STEREOGNOSIS - L.D.F 2019

Empowering Individuals: Diversity + Inclusivity by Design exhibition The world of set design and styling is predominantly based on the principles of aesthetics, among these, of particular relevance is the correlation between the object and the surrounding space, scale and proportion, the point of perspective and visual frame, colour and perceived textures of materials. Inclusivity in design is usually referred to several categories: gender, disability, ethnicity, vulnerability, language and age. In visual arts, a category is excluded from fully experiencing the beauty of an image: visually impaired and blind people. Usually the final art piece of my work is just a single photo. I design and make compositions with sets and various props, I photograph it, and then destroy the actual installation. Even though the process of building the aesthetics can be experienced and appreciated by blind people, the outcome of it cannot. Taking part in this exhibition will give me the chance to include all aforementioned categories in my design. I will design and make a monochrome composition, so colour will not be a discriminating factor. It is well known, in fact, that people who have been blind since their birth are not able to understand the concept of colour. I will use various materials and textures and instead of just exhibiting the photographic work, I will keep the sets as a live installation, where people can touch the objects and try to imagine the composition by tactile and sensorial experience. The concept will be developed and, according to space limitations, the size of the set will be chosen. The options are more likely to represent more effectively this concept: a small set with various props, where people can touch the objects and the surrounding space and understand the scale and the composition, or a bigger installation, where people can also walk through and around the sets, always using tactile experience to design a visual mental image of what they have in front of them. The installation will expose everyday-life object or abstract shapes of different materials, or even a combination of the two. A composition can be beautiful also if monochromatic, not focusing on colour, people will pay more attention to the texture, proportion and position of each object. Empowering our audiences as designers is a very important task, we should give the possibility to a broad audience to enjoy and experience visuals. Photography: Lydia Whitmore Set Design & Art Direction: Maya Angeli