David Johnson - Interview Transcript - January 26 2020

Interview Transcription.

Artist participant: David Johnson

Interviewer: Andrea McSwan

Date: Jan 26 2020

Location: David Johnson Studio, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Audio recordings: R07-0007

Transcript timecode start time: [00:00:05.24]

[00:00:05.24] David Johnson: This is the studio come workshop. So I work here and, as I said earlier, I tend not to be here much on my own. I nearly always with an assistant. The different pieces I work on and make, they're quite varied both in scale, material and sort of concept. The processes are quite varied, that I go through to make things. So my poor assistant (laughs) has to be quite adaptive. She's an artist herself and quite a practical person, so she can turn her hand to most things that I ask of her. So we do quite a lot of...as you can see there are sort of objects around that are very much ready made objects that I collect and use in various pieces. There's the giant mannequin over there...

[00:01:08.17] Interviewer: Yep, the scarlet mannequin

[00:01:10.11] David Johnson: Scarlet mannequin. He was part of a piece called 'red man in white cage on green hill' which was...I made a sort of scaffolding cage to put him in and there are bits of the white scaffolding that you might see dotted around I think. And I placed him on what was supposed to be a green hill in the middle of Hitchin, which I can show you later

[00:01:34.28] Interviewer: ok

[00:01:36.24] David Johnson: Which I chose in the hottest summer ever a couple of years ago? That green hill turned into a yellow hill because it was so hot

[00:01:42.08] Interviewer: (laughter) I remember that summer

[00:01:45.26] David Johnson: So, yeah that was very much an installation made from pre-made objects that I just assembled in a different way. So pieces range from quite big things like that to small casts like...I'll show you one (feels for boxes). Should be here, there's a box...yeah, there's a box full of err....casts...this is one of my favourite pieces. Erm...they're cast coffee...(lifts heavy box and begins to move)...is this table clear?

[00:02:26.07] Interviewer: Err...there's...what's on it, I'm just coming round the back of you. There's black acrylic pieces on there...oh no, it's glass actually I think?

[00:02:34.00] David Johnson: Oh it's probably perspex actually.

[00:02:35.23] Interviewer: Right

[00:02:36.09] David Johnson: Erm....is that table more clear over there?

[00:02:38.29] Interviewer: Erm...(hesitates) yes, I can move these recorders. Would you like me to guide your arm?

[00:02:44.29] David Johnson: Sorry? Yeah, thanks, I'll bring..

[00:02:48.03] Interviewer: (guiding David) So if you just come over to me...to your left, to your left, more to your left and that should be fine.

[00:02:53.25] David Johnson: (places heavy box) you can see why I need an assistant (laughing). So yeah, these are cast coffee...as you can see pretty ordinary concrete casts of coffee beakers

[00:03:09.13] Interviewer: Oh yes! The plastic coffee cups

[00:03:12.18] David Johnson: Very disposable plastic beakers err, that we've all come across at err...sort of events usually when people give you a cup of coffee and they don't want to spend too much so they...disposable...so highly...

[00:03:29.28] Interviewer: So they've all got spoons that are set into them

[00:03:31.01] David Johnson: All got coffee spoons that are set at the same angle, they're at different levels. (rummaging though box and assessing casts through touch) Trying to find all the different levels...these are all quite big ones

[00:03:41.15] Interviewer: How could you work out the angle?

[00:03:44.13] David Johnson: It was just because of the beaker. The beaker's sort of very, each one is much the same as the next. A mass produced plastic beaker, so they're all the same, so you just lean the coffee spoon in the same...

[00:04:03.17] Interviewer: So the tip of the coffee spoon would sit against the edge...

[00:04:07.22] David Johnson: The side of the...the same angle of every single one. Err...and I just filled each beaker with more or less coffee - or concrete - in an ever decreasing or increasing wave of err...coffee either being filled or empty..depending if you're either an optimist or a pessimist (rummaging through box) I'm just trying to find the really low level ones. I set them out on occassion, when they're on show in a sort of wave...Mexican wave of coffee spoons. Err and I like the way it speaks of....there's one of the really low ones you see...

