Blind Photographer's Frame——reality and fantasy

Visual space has long dominated our perception of the world, with other senses yielding to vision. Language is replaced by visual symbols, touch is enticed by clear textures of images. We effortlessly access vast amounts of utopian visual information on screens, believing in its authenticity, especially in the era where generative technology can create convincing illusions.

what is the world like when vision vanishes?

Inspired by the film "Proof," directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, We designed a device called the "Blind Photographer's Viewfinder." It utilizes image recognition and artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) to transform the captured world into diverse and rich expressions in real-time. When wearing the viewfinder, it produces analogous experience to being blind, the surrounding scenes lose their visual center, transforming into poetry, natural sounds, subtle sensations, and emerging associations, offering a new mode of interpretation to the world. It helps you mediate your sensorium through AI technology. This aspect of sensory translation is a valuable way to inhabit other sensoria, other bodies—a form of diversity.

Moreover, this creation demonstrates care for individuals with disabilities. The audience can experience the world from the perspective of a blind person. If this artwork were to evolve towards practical applications, it could potentially provide assistance for the mobility of visually impaired individuals.

The second part of the project extracts a series of real-world images and location information captured by the blind photographer's viewfinder. Using this authentic data, a series of AI-generated scenes corresponding to these locations are created. I deliberately blend the real images with the AI-generated information, collaging and constructing an indistinguishable world that exists between reality and fantasy.

The emergence of AIGC brings both technological dependency and anxiety of belief. In rebellious fashion, we organize such an experience—a questioning of visually dominant spaces, a deception of trust, and perhaps, a journey into a new multidimensional world akin to dreaming butterflies in Zhouzhuang.