The final form of my project is a mobile I constructed from paper shapes, cotton string, and an embroidery hoop. Each chain of the mobile begins at the top as a color of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) but as you follow the chains down, the vibrant paper shapes gradually morph into the hues that a person with deuteranopia would perceive instead. As a concept, I used deuteranopia, a form of color blindness that affects up to 6% of the male population.  Some might be unaware of their how their color vision differs from the norm and have been able to cope with little difficulty, while others are reluctant to talk about it for fear of stigma or being disqualified for job opportunities.

People with deuteranopia lack medium wave-length cone cells in the eye that are responsible for the perception of green light. This results in only being able to distinguish about 3 hues meanwhile the average person can see 7 hues. This mobile is meant to be an interactive, calming experience for people regardless of the condition of their color vision. I added several different shapes of paper to the mobile to give it a varied appearance, as well as for a tactile experience. For people who cannot see color well (or in rare cases can only see in black and white), one relies on other visual cues such as shape, and tactile cues like texture or firmness.

I ultimately intended this piece to be educational to people who do not have color-blindness, because in the course of my research I learned a lot about how people might experience the colors that we take for granted in a completely different way. The viewer can take their time gazing at the different chains to see how the colors morph into their green-deficient counterparts, and perhaps try to take on the perspective of someone else.

 

References:

https://www.color-blindness.com/deuteranopia-red-green-color-blindness/

https://pilestone.com/pages/color-blindness-simulator-1