[00:04:58.23] Interviewer: Oh yes, you see most of the spoon

[00:05:01.11] David Johnson: (laughing) yes, still at the same angle. Erm...yes I put all the low level ones at the bottom. So the idea is....it's called time-lapse, you get time-lapse effect and time-lapse film and you can have a degree of animation, I suppose, or movement within this piece, supposed to be when it's set up properly.

[00:05:27.24] Interviewer: So do you lay them out in sequence of height?

[00:05:29.29] Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. I try to achieve that, which I haven't done there, but one can...you can perhaps do that if I find enough...I think that's the lowest...

[00:05:46.03] Interviewer: Yes, that's only about...

[00:05:48.14] David Johnson: Just a tiny amount....

[00:05:49.02] Interviewer:  just under a centimeter.

[00:05:49.27] David Johnson: yeah, so that would be the smallest.

[00:05:52.14] Interviewer: Oh, they're like Russian Dolls

[00:05:53.12] David Johnson: Sort of...

[00:05:55.12] Interviewer: Not that you can fit them inside each other but...

[00:05:57.09] David Johnson: No, but they're a sequence. They're a sequence of gradation

of nearly zero to full. So I like that idea of getting movement into something very static. (moves box and retrieves more objects). Something like this sort of piece I would do with a degree of assistance. Although, you know I can do a certain amount on my own. I do all the mixing of concrete myself, because I like to get the right consistency, you know sometimes I get that wrong but I like to sort of get into the feel of the concrete being mixed and the different materials that you put in concrete.

[00:06:52.29] Interviewer: And would you use a sensation of the resistance of the thickness to understand whether it's...?

[00:06:57.23] David Johnson: Very much so, very much so. But I use...with concrete....concrete's such a viscious substance, I don't know whether you've ever used it, but I think it's got lime in it. It's very strong alkaline and can burn your...

[00:07:12.24] Interviewer: Caustic?

[00:07:13.05] David Johnson: Very caustic yeah, so it burns your skin. So there's always a sort of conflict between wanting to get my hands in it and feel it and sort of protect my hands against that burning. I usually just get burnt (laughter) but I can wear latex gloves that I put on, but I usually just use my hands unprotected. So I like to do the mixing and then she'll do the pouring.

[00:07:42.27] Interviewer: ok

[00:07:44.15] David Johnson: And I will be directing as much as I can, with my ideas and what else I can contribute, she would then do the pouring into the cups. And then, once the drying process has finished, we together take the plastic cups off to reveal the concrete.

[00:08:06.03] Interviewer: I can see all the ribs. I can feel them aswell, but I can see all the ribs of the plastic

[00:08:11.21] David Johnson: Yeah, so you can see, it very much gives you the feel of the plastic beaker. But what I like about it is the...well I try to acheive, the movement through the gradation, going from full to empty or empty to full, with all the spoons pointing in exactly the same directional...

[00:08:35.27] Interviewer: yes

[00:08:38.21] David Johnson: If I've set it out properly (moving concrete beakers around), they should all be pointing in a similar direction. And if I got them all out, they'll have sort of a wave effect and I'll alter the direction of the spoon handles so they have a wave within them.

[00:09:06.15] Interviewer: And what was your inspiration for...

[00:09:09.28] David Johnson: Err...

[00:09:10.17] Interviewer: Or the idea behind it?

[00:09:11.27] David Johnson: I think it's this idea of time-lapse, the idea of time passing, trying to sort of caputure that in a static way. I mean a lot of, I think it comes also from the idea of, the old idea of negative space, trying to capture the negative in something, which I think is very much part of where I come from I think with the blindness. One becomes much more aware of negative space and sort of the reality of it, if you like, with blindness because err, you're not so erm...affected by the positive in a way. Or negative and positive become almost like equal partners. So often my casting is about capturing the negative space. So other pieces I'll just show you...I've got a draw full of pieces over here somewhere (moving across room)

[00:10:16.23] Interviewer:  You've got a chest of drawers to your left

[00:10:18.26] David Johnson: To my left? That's what I'm after...

[00:10:20.00] Interviewer: A bit further..

