Ela Strand

Those of us who rely on sight when creating tend to take it for granted. But what happens when the visual is removed, and the process is guided instead by touch and bodily experience?

This degree project looks at meaning-making in aesthetic learning processes when vision is limited and tactile; physical ways of working become more central. By shifting the focus between different ways of sensing and expressing, it explores how experiences of learning, creativity and performance can change in an art education context.

In a workshop, pre-service art teachers worked with clay while blindfolded, shaping the concepts ‘light’ and ‘heavy’. The focus is on how they experienced creating without sight, and what new possibilities, as well as challenges, emerged when a usually dominant sense was taken away.