Dr. Ito: Being a researcher, my main work is writing and studying. However, I feel that it is not enough just to use language to express one's own concepts to people, so I hold workshops, and have teamed up with the artist Kohei Kobayashi to create works. In October 2015, for example, at "OK-3: A User Manual for Buildings," a workshop I planned in Hachioji, I looked at ways of using a single room in a multi-tenant building, which had been left unoccupied for a long time, via three approaches. A cabaret club, reggae bar and more had been through this room, but a dull atmosphere of failure remained; none of these endeavors had been a success. That specific atmosphere is something difficult to quantify in numerical terms, or to put into words and analyze, but I thought it would perhaps be possible to deal with the sensory factors in a workshop environment.

Dr. Ito talking about the workshop she planned in Hachioji, "OK-3: A User Manual for Buildings"

Flyer for "OK-3 A User Manual for Buildings"

Dr. Ito: Let me start by explaining my approach regarding disability. Conventionally, the idea of research into disability tends to make one think of welfare, but I always think of disability as a theory of body. One can consider that the ultimate goal of welfare is to achieve a society where, for example, both people with and without disabilities can live an equal existence in a barrier-free environment. Of course, the welfare-based approach is very important, but I still want to focus on the differences that remain. For instance, people who can see tend to look at their surroundings when they go to the station, while sightless people go to the station by using braille blocks. As such, their actions are the same, yet their actual experiences are quite different.

Dr. Ito studies disability as a theory of body

Dr. Ito: Usually, the body of someone without disabilities is a complete whole, whereas for a person with disabilities, it can be perceived as one from which some kind of function has been removed. However, one's body is something which generates a unique meaning, within its relationship to the surrounding environment. The Estonian biologist, Jakob von Uexküll, who was born in the 19th century, called the unique awareness of the world that each being has "Umwelt." Compared with how humans would perceive a flower garden, when a bee perceives the same flower garden, it is likely that only the flowers that hold nectar would stand out. In other words, he hypothesized that the way in which the environment is viewed, and its significance, differs between living beings with different bodily characteristics.

Generally, research in the disciplines of the liberal arts is predicated on the human body, but that is an extremely abstracted image of humanity. In reality, there are a large number of differences, such as gender, age, and reflexes, so there should be different awarenesses of the world that correspond to each. In order to think about this, I have continued to conduct research and workshops with people that have disabilities, as their biggest difference is easy to see.

Dr. Ito talks about the body as something that generates unique meaning according to the environment.

Slides explaining the differences in how a set meal of tempura is cognized based on how one sees

Dr. Ito: People who are completely blind from birth have no experience of having ever "seen." Accordingly, they do not comprehend the world by converting everything together into visual information. This is in the realm of things that people like us, who can see simply, cannot conceptualize. On this particular occasion, I was having a set menu of tempura with a person who has no memories of seeing. We spoke about a range of topics, and I realized that he understood our tempura set menu of many plates and bowls as if it were a "computer desktop." Each of the rice and small bowls were icons, and by moving a cursor as if to click them, he was able to understand the details, which in this case was the fact that it was shrimp tempura. People who can see take everything in in an instant from sight, and receive the various information such as shapes and types. However, in order to act, visually-impaired people begin by ascertaining the important location-related information, after which they access the next, deeper level of information, namely contents. I wonder if perhaps they have a method of organizing information that people who can see normally simply cannot separate.

Dr. Ito: Since the arrival of smartphones, sightless people have been using a lot of applications. Forms of artificial intelligence such as "Siri" and software that reads aloud are representative of this. People that can see simply do not realize that they "see" and "read" simultaneously, but when mediated by a speech application, a new term called automated voice is involved in "reading" for visually-impaired people, and the process of understanding information becomes more multilayered.

Dr. Ito: This person lost his eyesight when he was young, so had never seen the picture of Beethoven, but nevertheless knows the man's stern face. Why, you may ask. It is because the other children used to tell a school ghost story that "his eyes light up at night" and "he's looking this way." He said he had experienced Beethoven's "look" based on their information.

There is an interesting subplot to this story. I am sure many of you know this, but Beethoven was not actually a man with such a severe face. Yet the 19th century when he was active was a period of rigid values, in which artists had special skills, and were considered geniuses that lived in an entirely different world to normal people. I think the fact is that "seeing" is not the same for all people. We have a tendency to understand that what I see = correct, but we strongly rely on our unconscious perceived notions, that this "should be like this."

Many visually-impaired people have the preconception that "to be able to see is right." Even in a world where "it is not always right," I think we should convey things to our unseeing counterparts.

To put it another way, for visually-impaired people, it is not only sensory information that they can see objectively, but also the social meaning and value it contains, that they want to see, or that they are "seeing."

Social viewing (from art viewing workshop formed with visually-impaired people)

Dr. Ito: Let us take the social viewing of Tadanori Yokoo's work Bride as an example. In the center of the picture, there is a woman wearing a bride's head-dress, so at first, general comments, like "beautiful woman," were heard. However, when they looked at it more and more, they started making comments that implied their own background. For example, the gun shape formed by the thumb and forefinger is called "man's scissors" (for "rock paper scissors"), but that is an expression that only people living in certain areas of Japan can understand. One of the objectives of the social viewing is to reach a conclusion by working together with other participants, while recognizing each of the differences in this way.

Dr. Ito: The majority of students majoring in science held the impression that Pollock's paintings were "untidy." As I asked them to talk more in detail, they said Pollock's works were "childlike scribbling," "lacking in skill," and "unreproducible." These views seem to be the main reason they have negative impressions to the works.

So I mean to say that it is important for scientific research to be reproducible - to reproduce an experience one had today, even if it is by a completely different person, many years from now, in a very different place. Pollock and many of modern and contemporary artists emphasize a sense of presence, of the work being a "one off" or "of right now." This tends to be "seen" as incomprehensible to science students. Like the research of STAP cells, which was a hot topic last year, things without reproducibility are valueless (laughs)!

Then we continued to discuss a slightly trickier topic. "What, conversely, has value but no reproducibility?" Through this question, what we reached was sport. For example, a soccer match is something that occurs just once, to determine whether one wins or loses. It is for that very reason that people are crazy for it, and its fairness is retained. Introducing a unique view like this, we can arrive at a conclusion that is not written in any museum on Earth, that "Pollock's action painting is a sport." I think this is one of the ways in which social viewing can be enjoyed, in understanding that a work can deepen interpersonal relationships between participants.

Dr. Ito: The thing that is important in social viewing is that, in regard to enjoying the interpretation, there is no difference between whether one can or cannot see. For example, if one person's interpretation of a work alters other people's views entirely, then the change can be shared by a visually-impaired person.

Since nobody is able to look without preconceptions, we can try and comprehend an object initially by applying it to the patterns that we know. That said, by daring to put colors and shapes that we immediately understand into words, an atmosphere where we can have discussion is generated, and can be shared by every person present, regardless of whether they have sight or not. Then we can naturally share the fact that "everyone's (view of a thing) is quite different."

In that sense, disability becomes a catalyst. It is obvious that what we thought we shared is not actually shared. When people with disabilities join, the atmosphere becomes significantly active. I believe that it is extremely interesting that disability can fulfil such an important role.

Dr. Asa Ito, project supervisor and facilitator Asaki Nishikawa (center right) and foreign graduate students and researchers.