[00:10:21.00] David Johnson: To my left?

[00:10:22.27] Interviewer: Yes, there we are…   

[00:10:22.27] David Johnson: (feeling in drawers) Okay, so in here we've got numerous pieces, err there should be something called 'pigs'

[00:10:29.28] Interviewer: Yes to your right, oh you've skipped it

[00:10:34.01] David Johnson: I think we've got boxes with...can you see the writing on them?

[00:10:39.18] Interviewer: Err, yeah, I'll need to put my glasses on (laughter, whilst David feels for objects). So that's a big blue box that's got bubble-wrapped objects. This one says 'three times milk something....milk bottle?'

[00:10:59.09] David Johnson: I'll show you this one...this one is about negative space, I suppose (carries objects) where you've got...

[00:11:06.23] Interviewer: Ok, so you've got your table in front of you and that's where the perspex or glass is and there's a space to the right near the mannequin.

[00:11:16.08] David Johnson: Yep (places box down)

[00:11:20.22] Interviewer: I'll get my varifocal glasses so I can see

[00:11:24.01] David Johnson: Ok (unwrapping objects) so inside are milk cartons

[00:11:32.10] Interviewer: oh wow

[00:11:35.19] David Johnson: Cast in plaster err....again it's a sort of flow or sequence

[00:11:48.01] Interviewer: Yes. Would you mind if I took a photograph of this?

[00:11:56.03] David Johnson: Not at all.

[00:11:58.00] Interviewer: Actually I'll do it afterwards, just before we go

[00:12:00.28] David Johnson: Yeah, so here we are. There are three of them (places objects) so I'm just fascinated by the inside I suppose, you know sort of...

[00:12:11.25] Interviewer: So these are made of plaster-of-paris?

[00:12:13.27] David Johnson: This is called stone-plaster which is very hard plaster, basically the same as plaster-of-paris but much harder. It's much stone like...erm...so again, there's a time element to this. I feel anyway, you know the sequence, but it's captured, sort of thing. Erm and plaster is such a wonderful, as concrete is, a wonderful erm...material for capturing detail and somehow movement as well. There's a ripple...

[00:12:54.20] Interviewer: Yes, there's like a little...you can pick up the indentations where the plastic is kinked

[00:12:59.19] David Johnson: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:01.26] Interviewer: So this looks like almost solid milk

[00:13:05.19] David Johnson: (laughing)

[00:13:07.02] Interviewer: Because of the colour...

[00:13:07.26] David Johnson: It's the whiteness. It's like the milk itself

[00:13:10.26] Interviewer: Yes, but solid. How have you done it, it almost looks like you've filled up the negative space in the bottle?

[00:13:20.23] David Johnson: And then took the bottle away. That's exactly what we did do. We tipped the bottle, the plastic milk carton upside-down

[00:13:25.19] Interviewer: Oh, I see..

[00:13:27.01] David Johnson: cut the bottom off, you know, which was facing us, filled it up with levels of wet stone plaster and let it dry, go off. It sort of heats up as it dries. It's sort of chemical reaction, not like evaporating.

[00:13:45.23] Interviewer: ok

[00:13:45.29] David Johnson: It's a chemical process by which it goes off in 24 hours. And then just take the plastic off and you're left with the cast. And a wonderful revelation you get from that those....there's another piece I'll show you which does the same thing, yeah...err....you want to photograph it don't you?

[00:14:11.17] Interviewer: Yes, I was just thinking my phone's recording so...did you want to put these away before we get something else out?

[00:14:18.02] David Johnson: Well I just want to show you some other pieces

[00:14:19.17] Interviewer: ok..

[00:14:20.03] David Johnson: I can take the other piece out in front of the coffee cups, so that's ok. So yeah, another piece of a similar ilk...err if we just go back over to the chest of drawers (feels for objects in chest of drawers)...err, what have we got here?

[00:14:42.18] Interviewer: So there's two boxes here. One's called 'chewing gum' and the other's called 'mirror men' and then there's an egg-box that's wrapped up in bubblewrap

[00:14:56.02] David Johnson: So what we're after is a thing called 'Citrus Corners'

[00:15:03.05] Interviewer: There we are...citrus corners on the right-hand side. We've got pigs and elephants

[00:15:07.19] David Johnson: Pigs and elephants (laughing) yes, random.

