A photograph of the sculpture I made for image 3. It is a naked woman wearing a gas mask with her arms and legs tied to points out of view. I used fimo, sculpey, cardboard, twine, mesh, carpet tape & ribbon to create this work. It is mounted on a piece of Braille paper, ready for the thermoform machine.
Tactile Mind Studio Limited uses thermoform plastic for tactile images and Braille descriptions. This is a very sturdy material and pages can be sprayed and gently wiped with disinfectant. tactile mind book and tactile atelier bookmark both have paper accompaniments which can be held back and mailed (at no extra expense) when the pandemic passes.
Just a couple pictures of me (Lisa J. Murphy) pressing pages of tactile mind at home. For those who have a vision impairment or blindness, or anyone who is simply curious; I will give you a quick description. In the two pictures, I am putting the master copy Braille page of Diagram 13/ Bullet Belt onto the thermoform machine. I am laying the page within the confines of the machine; the base and frame of the thermoform machine is layered in tape to get the best suction. Soon I lay a piece of thermoform plastic on top, press the edges down with the frame, pull the heat source over the diagram and the plastic, the vacuum suction goes – and voila! A 3-D thermoform diagram page.
Sounds really easy. In reality many things can go wrong. The diagram, for starters can break – but that is the worst case scenario. Lately, I’ve had a couple problems in my master pages with a knee cap dislodging , a couple nipples coming loose, a background shredding, hearts moving, and a vagina crumbling. Nothing major, very fixable – just general wear and tear on the images.
Also, my trusty thermoform machine can be a little tempermental. I just give her lots of time to heat up, and some break periods throughout days when I’m printing.
Lisa worked with professional Braillist(s) who used grade-one Braille, so (she felt) the work could be easily understood by a wider audience. This Braille is written letter by letter, so even a sighted person could download the Braille alphabet off the computer and stumble through the descriptions of the photographs. The Braille accompanying ‘tactile mind’ is in (American) English, which is the standard for North America.
The Braille describes the photograph – how it is cropped, the mask, if the subject is turned to the side, etc. Generally when a blind reader ‘sees’ a tactile diagram of a person, the diagram is head to feet, facing forward. The Braille description given in ‘tactile mind’ helps guide the reader through the photographs for a better understanding.
5 years ago, Lisa J. Murphy was making tactile diagrams for vision impaired & blind childrens’ educational books, and thought “why not?”. Lisa had received a certificate in Tactile Graphics from the Institute for the Blind, and decided to use her new knowledge with her own photographs of artistic nudes. Lisa wanted to challenge herself, and she began to create tactile pictures for adults. Over the next 2 years, her idea turned into a book consisting of 17 3-D pictures, with grade-one Braille accompaniment.
