The Forest box
Multi-sensory Exhibition
Year
2021
Category
Experience design/ Exhibition deisgn/
Accessible design
Team
Winter Yan
This project was part of the Multi-Sensory Studio at OCAD U, where we aimed to make art more accessible to the disabled community by creating multi-sensory experiences. We picked a piece of art called Blue Reflections, 1962, by the Japanese-Canadian artist Kazuo Nakamura, on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). By adding audio descriptions, tactile objects, and other elements to help the disabled community experience the art in meaningful ways.
Blue Reflections, 1962
Kazuo Nakamura, Canada
The Process
Challenge
In the Blue Reflections artwork, the primary mode of communication was visual, with minimal cues of artifacts. This caused the design team hard to translate it into other sensory expressions. So, we did some brainstorming to explore possibilities. (Here, we only talk about the tactile element. If you would like to know more about how the design team overcame the same challenge in developing audio descriptions, check the journal book below)
The key sentences during our conversation helped me to find the solution, which was
"The image of the water layer is just the reflection of the forest, and it should be flat on the surface. Why did this artist want to use different strokes? "
Concept
With this concept, I came up with 2 questions:
-
How could I replicate these iconic strokes of this paint for visual impairments?
-
How could I preserve this iconic stroke style but, meantime, have the flat surface on this model?
Combining my industrial design background, I decided to use 3D printing skills to answer both questions. The left diagram showed my solution draft- a sandwich-structure haptic painting that retains the iconic stroke style while incorporating a flat surface.
The top layer was only pure epoxy resin to display the sky part.
The middle layer was the 3D printing material with the 3D version of the strokes.
The button layer was a combination of a 3D printing material and epoxy resin; both sides of the 3D printing material contained strokes of water reflection.
Transformation
The first step of this transformation was using photoshop to convert the colorful paint to a monochromatic tone; next, the monochrome images were imported into a 3D program to extract depth data by analyzing the picture's gradients. The last step was printing out those models and pouring the epoxy resin glaze on those parts.
Example of the monochrome pictuers
Process of 2D to 3D
3D painting- the forest part
Journal book included the ideation process from the beginning, prototyping procedure by digital fabrication skills, and personal reflection on this project.