[00:15:10.18] Interviewer: Right, that's the shoe-box with citrus corners

[00:15:14.03] David Johnson: Right, let's take these out and I'll show you these.

[00:15:14.09] Interviewer: Ok. Would you like me to guide you to the table?

[00:15:16.19] David Johnson: Would you mind?

[00:15:17.18] Interviewer: Not at all (guiding David by him holding the interviewer's elbow) Ok, just over here, just in front of you there...yep

[00:15:26.15] David Johnson: An early piece as it were. I started doing this quite a few years ago (unwraps objects). So this is casting the inside of polythene bags, so simply take an ordinary thin polythene bag, very sort of...

[00:15:44.04] Interviewer: oh yes

[00:15:45.00] David Johnson: And you just put stone-plaster in the corner of it and it comes out ripples and all. All the tiny little stretch marks and err...detail of err...

[00:16:00.14] Interviewer: That just looks like plastic

[00:16:03.23] David Johnson: yeah

[00:16:02.15] Interviewer: That looks like a miniature corner of a bin liner

[00:16:04.20] David Johnson: I know it's bizzarre the way it..

[00:16:06.23] Interviewer: And what material is this, because it's jet black. Or have you painted them?

[00:16:09.26] David Johnson: They've been painted, yeah. Err...it was for a commission for a perfume firm actually, who wanted blind people to respond to a new perfume and it was a citrus based perfume, so I just put a little bit of citrus on the point of these I think

[00:16:27.16] Interviewer: yes

[00:16:28.22] David Johnson: citrus colour...

[00:16:29.19] Interviewer: yes, that's bright, vivid yellow dot that covers the point of each of these

[00:16:35.12] David Johnson: Just to make the point about the citrus nature of the perfume. But what I get from these is the...very much the captured feel of erm...a bag filled with liquid and yet turned solid, you know. So that one's sort of a classic one where it captured the, as I say, the stretch marks on the bag or the ripples, as it... the thin polythene resists the weight of the plaster 

[00:17:11.17] Interviewer: yes

[00:17:11.23] David Johnson: That's what's going on there. And against....if you put it on a black or a...I usually, when I show this it's on a perpex, again black perspex base and you get this sort of reflection of the piece in the perspex. And they look as if they're emerging out of the surface as if this is the tip of the iceberg and there's a lot more underneath and you're just seeing the tip coming through the surface of whatever it is. A bit like an island or an iceberg or a volcanic island and I've shown these where I've got lots and lots of them in like an archepelego of these.

[00:17:52.11] Interviewer: Oh yes...

[00:17:53.15] David Johnson:  Just like a stretch of islands you know. So erm...again, you know, this sort of piece I would do with my long suffering assistant, doing the pouring and me saying 'a little bit more and a little bit less' and, you know, I would do the mixing of the plaster myself, I would make sure that I was happy with the consistency of the mix, you know getting that right, takes a bit of trial and error to get that right, so err I do that. And when I first started doing this type of work I was using help, I felt quite ill-at-ease doing that as I wasn't used to sharing the process of doing art with anyone else, it was very much a personal thing. But, over time I've come to enjoy the collaborative side of it, so it becomes more of a collaboration rather than an assistant, you know it's more of a discussion over how the piece is, or isn't, going and err...so rather than me leading this discussion it becomes more of a collaboration of equals you know. I'm not sure my assistant will agree with that, but that's the way I think of it (laughter)

[00:19:08.27] Interviewer: yes

[00:19:10.09] David Johnson: So when it comes to colour, for instance, you know the tips of these err, we just had a discussion, you know I can't see colour at all, but I've got very strong memories of colour, we went into a discussion about what colours were available on, you know the pallette. She would try and describe the colour, as best she could, and I would say 'yeah that sounds ok, but that one doesn't sound quite so good, let's go for that one', you know, I would just react to her description of what's available and jointly make a decision about what the most appropriate colour would be for what I want.

