[Synapse elist] Belated posting from Lizbeth of the watery far-away eyes always fixed on the next horizon. . .:-)

[lizbeth]

Dear All,

HELLO! 

And firstly, huge apologies for my silence in text and image. What I hadn't
planned on sharing with the list was my own problem with eyesight: it rarely
keeps me from communicating but in a weird stroke of luck or timing, my
sight shifted rather radically again a few weeks ago, making it impossible
to keep up with the text on screen phenomenon that rules so much of our time
in this age of new media communications.

So, here I am, a few weeks late, and needing time to tune into the flow of
ideas, but with total respect for the list and the many fascinating and
thought provoking ideas raised here so far. I got as far as reading Brad and
Ju's first postings (and happy belated birthday to Ju by the way!) before I
suddenly had to keep away from the screen, like the young girl in
'Poltergeist' told to keep away from the light. . .

So,. I'm back, albeit late and with a new sense of the incredible lightness
of being through (and away from) the screen.

Please forgive me if it takes me another few days to read through all the
text gathered, and if I intervene first with a few ideas to throw into the
cauldron. As I find time to focus, quite literally, on the screen, I hope to
make a bigger and perhaps deeper contribution.

For now, here goes:

1) I am grateful for the gift of sight (even when it leaves me now and then,
or perhaps because it leaves me now and then but always, at least so far,
returns). I am also grateful for the gift of the ability to hear what is not
always said, and to communicate without words, in gesture and shared
understandings and non-verbal & non-visual languages of various kinds. This
gratitude, forged long ago in a personal childhood chamber of shadow and
light without clear boundaries, inspires all my work, in all media. It is
perhaps what motivated me at first to work with people with disabilities,
with Motor-neurone Disease, Spina Bifida, and Cerebral Palsy, for instance,
and with people with Down's Syndrome and other cognitive or learning
disabilities too. I wake each day unable to see without lenses, and
therefore reminded of the incredible gift that the modern world has given
me, with the ability to put a small clear visual prosthetic onto each eye,
enabling me to function as though I can see. But it is the lens that can
see, not me. Or both of us together can achieve this task, which is so
central to my ways of being in the world.
     And so, I wonder at my good fortune to have this small clear
prosthetic, which is costly but not prohibitively so, and I then think of my
dear friends and colleagues who are smarter, stronger and more determined
than I am, and who somehow continue to live, write, form deep relationships
and make tremendous impacts on the world, despite much more profound
disabilities, for which much more radical and expensive 'prosthetics' are
needed. 
     My world is richer for knowing and having the chance to work & write
with and learn from James Brosnan, Katie Gilligan and Sapna Ramnani for
instance (all very intelligent, creative and determined artists with CP),
and with Bobby Byrne and the late Homer Avila- dancers of immense talent and
with very beautiful and unusual bodies, and with Blair Wing, Audrey Murphy,
Jayne K Rose and other dancers in wheelchairs brave enough to look to
technology to create more empowered prosthetic and robotic and animatronic
ways of moving and impacting on physical and virtual spaces. With these
amazing people I have learned so much, and with another team of colleagues
(including Mick Donegan, Aejaz Zahid, Colm O'Snodaigh, Robbie Perry, et al)
who bring their knowledges of teaching and learning, assistive tech and
medicine together to our joint projects, we have all contributed to the
creation of prosthetics and new interfaces with a group intelligence, in a
shared effort to help co-create new assistive technology tools to function
as prosthetics to enable full movement of minds and limbs.

2) And so: over to my many amazing colleagues: scholar-gypsies of mixed
ability and indefatigalbe zeal: as I rest my eyes for a day or two, I wonder
whether Rachel, Robbie, Bobby and Mick might for instance, put some thoughts
to the wider readership, in answer to two simple questions-
_What of value have we all done so far?
And
-What should we all do next, to see the function of prosthetics of all kinds
(robitics, visual, hci-based, implanted, accessorisable, and embodied and
imagined in all kinds of ways?

Over to you, wise ones. No doubt you will ask much more interesting
questions and engage in hitherto unimagined ways. I shall tune in. . .
Lx