Challenging the ordinary

I  have chosen to undertake the written stimuli assignment, "challenging the ordinary". This requires me to "develop a personal response that exploits a range of different materials and enables them to be part of a successful outcome". This statement informs me that I should focus on both artist's which use unusual materials, such as Robert Rauschenberg and his "combines", as well as have a personal concept behind my investigation. 

I have decided to represent my unusual manner of viewing the world, which is a consequence of my visual impairment, known as Stereoblindness. I believe this will be a learning experience for myself to understand my visual impairment more, due to myself avoiding it for many years. Stereoblindness has been a burden and a blessing in my life, I just hadn't realised the blessing until recently. 

What is stereoblindness?

From my research, I have uncovered many new things about my visual impairment, one being the fact that I only see through one eye at a time. I had an idea of this being true, however, had never realised because I have never seen through both eyes at the same time so I wouldn't know any difference. 

Stereoblindness is the visual impairment of having the ability to gather depth information using the binocular disparity between both of the eyes. Consequently, resulting in myself and around 10% of the UK's population being unable to perceive the world in a three-dimensional nature, instead we view the world in a two-dimensional nature. However, this isn't as speaking the 2D we commonly associate ourselves with, I am able to understand that the world isn't flat, by the natural focus on shadows, movement and size. 

Throughout my life, I have learned to understand the strengths and weaknesses associated with this visual impairment through experiecne, not through being informed by others. I experienced many issues with sports whilst at school, one being unable to perceive moving objects, such as footballs, rugby balls, tennis balls, and the list goes on. This consequently led to myself being always chosen last for teams because I was for the most part terrible at sports activities. People who didn't like to lose hated me for being on their team. 

I have in recent years, I been further impacted by my vision, by the near consequence of being unable to drive a car, motorbike and other forms of transport. I had believed that this might have been the problem by myself experiencing many problems with only riding a pedal bike. 

I want to try bringing the viewers into my world of the visually unusual, with the use of uncommonly used mediums.