[00:19:44.14] Interviewer: And you'd rely on...

[00:19:45.25] David Johnson: Her description...

[00:19:46.27] Interviewer: Her description and your previous mental recollection of colours?

[00:19:50.21] David Johnson: Yeah, which is interesting I think. You know and whether it's kind of quotes, right or not, I'll never know. And I don't really care, well, to say I don't care sounds a bit strong, it doesn't worry me that it's sort of not what is in my head. Because you'll never know what's in my head and I'll never be able to compare what's in my head with what's out there. So that remains an unresolved erm...thing. Doesn't it?

[00:20:27.00] Interviewer: Yes

[00:20:27.18] David Johnson: Which I find quite an interesting fact, that I'll never know whether what's in my head, what the colour 'Trevor' is over there, that giant mannequin. I know he's red, I remember what red is very clearly. And if someone says to me, you know tomato ketchup or tomatoes or pillar-boxes, those colours come back to me with great power and strength and I'll always, I'll probably always have that. And if someone said 'oh yeah, it's red but it's got a little bit of yellow in it, I'll think 'oh yeah'

[00:21:01.11] Interviewer: Yes, that's quite a pure red. That I would see on a stop sign, stop sign. Yeah, and pillar-box red but it has got a sheen to it, but it hasn't got as much depth as pillar-box red, it's a flatter. I don't know if you've ever seen those big bottles of squeezy paint in primary schools?

[00:21:27.23] David Johnson: Oh yeah, I have, now you mention them I think I have

[00:21:30.27] Interviewer: So they have like black, bright yellow, green - it's that red

[00:21:38.03] David Johnson: It's that red. School art room red (laughter)

[00:21:39.22] Interviewer: Yes a very flat one. But it has got a sheen to it, slight sheen like a satiny finish

[00:21:46.29] David Johnson: So all the words you're using, of course, are now feeding into my brain and my head and my library of associations and thoughts and those are pinging colours up in my head, as they will do for everyone else I think. A sighted person would look at the object that you're talking about and sort of check it against, I suppose, your inner library of associations and say yes or no, or make some judgement about that colour. I'll simply be reacting to your words, the word sheen, or your story about school room bottles of paint. And I'll be kicking that through my memory of schools and pillar-boxes and stuff. So, I find all that stuff very very interesting and very inspiring, for what I do. The whole point of what I'm saying is the collaborative process is really important to me. Apart from the practicality of it err... just doing stuff, it's very much part of the creative process as well. Talking to people about how the piece is going, or not going

[00:22:57.01] Interviewer: yeah

[00:22:57.29] David Johnson: So, err...yes this is...shall we put these away?

[00:23:03.22] Interviewer: Yes. So you've got the biggest one to your right there.

[00:23:07.09] David Johnson: This one? Yep (moves and wraps objects)

[00:23:22.17] Interviewer: (helping guide) And then you've got to your...yep, that's one of them. And similar postition again. Here we are. Just to your left and down. And I can guide you back to the drawers. Straight in front of you and then to the right and about your knee level and you just need to rotate that ninety degrees. Yep, that's it.

[00:24:03.24] David Johnson: So this one here is quite an old piece

[00:24:08.04] Interviewer: This is called 'pigs'?

[00:24:09.14] David Johnson: Pigs yeah. I'll just show you this (guided back to table) you may seen images of this on the website (unwraps).

[00:24:13.07] Interviewer: Ok. I'll guide you back to the table.

[00:24:29.06] David Johnson: Appears to be wrapped. Can you pull that bag?

[00:24:31.15] Interviewer: Yes, certainly.

[00:24:35.13] David Johnson: So this is called pigs

[00:24:37.25] Interviewer: Ooh, I didn't realise there was a heater there. I remember now, you said you'd put one on. I just got a warm

[00:24:42.03] David Johnson: Glow

[00:24:42.08] Interviewer: waft of air then (laughter)

[00:24:45.00] David Johnson: Probably welcome

[00:24:47.12] Interviewer: So this is a similar finish to the bags, plaster with black. It's so smooth, the black. I mean there's no

brush marks. What is it -  is it a spray?

