|
The collaboration with NISE (The National Institute of Special Education) in Yokosuka, Japan, dates back to April 2001, when some Japanese researchers came for a visit at the tactile museum Anteros of the Francesco Cavazza Institute for the Blind. These researchers were interested in learning about the cognitive functions in aesthetic education aimed at enhancing the imaginative processes of the blind and visually impaired. The intent was to investigate the means by which one arrives at a mental representation of artistic images experienced by touch in order to allow the extension of a meaning useful in daily autonomy. From that meeting with Prof. Susumu Oouchi, Director of Education for People with Visual Impairment at NISE's Department for Research, and his collaborators, was born a partnership that still lives today giving results of great value. Thanks to the systematic work of scientific translation by Dr. Hideyuki Doi, and to the competent commitment of interpreters Dr. Hiroko Tanaka and Dr. Noriko Fujiwara, the most important part of our research on cognitive processes of people with visual impairment migrated to Japan to flourish, in due time, adapting to the perceptual and cognitive needs considered in Japanese culture. In December 2002, at the invitation of Prof. Susumu Oouchi, I had the opportunity to present our studies in NISE to highly specialized experts from universities and research centres, and to visit historical and religious places among the most significant and important in the Japanese culture, in the cities of Tokyo, and in the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto. It was a memorable trip: |
|
||
|
from the professional as well as the human and personal point of view, a total experience, and such a warm welcome. During the following years, our affinity of thought between special education in Japanese and Italian arts became more and more defined. I felt the need to cultivate a bond, an avenue of research on the meaning and feeling of the form characterized with aesthetic value, which had originated in Western culture but drew life from the Eastern culture. I cannot say that bringing together two cultures so attracted to each other, though so different, was however immediate: true partnerships are founded on feelings of deep respect, pure love towards the mutual gift of knowledge and the ability to support expectations, because they are based on trust. Thus was born a fundamental research on the constants and variables of the techniques of tactile exploration of bas reliefs that translate paintings into form. This allows the examination of the potential and limitations of guided tactile reading, and the development of techniques of haptic perception differentiated by and adapted to the specific cognitive needs of Italian and Japanese blind people, as a sign of operational essentiality and perceptual economy based on the correct orientation of inner resources. Through the use of iconic and functional gestures to redesign the concepts of space and time according to static and dynamic representations, we were able to decipher patterns of perception which could be applied and adapted, according to the differences and similarities of a method for identifying the perceptions, cognitions and interpretations of a form preferable and comparable in both cultures. The study of the different processes of restitution of the mental image in bas relief and of clay modeling became another important chapter in our joint research. Between 2003 and 2006, with the collaboration of sculptors and professors Gualandi Paolo and Marco Marchesini, we produced the plastic translations of two famous prints taken from the Ukyio-e genre: the Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai and Seven Women Applying Make-up in the Mirror by Kitagawa Utamaro. |
Between 2002 and 2011, Prof. Oouchi acquired
important pieces of our collection of translations of paintings
in bas relief, including the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli,
the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci,
completing the masterpieces of da Vinci's genius with educational
applications of a preparatory nature made in Japan with extreme
care and efficiency, in order to unequivocally communicate
Italian painting and the intellectual and symbolic meaning of the
Renaissance perspective to an audience of people of different
age, condition and cultural background who were blind from birth,
who had developed blindness or who were partially sighted.
|
||
