LOVE IS BLIND
A participatory installation of interactive large scale Braille for the Wilsonville Festival of Arts
Ben Stagl & Scott Wayne Indiana, June 2019

This installation aimed to raise awareness around issues of accessibility for the blind by inviting all people to play around with Braille at a large scale. Braille is often included in public spaces and on objects such as ATMs, elevator buttons, bathroom signs, etc. However, sighted people are rarely invited to actually interact with Braille. This experience was a memorable, intimate, first hand interaction with large scale Braille, and will stick with kids and people of all ages as they go forward into daily life, hopefully with deepened capacities for empathy and awareness.

Braille letters on the lawn spelled, “love is blind,” but participants–with the use of Braille alphabets on cards–were invited to spell their names, words, brief phrases, etc. Throughout each day, the discs were reset to spell, “love is blind.”

Also on site was a gamelike tabletop version designed for people to interact with.



 

Special thanks to the Wilsonville Festival of the Arts for the invitation to present Braille-based work.
Also many thanks to Ian & Deborah Reeves for hanging out with the art throughout the duration of the festival, photos, and to Ian for producing the wooden boards.
And thank you to Marilyn and Cary Buchanan for helping to setup and take down the booth.