I see things
invisible to
mortal sight
Book III, 59, Paradise Lost
Inspired by Milton ....
was a body of work I compiled in July of 2007. It was a personal response to Miltons poetry and his blindness.
I have tried to interpret Miltons work as a viewable form that trancends his text and becomes fully abstract.
Click on 'The Work' to view the piece. let yourself be absorbed into the work and begin to view it both as a singular item and as a construct of many shapes and forms.
Try and allow yourself to identify with it as it shifts between reality and the blind sub-conciousness, which Milton describes, where vividness and colour is king.
This piece of work started as an examination into blind photography and in the way that a blind individual could become the subjective observer to a described scene. (see: www.theblindphotographer.com)
As I began to look more closely into this world, I could see that there was almost a complete bluring between what was the subjects awake reality and their dreamlike state.
In an increasingly visualy controlled world, we become so reliant on sight that the mere thaught of absence of sight seems so absurd and surreal, that it is all too easy to forget that it is a place where many people inhabit. I was then aimed with turning this personal discovery into something that transcended both visual form and tactile form, from a photographic viewpoint.
Miltons work seemed the most appropriate in helping me with this work. As his poetry and life effortlessly blended the spiritual and secular. I wanted to re-itterate his stance that this blindness that he and many others have suffered and are suffering on the flip side allows the person to spiritualy prevail where others may fall short.
In book III of Milton's Paradise Lost he writes
"So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate. there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight"
A hardly more fiting quotation for what I was trying to acheive. The visual link came with the use of a constructed braille board translated from that last line, with 10mm braille holes in it (the milton board). The use of colour was partly from my previous research into the common dismissal of colour as an important aesthetic in art, behind tone, form, composition, etc (see Chromophobia, David Batchellor) Which i had been trying to use as a running theme of my work and of this other world which milton described.
A running light relay system was passed from hole to hole and photographed to give an illuminated final piece, that was displayed on an A0 lightbox with tactile braille and the text underneath. The piece was displayed in London and Portsmouth, UK.
Milton Dictating to His Daughter by Henry Fuseli
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