The Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, Texas is the first art studio in the state to purchase its own set of 3D printers.The reason for this is not necessarily to 3D print replicas of famous works or to create new, original art pieces, though those uses probably aren’t ruled out. Instead the motivation for purchasing three Makerbot Replicator 2s is much more altruistic. The Ellen Noel Art Museum is using these machines to aid in the experience of art for the visually-impaired. This is not the first instance of motivation of this kind with The Midas Touch, Guide4Blind in Germany and Yahoo Japan having applied 3D printing in this way also. But each and every project has merit.
George Jacob the director of the museum hopes to create a series of kits with Braille instructions to allow the visually-impaired to learn about art through touch. Then, the plan is to lend these kits to other institutions and museums so that they, too, can provide this experience to their non-seeing patrons. Jacob describes the kits in this way:
The primary purpose is to make tactile teaching tools for the visually impaired. We want them to feel art and sculptures in a different way than the rest of us see them. When I talk about cubism or abstract art, most of us can understand because we see something and think, ‘That is abstract.’ But these new tools allow those with impairments to feel the volumetric dimensions of aesthetics and experience the sensations of these different types of art as if they were seeing them.
Printing these teaching tools with their three printers – and a fourth multicolored printer on the way – will complement the museum’s already existing Sensory Garden, which, with design help from the Texas Commission for the Blind, provides a series of fragrant plants and textured sculptures for the visually-impaired to enjoy. In addition, the museum offers “sight-assisted tours” that use “blindness simulation goggles” to help seeing individuals connect with the visually-impaired community. The museum’s website describes the purpose of the Sensory Garden in this way:
The garden provides badly needed cultural enrichment and recreational activity for the visually impaired, whose special requirements have been low priority in West Texas even though Texas Commission for the Blind 1998 figures indicate 11,000 visually impaired residents in the Permian Basin region. It also provides a shady, protected location for their rest and enjoyment.
Though the region certainly has a lot of work to do to meet the needs of its non-sighted community, the whole heartwarming project from the Ellen Noel Museum gives me one thing to say (which just so happens to also be the name of a Mountain Goats album): All hail West Texas!
Source: mywesttexas.com
