“Unseen Art” enables the blind to “see” famous paintings

A new project named “Unseen Art” has been launched by Hilsinki-based designer Marc Dillon. His idea is to enable the blind to experience the great heritage of world’s famous painters like Leonardo da Vinci and Van Gogh. The project became possible due to the advance of 3D-printing technology. Dillon creates 3D images from masterpieces of outstanding painters so the blind get opportunity to experience the mysterious smile of  Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

Millions of blind people might have heard of famous paintings but they are not able to see, to experience these masterpieces. The Project aims to enable the blind to see them, to form their own vision and opinion of the paintings, the founder of “Unseen Art”, Marc Dillon, says.

According to Dillon 3D-images of paintings could be placed in art galleries and museums. Thus, all categories of visitors will be almost equal to get acquainted and enjoy the world’s art heritage. The process of re-creating 3D-images of famous paintings takes two steps. At first, a 3D-model is developed, sizes of each element are calculated. Then according to these technical data 3D printer prints a 3D-model of a painting using special sand-based material.

Today the project “Unseen Art” has recreated just one painting – The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vanci. The 3D-copies of The Mona Lisa are on sale. The money received for them will be invested into the 3D recreations of other paintings. At the moment the project is collecting funds on the crowdfunding platform IngieGoGo.

The global aim of “Unseen Art” is to found a free repository “Touchable Memories” with all the technical data available to print great paintings in 3D. Also any artist who wants his art to be seen by the blind will be able to submit his works to this global art storage.

It would be a revolution to get blind people going to art galleries, people hate them because there is nothing there to touch! says designer Marc Dillon.

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