Tuntumaa (Feeling) - An Exhibition For All Senses

To create accessibility art, there are many kinds of common attitudes that have an influence on this creativeness. Are we ready to welcome a range of different visitors? Keeping an open attitude to diversity is the key to development when we want to welcome new visitor groups. Art, in its many forms is usually visual and is made for looking - even the internet which is mostly visual. There are also lovely examples such as Finnish National Gallery which has produced already 1998 a web exhibition targeted to visual impaired people about Finnish painter Hugo Simberg's, pictures with audio, visual imaging and simple texts.

 Art sites that are readily available offer everyone the opportunity to take part and to gain new experiences. There are various ways that people can use their senses – touch, smell, taste, hear. This was in my mind when starting to produce as my final thesis project for School of Art and Design an art exhibition for little Finnish west coast city of Pori bearing in mind visually impaired children as main target group. Tuntumaa (Finnish word means touching, feeling)  exhibition’s main goals were to improving accessibility in many ways. One of the main points was our willingness to work on improving accessibility and equality art. A thing that makes Tuntumaa exhibition so new, exciting and special is the fact that all the works of art were specially ordered for this exhibition. The starting point for the pieces of art was to design art for impaired children and at the same time it would give an opportunity to approach this using all senses. The artist created paintings, sculptures and installations that people were able to touch and feel, listen to, smell and taste the artwork. We also encouraged people with normal sight to experience our exhibition with their eyes covered, this way they would be able to relate to what the true meaning of the exhibition was all about.

 Each work of art got a descriptive poetry portrait. We assembled the exhibition books in Braille. Later on these poetry portraits will be uploaded to the internet for people to listen to as audio files. The accessibility of an exhibition increases when the public can make a connection to the art works whenever they feel like it through the internet. Poetry portraits, that are written by poetries, describe the world in the work of art - poetries are more like tales they are more than visual imaging. Visual imaging efforts to define art work objectively.

 Artists in this exhibition represent various fields of art. For this group Sanna Heikintalo, photographer and Jaana Teräväinen, journalist, were selected. Their art work considers how vision pictures are created for people with normal sight and for the visually impaired, just based on the text they are reading. Maarit Hedman, a visually impaired painter and teacher of painting, did a painting in three parts, a painting which is also very "beautiful" to touch. Kirsi Jaakkola, painter, did a scenery in winter time, a scenery which also invites to flying. Mervi Kuittinen-Karivirta, a costume designer, in her pieces of art one can sense the slightly fragrant eggs of silk butterflies which lures gently under their rough and smooth surface. Artist Hilda Kozari painted her tasty pictures with the scent of fresh and crisp and different tastes all in 3D installation invited children to hide and play. Kari Mäkiranta, composer and musician, composed a playable work of art with sounds taking an attender on a long and holy journey just listening to the music or producing it. Veijo Setälä, sculptor invited visitor to try what it is like to walk in a crowd by his work of art.

What is the meaning of this Tuntumaa exhibition in todays visual world where visibility and eyesight take on a central position? How did the attendees with sight and also the visually impaired experience the Tuntumaa exhibition? What created a good experience for visually impaired people? My work is based on these questions. We looked for answers by having discussions with the attendees and following their behaviour in the exhibition hall.

 Tuntumaa exhibition begins touring after it has been shown in Pori, 10.9.-3.10.2010, in capital of Finland Helsinki and then a smaller city of Hämeenlinna. It would be interesting to document the tour in the Internet bearing in mind the same principles of accessibility in web design.