Category: Art

My vision, my identity

smackenz/ / Art, Emotion, Haptic touch, Hearing, Multisensory, Philosophical Approach, Posts, Vision

The case of S.B. and later research have helped answer Molyneux’s question, posed to Locke, about whether a man born blind and now made to see can recognise a cube and a sphere by vision alone. Molyneux’s question was a pure thought experiment, aimed at exploring the structure of sensory knowledge. And over the years, it has been turned around and nuanced by both philosophers and scientists. (See our blog for the philosophical approach and the scientific approach.)

“We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.” (Attributed to Helen Keller.)

But are people in general able to take up William Molyneux’s challenge and imagine life from a different sensory perspective? And if so, do they reach the same conclusion as Helen Keller – that true understanding goes beyond what the “blind and seeing” can or cannot do?

This time, I have invited Sidsel Størmer to share her lived experiences of how everyday beliefs have shaped her sense of self and confidence in relying on other senses rather than vision. And her journey towards reshaping her identity – both for herself and in the eyes of others. Sidsel holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, has worked as an analyst at The Government Pension Fund Global (also known as The Norwegian Oil Fund), and is currently pursuing a degree in Law at the University of Oslo. Her eyesight has been limited for as long as she remembers: No vision in her right eye and tunnel vision in her left, with less than 20% of the normal visual field.

I wasn’t blind

Growing up I was never blind. Yes, I had a white cane, and yes, early on I had braille lessons, but I was never blind. One of the first phrases I learnt – after my name – was to tell people that I did not see very well. I could see the sun, I could see pictures in art galleries, I could see my outfit in the morning when I got dressed. I could see enough to read in print – sometimes – and very slowly. To my parents and teachers, this made me “not blind”.

I soon learnt to embody this vision of myself. To me, being not blind was very important, because the people I saw around me and the people I admired were not blind. The people I had met who were blind seemed – to me – strange, scary and fundamentally different from me. As I grew up, I learnt that “the blind” were unable to work, dressed badly, and did not care about architecture, art, design or fashion – things which all mattered deeply to me. But: that was okay – I wasn’t blind.

This attitude carried me into adulthood. While I needed many adjustments during my undergraduate degree, I still took notes by hand, even while needing everything to be recorded for me. I colour coded my notes, as I had always done, in order to get as much as possible out of the pinprick of vision I had. I went clubbing, not knowing who I was going with or where we were. “Blind people don’t go clubbing” I thought, terrified, as I tried to find out where I was.

As I entered the workforce, my blindness caught up with me. I had landed a job in Oslo, where I had grown up, and was going to be living independently for the first time. I continued as I had always done, getting the most out of my vision and pretending like I could see more than I actually could.

Slowly, I came to realise how unsustainable this approach was. My psychologist diagnosed me with burnout two years into working full time. In the year and a half that followed, I slowly began to realise how little I could see and that I had to do something about how I navigated the world. I learnt to use a screenreader, and took time off from work to improve my slow braille and re-learn mobility and orientation skills. I started learning to echolocate, to use my fingers and ears to read instead of my eyes. This journey continues.

Now I choose both – I am blind, and I am sighted

I still love art, fashion and design. I am still deeply invested in the visual aspects of my life. But: I have also come to realise that my other senses sometimes work better than my eyes.

Yet, I have come to realise that I have the privilege of choice. I can choose which senses I want to use on different occasions. When using my recently acquired national gallery membership in London, my guide dog leads me through the halls, but I look at the paintings. I sit in the a nearby cafe reading The Times in print, before reading the braille sign on the bathroom door, I still like to know where I am and to be able to decide “ladies, not men”.

These actions are not contradictory to me. They embody the choice to use different senses for different things.

The thought of blindness is probably scarier to the sighted than it is to the blind. For me, this fear led me to live in a strange in-between state I was neither sighted nor compensating as well as my peers who are “fully blind”. While enjoying the privilege of using all my senses to the full, I wish I had learnt to do so sooner. To be proud of my blindness and my sight. To love art while reading with my fingers and orienting with my ears.

If you know a child who is blind and have some vision, teach them to be proud of their blindness and their sight. Teach them to read with their fingers, orient with the ears and see things that matter to them with their eyes. They will thank you.

See our blog for Activities; especially 91-93.

Some suggestions for further listening, reading, and watching:

How the internal senses may connect sight and sound

smackenz/ / Art, Crossmodal correspondences, Emotion, Hearing, Interoception, Movement, Posts, Proprioception, Vestibular, Vision

Certain information is associated across the senses. Some of these crossmodal associations are shared by most people. For example, in the Bouba/Kiki-effect, more than 95% of people around the world match the spoken word “Bouba” with a rounded shape and the spoken word “Kiki” with an angular shape. Other crossmodal associations are subjective; while some people see colours when hearing music, others read braille in colour. And it seems these subjective associations between the external senses may be closely related to the internal senses. (See our blog for How anxious individuals perceive odours, Emotional perceptions associated with sound environments, and Growing into one’s own body.)

