there are too many to list.

Why Urban Life?

Cities are complex systems of humanity. They are both the heart of culture and progress while simultaneously acting as pitfalls of marginalization. According to the World Bank, almost 70% of all humans will live in an urban city by the year 2050. With great freedom and individualism in America's cities arises concern for how this impacts blind people. Will people look up from their phones? Will cars think consciously about your movement before making a right-hand turn? Will city governments finally fix that pothole or repair those dilapidated truncated domes? Will designers, planners, and architects help build inclusive infrastructure? For all these questions, the answers hang in the balance. But one truth is fundamental: Blind Americans have every right to the city. Our work strives to help people understand that.