In visible web

in visible

"After all, isn't it true that the realities of the inner life seem like marvels only because we live so far away from them?"

Jacques Lusseyran

intro

In May ‘16, I undertook the self-experiment to shroud my eyes for a prolonged period, leaving me sightless. I resolved to do it for eight days, but stopped on the seventh night.

If it was possible to put an experience into a little box that keeps it fully authentic and wholistically intact for others to relive, it would be my method of choice. But that is wishful thinking, so instead this book takes its place.

The experiment is documented from a subjective perspective and is to be taken as such. It’s not proper research, but anecdotal throughout, knowingly unprofessional.

Any other way would miss the point.

My interest in blindness started with braille.

In August last year a friend showed me her gorgeous self-made childrens book with impregnated illustrations and braille narration.

After memorizing a few single letters, I tried to recognize them with closed eyes. At that time I had the naive intention to train and develop my senses deliberately and decided to use braille as a starting point for the sense of touch.

Although nothing became of these supertrained senses, I did learn to read braille letter by letter. It was practice in patience, and became a soothing way of meditation.

Consciousness reduced to the tactile sensations on the finger surface. Before delving into the topic of blindness, darkness had already touched me in a few particular ways.

They do not bear literal links to being blind, but are meaningful to me personally.

So not long after, an intimate connection to blindness arose.

It became something that influenced my everyday thoughts and ideas. I read books and articles, watched videos, and was generally more attentive when the topic came up.

But after all, there is an impassable gap between intellectual understanding and the actual experience. One may read a hundred books about the taste of a mango, yet lack essential knowledge compared to the person who has tasted a mango.

By no means was my self-experiment a simulation of blindness, nor is this booklet supposed to give you a proper picture of a blind persons everyday life. There's a spectrum of visual impairment. The closest this comes to is certain aspects and challenges of a newly blind.

There’s many great accounts and resources about blindness out there, this is not one of them (I highly recommend Jaques Lusseyran’s autobiography “And There Was Light”).

Besides blindness, I approached this undertaking from another point of interest: the nature of consciousness and perception.

As humans, we are habitual creatures. We get used to a status quo, adapt and take things for granted.

Four years ago I started to occasionally remove my glasses in public transport, or at parties. Unable to focus on objects in the blurred distance, my perception balances out, as the eyes are not anymore endlessly wandering from one point to another. The field of view retreats into peripherality and allows room for the other senses. This habit shed a different light on my nearsightedness, giving me the option of a different way of perceiving.

By taking away vision completely my aim was to shake and loosen up the perceptual core.

I prepared over the course of a month and a half, but tried not to dilute the pureness of the actual experience with rigid expectations.

The way I went about it is definitely not optimal, but it is what happened.

I have documented the experiment mainly through a journal, written during the week when I could not see. Using my thumb to mark the current line while writing and tape to remember the position when closed, I was able to write legibly (for me). It felt interesting to write without seeing. When I tried to write willfully, focusing on it, it still happened by itself. Much is done unconsciously, I’m just not aware of it.

A disposable camera accompanied me during the blind week. It was strange to see the pictures developed. When I took them, my perception of the scene was different. For composition I depended on estimation and intuition.

And last but not least: the documentation of the whole process - this book.

*

anecdotes

Like many people, as a child I was afraid of the dark. Our hallway light worked strangely and didn’t always turn on, so when I passed through I would get this onimous sensation of dark tentacles reaching out, tickling my back from the unlit room behind me.

It gave me shivers. Often I’d pick up the pace considerably to arrive in a lit room soonest possible. Back then I was certain it would be impossible to live alone.

“Don’t grown-ups tremble in fear every night?”, I wondered.

My mother lives extremely sparingly, to the point that she doesn’t turn on the light when it can be avoided in order to reduce the electricity bill. I would tell her to turn it on, feeling sorry that she spends so much time in the dark. Despite opposing it, I grew up adopting this habit, in the toilet, the washroom and so on.

A different encounter with darkness were my experiences in sensory deprivation tanks.

They cut off light and sound, and are filled with salty water, which is kept at body temperature.

