Braille from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.
I whipped up the above video as some sort of starting point for my exploration/experimentation process. To put it together I first filmed a group of flashing lights in the distance. I liked how the colours merged together to form a flashing/blurred circle – this felt appropriate as a single cell in the Braille code. After duplicating, rescaling and transforming, I ended up with the six single cells allowing me to construct the alphabet. Unfortunately, the cells are too far apart, but the idea is pretty straightforward – besides the fact that blind people can’t actually see… I suppose what I’m going for is the idea that people who are visually impaired and not necessarily blind have this blurred perception of the world, and having an understanding of Braille helps them to navigate through it. Even for me (I am short sighted), things around me often look blurred without my glasses, particularly lights in the distance.
I want to keep building on this exploration by adding words relating to sight, vision, eyes, etc… For the 26 letters of the alphabet there will be a word beginning with each letter and a snippet of video relating to that word. This could be difficult finding shots to distinguish between similar words, but the challenge will inevitably be of good learning value.
– Gabe