I have invited Dr Marina Iosifian, School of Divinity, University of St. Andrews to write this post about crossmodal associations between visual paintings and sounds. Dr Iosifian has contributed to several scientific papers and public outreach events on how the internal senses might create crossmodal associations between vision and hearing.

Have you ever noticed that certain colours seem to “fit” certain sounds? For example, dark red might feel like it matches a low, deep voice, while pink feels more like a high, light voice. These kinds of connections between different senses—such as sight and hearing—are called cross-modal associations. Researchers study them to understand how our brain brings together information from different senses to form a unified picture of the world, even though each sense works separately (our eyes only see, our ears only hear).

Why do these associations happen? One possible explanation involves emotion. For instance, dark red and a low voice might both feel connected to sadness, while pink and a high voice might both be linked to happiness or playfulness.

But emotions aren’t the only reason. Another explanation has to do with the body’s movements and sensations. For example, when people are asked to name two round tables—one large and one small—they often call the large one “mal” and the small one “mil.” This may be because of how our mouths move when saying these sounds: “mal” requires a wider, more open mouth shape, similar to something large, while “mil” involves smaller, tighter movements, like something small.

Girl in garden scene with a cat and a dog
The Garden Walk, by Emile Friant. Retrieved from WIKIART

In our study, we explored these bodily mechanisms—the ways our physical sensations and actions might shape how we connect sights and sounds—to better understand how cross-modal associations arise.

To explore these associations, we collected a set of sounds produced by the human body, such as the sound of someone drinking. We called these embodied sounds. To provide a contrast, we also included sounds that cannot be produced by the human body, such as electronic or synthesized sounds, which we called synthetic sounds.

Because we were interested in how sounds are connected with visual experiences, we also gathered a collection of images. These included two types of paintings: figurative paintings, which show recognizable subjects like people or objects (eg, The Garden Walk by Emile Friant), and abstract paintings, which do not represent specific things (eg, Sky above clouds by Georgia O’Keefe). We then paired the paintings with the sounds and asked our participants a simple question: “Does this sound and this painting fit together?”

Glowing horizon with fluffy white clouds below
Sky above clouds, by Georgia O’Keefe. Retrieved from Custom Prints, Georgia O’Keefe Museum

We found that embodied sounds were more often associated with figurative paintings, while synthetic sounds were more often linked with abstract paintings. This suggests that the body—and the way we experience sensations physically—plays an important role in how people connect what they see with what they hear.

Why might these associations occur? One possible explanation lies in the difference between concrete and abstract ways of thinking. Figurative paintings depict familiar, tangible things—people, objects, and scenes—so they may evoke more concrete thinking. Abstract paintings, on the other hand, invite a more imaginative or distant mindset.

Interestingly, previous research has shown that people tend to associate abstract art with more distant situations—whether in time or space—compared to figurative art. This idea is related to the psychological concept of psychological distance, where concrete things feel close to us and abstract things feel farther away. Our results suggest that this distinction between the concrete and the abstract may also shape how we connect sights and sounds.

Some researchers believe that psychological distance is one of the main concepts which can help us understand how the mind works. They developed the Construal Level Theory or CLT – which explains how our mental distance from things – called psychological distance – affect the way we think about them. Psychological distance can take many forms: something can feel distant in time (happening in the future or past), in space (far away), in social distance (involving people unlike us), or in hypotheticality (something uncertain or imaginary). It is suggested that people think about things that feel close to them—such as events happening soon or nearby—in a more concrete and detailed way. In contrast, things that feel distant in time or space, are understood in a more abstract and general way.

If abstract thinking is linked to distant, less embodied experiences, and concrete thinking to close, bodily ones, then the way we perceive and connect sounds and images may depend on how “distant” or “close” they feel to us psychologically. In other words, our sense of distance—both mental and sensory—may shape how we integrate what we see and hear.

Thus, the concept of abstraction offers valuable insight into how people interpret and understand the world around them. Art, in particular, provides a powerful way to explore these processes. Recent research suggests that engaging with beauty in art can encourage people to think in more abstract ways, making art an especially meaningful tool for studying perception and the connections between our senses.

See our blog for Activities; especially 85-87.

Some suggestions for further reading, listening, and watching:

Applying Bodily Sensation Maps to Art-Elicited Emotions

From Perception to Pleasure

From Sensory to Movement

How Does Your Body React to Art?

How Music Changes Your Mind

Processing Internal Sensory Messages

See What Your Brain Does When You Look at Art