The water keeps you afloat and soon the body is forgotten. From the moment I heard about it, curiousity was awakened. When I stumbled upon an affordable place in Vienna, I promptly made an appointment. Floating in there felt like a rendezvous with my mind.

One realization, amongst others, was that our brain has a limited capacity, yet our mode of perception is malleable in this framework.

Since early childhood I’ve suffered from depression. The recent, most devastating relapse culminated last winter in a long period of self-isolation. I was living in a tiny room with no direct window to the outside.

It became my snail shell. A few months later, I moved back home, driven by irrational social anxiety of having to face my flatmates in this state. Six months I hardly left the house, confronted by an inner darkness that threatened to consume me.

Depression is an invisible illness - there are sparse outward signs on the body. It took me twenty years to realize I have it.

I’m lucky to have found my way out and grateful for all the people who helped me along.

Accepting my depression turned it into a source of passion and energy, and taught precious insights. Making friends with the seemingly dark and negative was perhaps the most important step I’ve taken.

Perfection lies in the imperfect.

I try to explore the void, the place of potential.

The silence between words, the intervall between music notes, the perception without senses, seeing without seeing.

*

The idea for this experiment came up naturally following my interest in blindness, but it had only been a faint wisp floating in my head. Something I might do sometime in the future, maybe.

End of march this year I attended a Vipassana meditation course. A curious thing with meditation is that, when the first layer of mental noise retracts, stauncher thoughts keep returning - those that occupy one at a deeper level.

At the time I found myself at a creative crossroad. Besides this experiment I wanted to produce a computer game, and further develop a light object. Having no clue which one to focus on, these thoughts kept looping, each time clearing up a bit. The intention for the blind experiment manifested during a particularly intense meditation session. Perhaps it was the fact that I spent ten hours a day with closed eyes in meditation, perhaps it was meant to be from the start. After that session these thoughts of indecisiveness ceased to molest me.

As time went on, the blind week became more and more real. With every step I took, it concretized further. There were many things to figure out.

How will I know the time?

What possibilities are there to engage myself?

Are there health concerns?

Will my intentions be misinterpreted?

In which ways can I document the experience?

So on and so forth.

I searched for necessary gear and picked those that made sense to aquire for the short span.

For example, getting a braille screenreader, which transcribes digital information, would be out of my budget.

To my luck I found a cheaply priced second hand white cane and started memorizing the route from my flat to the nearby Vienna river, practicing cane travel technique with a friend watching over me. Walking straight with closed eyes is surprisingly hard. I visited the museum at the blind institute and talked to people there.

My therapist guides seminars in the dark and gave me his accounts as to the emotional effects of prolonged darkness. Just by mere everyday awareness moving about Vienna I noticed things I had been unconscious of before, like the boxes at crossings that indicate traffic light signals. One night, on the way home, I noticed they don’t make any sound during late hours.

What a surprise when it turned out the button on the bottom side vibrates when it’s green.

A week and half prior to the experiment I tested for unforeseeable difficulties and emotional dangers, covering my eyes for ten hours. Though the blindfold didn’t work so well, it already gave me a taste of what stood before.

And so the day came to flick off the light.

*

8

7

14

1

3

6

2 4 5 11

materials

15

13

10 9 12

1»occlusion mask • 2»journal • 3»single-use camera • 4»talking watch 5»cigarettes • 6»phone • 7»#'s in braille • 8»slate and stylus • 9»white cane 10»high visibility armband • 11»bandages and alcohol sponge • 12»CD-player 13»music and short stories • 14»braille books • 15»clay and tactile materials

during

may 7 15:19 - today is the day‌ my blind period will start with the sunset. most everything is prepared, some more cleaning up to do. i can’t help, but feel stressed. despite all the planning, i feel entirely unprepared and overwhelmed. my mind is a chaos, thoughts of insecurity whirling to and fro. about five more hours of sight. i will not romanticize it, but looking at the sky does seem different, timeless and more beautiful.

20:44 - been without vision for half an hour. the first step of this journey. i can’t find a word for this feeling.. of at the beginning of a long path, unsure what lies ahead, slightly anxious, yet there is some kind of passion for the future. already managed to cause two mishaps in this short time: spilled water and a broken bowl. my sphere of perception is minimized. hope it gets better as i get used to the state. even though my roommate Marcel is audible, singing in his room, the underlying silence is overpowering all other sounds.

