New Tools for Disabled Artists
By Matthew Baranauskas
A Project presented to The Graduate Faculty California College of the Arts
Introduction
“But the way I was born I usually have a difficult time doing all this stuff.” This is what Mikey told me several weeks into learning how to make a collage. A pile of National Geographic photos, precut into small one-inch squares, were scattered across his work surface. His glue bottle was tipped over and a small puddle of glue was beginning to form in the corner of his work area. He was rubbing at the dry glue on his fingertips visibly upset – frustrated by the difficulty and number of operations involved in making a collage. Mikey is one of the many artists at NIAD (The National Institute of Art and Disabilities), whom I have found myself spending a lot of time with. He is the epitome of a person who sits at the fringe of society. Mikey sits in the back of the studio at a table by himself. He always sits in the same chair; an orange chair that has his name written in big black letters on the back. He wears a batter’s helmet in case he should have an epileptic seizure. I’ll often notice Mikey getting agitated if other artists are having a conversation with each other while standing near him – his nose contorts, and his lips curl back, revealing his clinched teeth underneath. A low, almost inaudible mumbling of words under his breath usually follows this. This is then followed by a period of vigorous rocking back and forth in his chair. Getting frustrated around others and with what he is doing accounts for a large portion of Mikey’s day. When I asked him why this was the case, he told me, “I just don’t think there are very many people I can sit with.
I hadn’t originally set out to work with Mikey as frequently as I have, but for whatever reason he doesn’t seem to mind me hanging around (as apposed to his discomfort around others). If you’re willing to invest the time it takes for Mikey to get to know you then he’ll let you know exactly what he wants – either through his words or his actions. When I first meet Mikey I told him that I would be spending some time at NIAD so that I could discover what kind of new tools him and the other artists needed. He expressed to me that what he really wanted was to learn how to make collage. After speaking with a number of teachers at NIAD I was able to get one of them to work directly with Mikey teaching him how to create a collage. This presented me with the unique opportunity of observing a disabled artist learning how to work with a new set of tools in order to perform a desired task – collage.
At NIAD the teachers and the clients see a disability as just a condition or variable with which they have to work – not as a problem. Teachers help develop artists talents by placing more emphasis on developing abilities than on making up for deficits. Despite the fact that the teachers at NIAD have adopted this approach towards working with any person – no matter the disability – a number of problems continue to stand in the way. While some tools designed for non-disabled artists are as functional for disabled artists, many do not address the needs of disabled artists. The absence of tools that reflect these needs inhibits the capacity for creative expression. This directly affects a disabled artist’s sense of personal identity and pride. As for tools that have been designed for disabled artists, many have simply been adapted to better perform an operation, which the tool has been designed to perform (e.g. Scissors cut and glue adheres). Lets call this approach operation-focused design. In this approach, more emphasis is placed on the low-level operations of a tool than on specific high-level tasks. This is a bottom-up approach that better reflects the need of the tool (to adapt and remain relevant) than it does the needs and desires of the disabled artist to perform a task that enables creative expression. More emphasis should be placed on considering and examining the fundamental essence of the task and how any variety of actions may alternatively support the task. While accommodating for impairments within the design of tools may have benefits for those who experience particular impairments, embracing, or leveraging impairments within a design can lead to new perspectives that may have broader applications.
In this paper I pose a number of questions, which I have asked myself, so that I could better understand the ways in which the needs of disabled artists might be addressed by design. Each of these questions begins a chapter, which answers these questions through a critical analysis of design, culture and my own investigative process. Finally these culminate in the description of three design principles, and the manifestation of these principles and research, which is embodied in the design of two new art tool experiences.