The edge of vision
by Nicole Bauge
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Every fourth person lives in a world of trembling lines, floating text, and broken contours. The Edge of Focus is an attempt to convey how the familiar clarity of the world dissolves into blurred and quivering images for people with astigmatism.
Process
My work is divided into two parts: drawings created with charcoal and pushed to full abstraction through digital processing, and text that, in some places, becomes completely blurred — almost floating.
Astigmatism affects every fourth person on Earth, which makes it a fairly universal condition. But I chose not to treat it as “bad eyesight” — rather, as a subtle shift of reality, where car lights turn into arrows and light bends and scatters. This sensation of fluctuating sharpness became the visual foundation of my work.
There are also many numbers throughout the piece — none of them are random. They encode article titles and phrases written using the international cipher code in English. In this way, I reference an eye exam, where letters blur right before your eyes. Are your letters blurring too? Perhaps it’s time for an eye check-up.
Astigmatism affects every fourth person on Earth, which makes it a fairly universal condition. But I chose not to treat it as “bad eyesight” — rather, as a subtle shift of reality, where car lights turn into arrows and light bends and scatters. This sensation of fluctuating sharpness became the visual foundation of my work.
There are also many numbers throughout the piece — none of them are random. They encode article titles and phrases written using the international cipher code in English. In this way, I reference an eye exam, where letters blur right before your eyes. Are your letters blurring too? Perhaps it’s time for an eye check-up.
Looking at the lamp on my desk, I once again noticed how the light split in two. As I glanced around, searching for my glasses, I realized that the world around me had generally lost the sharpness of its contours. That’s how the idea for this work was born — to show the world through the eyes of a person with astigmatism.
Process
My work is divided into two parts: drawings created with charcoal and pushed to full abstraction through digital processing, and text that, in some places, becomes completely blurred — almost floating.
Astigmatism affects every fourth person on Earth, which makes it a fairly universal condition. But I chose not to treat it as “bad eyesight” — rather, as a subtle shift of reality, where car lights turn into arrows and light bends and scatters. This sensation of fluctuating sharpness became the visual foundation of my work.
Astigmatism affects every fourth person on Earth, which makes it a fairly universal condition. But I chose not to treat it as “bad eyesight” — rather, as a subtle shift of reality, where car lights turn into arrows and light bends and scatters. This sensation of fluctuating sharpness became the visual foundation of my work.
There are also many numbers throughout the piece — none of them are random. They encode article titles and phrases written using the international cipher code in English. In this way, I reference an eye exam, where letters blur right before your eyes.
Are your letters blurring too? Perhaps it’s time for an eye check-up.
Looking at the lamp on my desk, I once again noticed how the light split in two. As I glanced around, searching for my glasses, I realized that the world around me had generally lost the sharpness of its contours. That’s how the idea for this work was born — to show the world through the eyes of a person with astigmatism.
Every fourth person lives in a world of trembling lines, floating text, and broken contours. The Edge of Focus is an attempt to convey how the familiar clarity of the world dissolves into blurred and quivering images for people with astigmatism.
Find me on:
by Nicole Bauge
The edge of vision