23:40 - the reality of my intention is settling. banalities turn into accomplishments. i just made a sandwich!

DAY 1 may 8 10:45 - my dream last night was quite strange. i was getting nervous because i could see, even though my eyes were covered by blindfolds. “the whole experiment is fucked!�, i thought. it seems i was and am still a bit too adamant to be puristic in my vision occlusion. in the morning i noticed a very subtle change of brightness looking towards the window. i was severely disappointed.

w

w

12:22 - i underestimated the visual aspect of smoking. without seeing the cigarette, the gesture and the exhalation, it’s really just a distorted breath. and the sensation itself isn’t all that great.

17:11 - just went out for the first time. the soundscape is entirely different. soft traffic sounds, chirping birds, flowing water. main difference is the scale though. far away sounds, or cars swooshing from one audible end to another, then vanishing.

20:56 - the blackness i see reveals many fine nuances on second glance. it is not flat, but endless in depth and decorated with subtle noise throughout. the occasional luminescent shape passes by - increasing in frequency when i pay attention to my occluded vision. it’s beautiful, really. reminds me of northern lights. some more complex forms appear as well, like a sort of spiral, similar to the water surface, when some small pebble drops on it. i’ve got a slight headache… or rather my head feels heavy. shifting senses is demanding mind work.

i’m getting better at sensing others movements. my friends like to sneak by for fun, or silently come next to me to check if i notice. be it inaudible sounds, the wind of movement or something other, i’ve started intuitively knowing when someone moved near me and i anticipate this improving in the next days. somehow the water while washing hands has a bit of a slimy feel to it. generally, sound, touch, smell and taste started feeling more tangible, more immediate and direct. i’m not so anxious about the remainder of my sightless time anymore. if my schedule allows it, i might prolong it for a few days even.

DAY2 may 9 10:30 - yet another stressful experiment-related dream. my brother is guiding me to therapy today and i got lost in the city subway somehow and was forced to open my eyes.

Cheng (my brother) also forgot about the appointment, which further added to the stress

11:47 - paranoia is triggered easily. my codependence and helplessness in some aspects leaves me unstable. when Cheng didn’t pick up his phone when i wanted to remind him, and my mum said he left for work early morning, i got extremely agitated. my roommate Evi helped find his work number & he assured me not to have forgotten.

13:10 - just listened to the H.G. Wells short story “country of the blind”, which takes up really one of the major realizations when pondering blindness, or other shifts of sense perception. how relative and subjectively self-centered our mode of perceiving is. in the story a mountaineer falls down a valley while venturing and discovers a lost tribe of blind people. he tries hard to show his superiority as a sighted individual, in an attempt to become the “king of the blind” by demonstrating feats exclusive to someone with vision. he fails horrendously, the blind people convinced that he is stupid, of lower mental and physical evolution. if every human on earth was blind, is the sighted person then disabled? to be blind, is it like being a fish out of non-existent water?

17:51 - i’m alone, sitting by the canal, waiting for my friend Ari to pick me up. there’s bikers, walkers, a construction site and the soft echo of driving cars. in therapy we found out that i’m actually quite stressed subconsciously. that it’s perhaps just… i don’t even know. it’s difficult it’s hard to grasp my perception, as if it’s blurred and sharp simultaneously. with the concrete visual stimuli gone, i lack a fundament for reality. the sphere of perception isn’t just reduced, but shifted altogether. don’t misunderstand, i’m enjoying it, with its ups and downs. and i’m curious how i’ll feel in a few days. but yeah… it’s hard to put it in words. in many conversations i sense this expectation from the other to hear summarized about the reality of this, but i’m unable to fullfill this wish.

it is a nice change of surroundings however, even though i’m more nervous in public. the warm wind caressing my skin. ari is here!

01:25 - spending seven hours outside was intense. my mind needs rest now.

DAY3 may 10 8:45 - entering waking life is smooth, gradual, a change in awareness. normally the intervening clue is the opening eyes: i don't remember the moment i wake up.

