Tactile Model
As part of Block Party: From Independent Living to Disability Communalism, a tactile model — initially created to collaborate with a blind team member — offers gallery visitors an additional means to access the project’s architectural and urban strategies.
Visual Description
Seen from above, a low-profile, rectangular, tactile model of a street block features white rectangular building shapes interspersed with black circular indents and rectangular protrusions of different sizes. The blacks shapes either recede as circles or protrude as rectangles and squares detailed with various ridges and linear textures. The model is bisected horizontally by a row of black dots that protrude slightly from the base of the model, like buttons. Moving from the left to the right, one third of the way through the model, another row of black dots stretches vertically and connects the center line to the top edge of the model. Two thirds of the way through the model, a third row of black dots extends from the center line to the bottom edge of the model. Three fourths of the way through the model, a fourth line of black dots extends vertically down from the top edge and cuts off the center horizontal line before it can completely bisect the model. The fourth line juts to the right about three fourths of the way vertically down the model.
Audio Description
The below audio description of the tactile model features Georgina Kleege, a novelist, literary critic, activist, and professor at the University of California at Berkeley. A foundational figure in the field of disability studies, Kleege is the author of Sight Unseen and More Than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art. Sound editor: Jim McKee, Earwax Productions.