[00:24:57.00] David Johnson: No, well it's the cast that's so smooth. I cast from things like baking trays or metal trays. So it's the finish of the tray that gives you that incredible smooth finish of the erm...the cast. And then we spray, usually spray paint

[00:25:18.17] Interviewer: ok

[00:25:19.27] David Johnson: And that, being a spray paint you get a very fine finish

[00:25:24.00] Interviewer:  Yes, because there's no brush marks at all.

[00:25:26.02] David Johnson: No

[00:25:26.06] Interviewer: That's what makes it so lovely and the pigs are...I can see their hair, the texture of their hair

[00:25:34.18] David Johnson: So this is a very disturbing piece I find, it's kind of...these are plastic pigs that I've bought ready made from a toy shop

[00:25:42.12] Interviewer: hmmm hmmm

[00:25:44.13] David Johnson: Erm...and because being toy pigs or animals, they are all exactly the same. They are cast out of a diecast plastic animal making system, probably in China or Japan, somewhere in the Far East, I think these came from. So, I just set them in different levels emerging from the plaster. So in my mind it kind of feels like these are a cohort of rather strange animals emerging from some kind of swamp environment. And it's got a sort of dystopic, post-apocalyptic feel to it, in my mind. You know, what's going on here? Are these pigs, you know, like a group of pigs that are emerging in a rather malevolent way in a world that's all that's left is these pigs. Pigs that are all exactly the same. So I find it rather a strange thing, but again it's, on one level it's also about what you can see or feel erm...suggesting that there's more going on here. This is only part of a much bigger and stranger event, that you've just got a snap-shot of.

[00:27:25.29] Interviewer: So how did you cast the pigs?

[00:27:28.11] David Johnson: The pigs, they are the original pigs, they're plastic

[00:27:32.13] Interviewer: Oh I see...

[00:27:32.25] David Johnson: They're painted

[00:27:33.16] Interviewer: Painted. And have you...so the ones that are furthest out...

[00:27:39.02] David Johnson: In, oh, out

[00:27:40.06] Interviewer: Did you stand them on little stands?

[00:27:43.07] David Johnson: Erm...it was a long time ago that we did this. I think we did have to do that on some of them, yeah. And the ones that are nearly submerged, they are bits of the pig cut, you know so the whole pig isn't below. They're just cut-aways, but it looks as if they are part of, again, you know the same trickery going on here, suggesting a whole pig below there. But there isn't literally a whole pig.

[00:28:11.24] Interviewer: yes. Well also because the lake rises up and bulges a little bit around them, like it's been displaced

[00:28:21.15] David Johnson: Yeah yeah. You might read it slightly differently I suppose. So, but...yeah I sort of moved on a little bit from this piece. The same ideas are still with me, I guess, that I'm working through the idea of blindness, you know the blind side of this is that with blindness you only ever get a...you quite often only get a fraction of an object to feel and understand the whole object by. With healthy eye-sight you can take the whole of an object in with your field of vision and understand it, whether it's a tree or a building or a mountain, you can stand back and look at the whole thing, and to understand it for what it is. With blindness often, you've just got a fraction of the object you've got your hand on. For instance, if I came into this room and didn't know this room as well as I do and put my hand on this table, all I would have to go on, to understand this table, would be what's under my hand. Ok, I can move my hand along and understand it a bit better, but the initial touch is just (tapping) that. Whereas, with eye-sight you can take in vast amounts of...

[00:29:40.07] Interviewer: Scale

[00:29:40.24] David Johnson: It's all about scale and proximity isn't it. With blindness you lose quite a lot of the distal, you know, the non-proximal data. Ok, you've still got sound, distant sound data but the visual data you don't have with total sight-loss. So I'm trying to enjoy that side of blindness if you like, as it were, through the pieces I make. Enjoy thinking about that fact that you're only getting a bit of an object. It kind of then led me to sort of investigating that fact, about blindness, that led me to the story of the six blindmen and the elephant. If you've heard of that one?

[00:30:31.27] Interviewer: Oh vaguely. Did they all have a different perception of what it was?

[00:30:36.25] David Johnson: Exactly, yeah, that's all about...