15 23 - not much happening today. time flows slowly, incessantly. the pace of day-to-day life has decreased, externally and internally. being able to only do one thing at a time puts a break to my usual speed of life. trying to relax, having some success, but only some. i'll do a body scan relaxation after this entry. my eyes have been itchy, i hope it goes away, though i doubt it. sound and touch are less defined than sight. seeing a car drive by will produce a clearer image than hearing it. and this kind of is the same for most other things. though my mind is still conceptualizing, it is not abstracting the immediate reality. i listened to a short story ironic to my current state. "Nightfall" by Asimov, in which a planet with six suns and everlasting sunlight is covered in darkness every 2049 years through a solar eclipse and the people go mad. will i go mad?

18:30 - just woke up from an unintended nap. i feel demotivated‌ as if there's no point‌ writing this is probably a meager attempt to find it again, for naught so far. five more days to go. taking off the blindfold is out of the question. aren't i dirty, with the knowledge i'll see again on sunday, while blind people don't have a choice in the matter.

23:51 - a happy get together was what i needed. we had dinner in a group of six in my room, a good number to keep up with, and a good location for me to move about confidently. yesterday evening i ended up in a group of nine or so of whom i didn't know the majority and out in the open by the canal. it was harder to open up then and relax. this evening with familiar people and familiar place helped to forget about the experiment and

feel and interact normally. i'm getting used to occluded vision, moving and doing things more intuitively, with less effort. the non-visual mental map is solidifying, inherent knowledge of the surroundings and location of objects, together with momentous sounds and tactile clues forming a rough knowing of the constellation. when i think back it is half the visual imagined projection of the scene and part mental map of knowing that i remember.

DAY4 may 11 13:07 - i failed in starting the day with momentum. been lying and sitting in bed, lacking any kind of productiveness. i will meditate now to clear my head of withering fog.

20:08 - almost half-time.. it's surreal. the evenings are joyful when there's company, during the day i'm still kinda stressed. could be the isolation, or something else.

??:?? - it's the middle of the night and two friends are sleeping over, so i will not press the talking clock. i'm usually very much comfortable keeping my own company and have no problem spending extended periods of time by myself, with myself, but now it seems i need to be with people at least in the evening to stay emotionally balanced. staying alone through the evening would throw me way off. the itching is getting worse, i think wearing the blindfold 24/7 isn't too good for the sensitive skin around the eyes. it's raining and the birds started singing. i'll go back to sleep now.

DAY5 may 12 13:51 - i attended a 10-day vipassana meditation course a month and a half ago, during which only afterwards by contrast i realized how deep into the unconscious my mind went, as it went very gradually deeper. i wonder if it will happen in a similar fashion now, that after taking off the blindfolds i will realize the gravity of the perception i'm so used to already. for sure i'll have gained invaluable appreciation for eyesight, and also for the other senses, and hopefully some experiential insight as to the relative sphere of our everyday perception. all in all this undertaking with its hardships and challenges has, i think, been a success so far. i've already lived situations i had only hoped for prior to initiation. i'm eternally grateful for supportive friends without whom these days would have been much duller and depressive. now i can say that eight days was a well chosen number to immerse myself and have enough time to be in the immersed state.

18:11 - it's quite a novel experience conversing without body language underlining the speech. it seems i had connected looks, gestures and voices so much so, that even meeting old friends, their sound of the voices seem a tad alien at first. i went for a walk alone today. it was unnerving since the rain had changed the feel of some ground textures from the practice sessions, but some friendly pedestrians offered help when i needed it (and when i didn't as well). despite the stress of leaving the flat, the fresh air helped fight the feeling of isolation.

23:28 - what has my blind period taught me so far? i find it difficult to give clear answers right now‌ perhaps the lessons learned need more time to sink in. or maybe the questions should be phrased differently and ask for the effect, the literal changes i'll have gone through. to this i can list a couple answers as of now. slowing down of the mind, practice in patience, appreciation for

little things, acceptance of dependency, neatness, malleability of perception, pushing limits of mine, concentration on single task‌ i'll stop this list as it seems quite silly. tonight i went to a concert with many exotic instruments and singing styles. it took place in a tiny church. when we entered, the concert had already begun and as i sat down i had no idea as to the scale of the space and the amount of people present. sitting there, it felt as if i was alone, listening. then the piece ended and the applause came and i was engulfed by clapping noise. for me the room was endless at that time, but actually the church was more like a big living room. what a sensual experience to listen to the organism of sound morph right there.

