O/MISSION POSSIBLE
Link to listen or download the audio guide in English.
O/MISSION POSSIBLE
Audio guide through the architecture of the Muzeum Susch
Dear Visitor,
with O/MISSION POSSIBLE
you are walking like a blind.
Erich guides you all the way up through Muzeum Susch,
and on the way down, he does reflect
how it is to live as a blind person in the world
that is so much visually oriented.
Let yourself follow him.
That might ask you to change your habits of how to meet a new place.
On the way you may wish to watch art works or the details of architecture.
Please remember that for Erich they do not exist until he gets them “explained” / “read”/described by words / and heard -
as to hear is his primary orientation sense.
Please come back to the museum
when you finished your walk with Erich Schmid.
Has your perception changed?
We’ll be grateful when you share with us your impressions!
You can reach us via
www.willidorner.com
www.dornerrastl.com
insta: willi_dorner
Willi Dorner / Lisa Rastl / October 2021
The unique architectonic design of Muzeum Susch inspired us to visit it with a blind person. We invited Mr Erich Schmid who is blind from birth and asked him to walk through the building in order to record him when describing how he does it.
We got interested how he dealt with the given architecture and how he perceived all its different spaces. Instead of creating a pedagogic instruction of “how to visit the museum when blind” and for people who can see, we wanted to enter into, and to understand the mindset of a blind person.
Within this experiment we faced few surprises.
We wonder if you’ll share them as well?
We realized that in general the seeing people create a romantic image of a blind person, when in fact - the blind people are far more pragmatic. The finding after working with Erich was, that surroundings like museums or galleries are designed predominantly as visual experience where art and architecture itself remain always in focus. In Susch it is even more specific due to the location and architecture’s beauty.
Yet again, for Erich the environment is mainly a sound.
He is very fast with hearing (and with that “reading”) the rooms as he’s not distracted by their visual details. He can’t see the stones of the vault, he can only hear a vault - it differs in volume and quality of sound to other vaults he has heard before. Sometimes he makes a guess on material the walls are made of, and of course - sometimes he also fails. And he brings to attention details we would most probably never notice, as he needs them to memorize the way, and to find his orientation in space.
His main ‘trick’ is “clicking” with his tongue. Not every blind person does that. It’s his way to measure the distance to the walls by hearing how the sound bounces back. The same way he discovers where are the wall openings and then, he walks through them.
Version: English translation
Concept: Willi Dorner & Lisa Rastl
developed in collaboration with Erich Schmid
Performed by Erich Schmid
Sound engineering: Paul Ebhart
Commissioned and produced by Muzeum Susch as part of the Acziun Susch programme
English translation: Translingua Vienna
English voice: Chris Myers
Technical notes:
- To visit Muzeum with this audio guide, all you need is a regular entrance ticket and your smartphone and headphones.
- The audio guide is to be found here (link above) or on the Muzeum Susch App that you can download from Apple or Google store.
- It can be either downloaded into your device directly or listened to on the Muzeum Susch App via WIFI (Public Muzeum Susch)/Internet data.
In our APP you will also find more audio guides in various languages (EN, DE, IT) for our temporary exhibitions.