“We need empathy to ensure that we’re building a city and infrastructure that works for all,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said. “This is a fabulous example of how we attempt to integrate the arts into our daily lives here in Providence. We’re not the creative capital for nothing.”

Part public art installation and part research project, the students created “The Blind Urban Subject” by modifying a sightseeing view tower — those structures at vistas and parks where visitors can pop in a quarter to get a better view — to present examples of ocular dysfunction.

A series of pithy sidewalk decals featuring facts about blindness lead people to the tower. Sighted people can peer through the viewfinder, turning a dial to flip through custom-fabricated lenses that offer simulations of how individuals with cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration experience urban America.

“The first step to building better, more inclusive cities is to make the blind urban experience relatable and to build mutual understanding with groups who experience life differently than most people,” said Solomon, the project’s director. “My hope is that it gets us to think about the role that public art plays in bringing people together.”

Solomon was born legally blind with ocular albinism, which causes uncontrollable eye movements and makes him sensitive to light and unable to see details or depth. Originally from Miami, Solomon has spent his life cultivating a passion for education, policy and urban studies, driven by his experience as a blind person. It’s a passion he’s continually nurtured during his time at Brown, where he co-founded Blind@Brown while pursuing concentrations in political science and urban studies. 

In fact, it was an introductory urban studies course that inspired the project. Students were required to conduct a study of a specific urban area, and Solomon chose the intersection of Angell and Thayer. After sitting there for hours, observing how people interact with the busy stretch of traffic, the seeds of project took root.

Solomon brought the idea to Goldemberg, a fellow Miami native studying materials engineering at Brown and apparel design at RISD, and Kartik, a disability advocate who co-founded Blind@Brown with Solomon and is pursuing an independent concentration in disability and design. 

Together, the trio worked closely with student industrial designers and engineers, Brown faculty members, medical experts and the blind community to make their vision — a solutions-oriented, educational, accessible, engaging and fun public art installation — a reality. 

Support from the Brown Arts Institute and the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity helped offset the costs of development, and the team worked with Providence’s Department of Public Works to obtain a permit for its installation on the intersection’s northwest corner, where it will remain through January 2025. 

“[‘The Blind Urban Subject’] is particularly important because it helps us think about how we can best address the challenges we face,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo said at the ceremony. “As a policymaker, that’s part of the mission — not just to identify the problem, but to pursue solutions.”

Do you see what I see? 

Kartik said she was inspired by a conversation she heard during a vision-loss support group. 

“They were talking about how there’s a big disconnect between the sighted and blind communities,” she said. “We saw our project as an opportunity to bridge that gap in understanding by sparking people’s interest, then getting them to learn more about the blind community and confront any misconceptions that they may have about blindness.” 

One common myth is that blind people “see black” or nothing at all, said Goldemberg, who encountered that belief in courses where students designed products for blind people without sufficient input or adequate knowledge of vision impairments. The resulting designs were less effective and accessible, as they catered only to people who cannot see at all — a very small portion of the blind community. 

As the project’s design engineering director, it was crucial that Goldemberg understand what exactly blind and visually impaired people see. She was, quite literally, responsible for seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. To better understand how each condition visually manifests, she interviewed blind and visually impaired people, devoured research and worked with Brown University Health ophthalmologists who advised on critical medical aspects of the project. 

“We didn’t want something ‘like’ cataracts or a ‘generalized depiction’ of glaucoma,” Goldemberg said. “I wanted to ensure that we’re presenting something to the world that is accurate.” 

Assistant Professor of Neurology and Surgery Dr. Tatiana Bakaeva was instrumental in helping Goldemberg make those translations. While working on a simulation of macular degeneration, which presents itself as a dark pit in the field of vision, Goldemberg said she was struggling with its presentation until she worked with Bakaeva. 

Bakaeva helped unlock a major realization — that the tower required a divider between the eyes. 

“That component was so important,” Goldemberg said. “The divider allows for one eye to see one thing, the other eye to see another, and then they come together to create one full image. Medically, that’s how the eye works.” 

To fabricate the lenses and components to install them inside the view tower, Goldemberg assembled a team of fellow Brown and RISD students. Each designer brought their expertise in different specialties, from rapid prototyping to mechanical and 3D printing. Working in the Brown Design Workshop for months, the team tested dozens of prototypes before landing on the final version of the tower. 

Seeking input on the project, the team also consulted with leaders from the National Federation for the Blind. 

“This project serves as a gateway for people to learn about the blind community,” Kartik said. “And I think it’s nice that our project is not so highbrow — a 5-year-old can look at it and be like, ‘Oh, I learned something!’” 

Working toward a kinder, more inclusive future

At the ribbon-cutting, dozens of people stood in line, waiting to see the city through a different perspective. 

After peering through the tower, Gavi Burack said the project goes beyond a novel way to illustrate each ocular disorder: it’s also a way to encourage empathy, especially in an neighborhood with so many young people.

“It’s different from just seeing someone with a white cane,” she said. “As long as people stop to look at [the tower] and are curious about understanding it, I feel like it will be really good. Maybe there’s someone in class who uses adaptive technology. Other students being exposed to something like this might make it less likely that they’ll get made fun of or ‘othered.’”

On a personal level, Burack said it was compelling to experience a simulation of diabetic retinopathy; her father has Type 2 diabetes, though he has not lost his vision. Looking through the lenses, with her field of vision peppered with dark, floating speckles, was the first time she could see how diabetes can impact eyesight.  

Kartik recently saw a woman at “The Blind Urban Subject” pull away from the viewfinder, visibly emotional. She stopped to make sure the woman was OK: “Her mom had recently passed, and she told me, ‘My mom had cataracts. I feel like, for the first time, I finally have an entrance to seeing the world through her eyes.’” 

To Solomon, the installation is the first step in what he hopes will be an enduring presence of research and advocacy. He’s working with Lauren Yapp — the lecturer whose course inspired the project, and who Solomon now supports as a teaching assistant — to conduct surveys and focus groups for a study they’ll author analyzing public perception of the blind and visually impaired through public art. 

“This project was a great case study, but let’s take it a step further,” Solomon said. “I want to think deeply about how to best develop mutual understanding. How can public art help people understand the daily lives of others who experience life in a fundamentally different way?” 

The possibilities of what can be accomplished when people with different experiences learn from each other is what drives Solomon, especially in his political science studies. He draws parallels between unnecessary divisions between blind and sighted communities and political polarization. But he has hope that mutual understanding can create a kinder, more inclusive future. As he puts it, blindness is bipartisan.

“I’m from deep red Florida, and blind and visually impaired folks are supported very well, and now I’m in Rhode Island, where they’re also supported very well,” he said. “If we can get people to understand others through the perspective of a very bipartisan policy issue of identity, hopefully it can inspire more conversations in other challenging areas. Today we’re talking about the blind, but tomorrow we could be talking about any other large-scale societal issue.”