DAY6 may 13 9:49 - our subjective conscious, unconscious and perceptive experiences are ultimately ineffable. we are prisoners of association, chained to inacurrate interpretation. and so i question the value of this journal, which in the end will be but a mere cheese that is more holes than not. alone in the writing down many minute details are gobbled up, left out. after all, a spotlight only illuminates a bordered area. still, a better way in transmitting this experience purely and raw didn't come to me. it is in its essence an internal experience, so video and picture would only condone prejudiced imagination. expressing it in some riddled art piece would go against my goal of accessibility, and i lack the skills to do so anyway. and so this journal has been my focus, the main tool to streamline the current of thoughts as directly as possible. the writing will be better some days, worse on others, paralleling the state of mind at that time.

i've realized that sculpting in a tactile manner will yield aleatoric visual results and vice versa. i've only spent little time using clay, but intend to explore at least a bit further. now i think i'm so used to blindness that i speculate the influences on art-making will be authentically effortless.

18:52 - an interesting notion is that the perception of the surrounding and the atmosphere is flexible in the same place. for example, my.. whoops lost track.

DAY7 may 14 9:?? - it's often said that you don't start appreciating something until it is lost. that is definitely true here. i thought i appreciated my eyes, but i took them for granted and now i recognize their preciousness on a whole other level. even so, sight is not what i look forward to most, but autonomy.

as a fairly emancipated character, i underestimated the impact dependency would have on me. i wonder how much of the change in personality will remain, if i will have become a more patient and appreciative person or if these traits will just bounce back with the inevitable getting used to vision. i guess it'll be already great if traces leave a lasting effect. i have not become a completely new person, but i haven't stayed the same neither.

17:38 - it's strange how even in a place filled with people, i ultimately feel like i'm alone. usually when you are sitting or standing, the tendency is to, when waiting and there's nothing else to do, look around, jump from object to object, because there's always so much to look at. blinded, i fall quickly into meditation, for example when waiting for someone to come back on the street.

perceiving only the nearest objects by touch, and most of the time almost nothing at all, my body awareness is heightened - the body is always sensible. i wonder if its the same for a blind person without any background in meditation. the sphere of perception is on one hand minimalized, on the other blurred, intuitive. less solid save for the most acute signals. in this short time it is wishful thinking to expect the development of the other senses, refinement is not possible in this time, but adjustment, calibration did happen.

final day may 15 3:00 - holy shit. two words i said at least

twenty times (that's exaggerated) in the first minutes, or rather the first short glances after taking off the folds. my left eye started hurting tonight, so i decided to stop a day sooner if eyedrops wouldn't help. it hit, or is still hitting me (i have my eyes mostly closed at the moment) like a brick. how do i even begin to describe how it is to see again? it's not even full on - the light is off and my room is dark, at least for others. the conception of space is so different. my body awareness isn't aligned yet with the visual information when i look down at myself. i layed in bed, glancing every once in a while around. broke down in tears as it overwhelmed me. it's less disorienting to move and do things with closed eyes. when i first saw, it felt like my vision was pressing down on my perception, the way you might lay a towel over a plane. the contrast is stronger than expected. i can't put into words what i've learned about sense perception and the relativity of it, at least not yet. i'm pondering whether to go to sleep or to see a bit longer. anyhow, this is it for now, i will be documenting the readjustment.

13 40 - i feel worn down, emotionally and sensually overwhelmed. unable to decide what to do, i drowned my first morning of vision in the computer screen. not the best thing to do. i've gotten used to seeing rather quickly and the memory of the non-visual perceptual dimension which i just resurfaced from lays an invisible veil of illusiveness over my sight. i'm calmer if i keep my eyes closed. taking off the folds at night was too violent a switch and i'm exhausted. i think i need more time to dwell. my left eye is swollen, though the pain is gone, and both of them feel bloated. it is as if the capability to see itself is trying to pull me to a pace of being which i'm not used to. i was right in thinking that in the aftermath i'll realize by contrast the heaviness of the experience. it is like waking up from a dream. i need to rest.

evening - seeing is exhausting and i feel much more comfortable in darkness. on the other hand, the beauty of seeing clouds again fills me with awe. isolation has grabbed ahold of me, that i felt anxious to go outside and got lost in the safe space of the computer. the feeling when i saw again remains indescribable. seeing is practical, the speed of my actions has increased a few notches, unintentionally, and it's stressing me out. i'm exhausted and emotionally shaken up. i was crying a few times today. light feeling of depression. i felt lost. still do.

may 17 eyes easily irritable, tear up quickly, sensitive to light. felt more comfortable with eyes closed or in the dark. expectations mostly came true, the seemingly irrelevant, but in actuality vast difference is the real, concrete experience. feel depressed in the aftermath, though it's getting better. we are so blind to the nature of perception.

same day, evening, looking over city and sky from a hill. it took three days to "accept" vision again. the knowledge of its deception remains and is the pearl of wisdom, the essence, the fruit of it. a milestone in my research of consciousness, a big step in understanding the nature of being. what had only been theory, became fact. what was logically concluded, is confirmed.

photos

sculptures

after

A week has passed since the experiment ended.

For three days following the return to sight i seldom turned on lights, and hesitated to leave the house by my own accord.

It was a kind of reverse readjustment of the senses, as i had experienced at the start of the blind week, only the other way around.

Contrary to what i had expected, moments of appreciation and gratefulness for sight were few and far between during this time.

Vision was peripheral through and through, more awareness paid to the auditive and tactile.

After three days came a point when sight was welcomed again as part of my perception.

It has mostly gone back to normalcy now, though my senses do feel a bit more balanced.

A question i'm often asked is if i hear better now. I intuitively pay more attention to sound, but the sense apparatus hasn't evolved in some miracle way. Colors seem more vibrant, but that could just be my imagination.

It's a common saying that you don't realize what you had until it is taken away.

In my case it is only one side of the coin.

While i gained indispensable appreciation to be able to see, i learned a different kind of appreciation for the remaining senses as well especially hearing and touching, having lived with them so intimately.

Throughout this week of sight i've noticed signs of depression relapse.

Low energy and motivation, escaping to the computer screen, misusing it purely for distraction, fits of crying, feeling lost, stressed and anxious.

Somehow this undertaking perilously unbalanced my psyche. My guess is that the emotional states i went through triggered deeply stuck memories of isolation. This is part of it though. No light without shadow.

It is strange trying to remember the sightless week. Visual information is normally a prevalent part of a memory. It's a fleeting dream, the memory merely an altered abstraction of what the experience, the actual consciousness, was.

Every journey starts with the first step indeed.

When i put on the blindfold, there was no going back. The modest act of shrouding my eyes foreboding the whole experience, fixing it in place.

The first days of accustomizing demanded continuous concentration and effort.

Arbitrary everyday tasks had to be done differently, breaking up engrained habit patterns. In the evenings, I felt drained.

Shifting senses is rather depleting for body and mind. The true exhaustion came over time though, when the sentiment of isolation took over. I had prepared three kilos of clay and tactually varying materials, but in the end made merely three small sculptures for lack of creative drive.

I am blessed with good friends, without whose company i might not have lasted a week - or at least the mental consequences would have been graver. During the day, when i was mostly alone, stress and deceleration counteracted, creating aggravating friction. While the anxieties caused by forced concentration, stressfulness, lack of autonomy and resulting isolation pushed me in one direction, the slowed down pace of life - doing things in snail tempo - pushed me in another.

After all, mine is but one of many perspectives. There's more courageous and daring blind people, who don't let the impairment hinder their curiosity.

There's those who have a harder time accepting their fate, but who fight through it. And all the ones inbetween.

*

emergence

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conclusion

Is there anything to conclude? I doubt it.

My perception is almost back to normal now, but there is something different, very subtle.

I can't make out what it is.

Could just be imagination.

Getting used to seeing makes it harder to remember what it was like to be sightless.

Even though our perception reveals but a fraction of reality, it is a fraction we can fully indulge in.

Oh, how much freedom we have!

** *