[00:30:37.19] Interviewer: Based on what they could feel of it?

[00:30:38.18] David Johnson: Feel, that's right. So each of the blind men, six blind men, only had a little bit of the elephant to go on, so they understood the elephant in six different ways. And that's true of all blind people. And the real moral of that story is that the king, or leader of the country, would turned to his advisors, 'remember when you advise me, you're advising me from your particular point of view. And you've only got your point of view, there are lots of different points ov view'. And he illustrated that fact of human nature, by referring to these six blind men round an elephant, trying to understand the whole of the elephant. So, and you so often come across this you know, as a blind person. Like I went to ermm....I visited the Henry Moore centre in Hertfordshire, I don't know whether you know that? It's on the border of Hertfordshire and Essex, Henry Moore sculptures. And err, famously his sculptures are massive aren't they, and I was shown around this huge, monolithic sculptures or metal casts in the grounds of this place and I put my hands on these things and, of course, didn't get them at all, they were so big. So I felt immediatlely like a blind man and the elephant. But then they took me in and they described one or two of them, which was great and then they took me into the studio area and they brought out of this sort of safe, these maquettes that Henry Moore had made of these giant objects. And then let me touch these small maquettes, which I could then understand the whole thing because I had a small scale version of them, to handle. So ones knowledge of the big piece is then, closer. So it's all about scale and understanding.

[00:32:48.08] Interviewer: Yes, interesting. I was erm...when I worked on Judge Dredd the sculptures needed to replicate the Statue of Liberty's head and they had a maquette in the studio. And scaled the whole thing up from that maquette life size, to this huge head that we could then be in. But it reminded me of the puzzle books as a child, that was a grid and there was a drawing on one side that was already pre-drawn into the grid and you had to replicate that it the next grid.

[00:33:19.20] David Johnson: Scale it up

[00:33:20.09] Interviewer: Yes, or just necessarily copy it from the same scale

[00:33:24.12] David Johnson: Copy it, same scale, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you just broke the thing up into those little boxes?

[00:33:30.13] Interviewer: Yes, one piece at a time

[00:33:34.24] David Johnson: So err, yeah, part of I think what I do, dwells on that fact, that you're missing quite a lot of what's out there, through not being able to just view it with your field of vision. But again, trying to enjoy that fact, or learn from it I suppose.

[00:33:58.12] Interviewer: yes

[00:34:01.17] David Johnson: So again, have you see my piece 'Too Big Too Feel'?

[00:34:06.02] Interviewer: Only in photographs. But yes, I was thinking about that just when you were talking about

[00:34:10.18] David Johnson: So that's all about that. The title gives it away. Yeah, it's too big to understand, it's too big to get for everybody. Well, I suppose if you see a photograph, which I've never done, of course, of it...err...which is obviously a photograph that I think tries to take the whole thing in, in the one photograph. So you have to stand right back to get it in, because it's eighteen metres long.

[00:34:37.02] Interviewer: So this was braille? But huge scale braille?

[00:34:40.18] David Johnson: It's just giant braille, you know. But it's so big you can't read it by touch, unless you're some sort of gymnast who could clamber over it (laughing) and sort of try and remember where you...people did try and do that. Err...the only way to really read it is, as a sighted person, who can read braille by sight (laughing) and read it that way, either from a photograph or stand back, if you're there about a hundred yards back to view the whole thing (laughs).

[00:35:14.14] Interviewer: Yes. And did it say anything?

[00:35:14.20] David Johnson: Oh yes. Well the words, which I kept quiet for a long time, the words were 'seeing red' and err...sort of one word 'seeing' in grade two braille where you have contractions. So the 'ing' in 'seeing' was a single symbol and then the word 'red', one of the dots, they were all coloured white, apart from one of the dots, which was coloured red. Which was just a mystery making, mischief making intervention by me

[00:35:52.15] Interviewer: Yes, I saw a photograph it looked like the Royal Holloway University was in the background.

[00:35:56.07] David Johnson: That's right. That was where it was showed at Hannah's conference 'Blind Creations'. She'd asked me to show it there

[00:36:03.29] Interviewer: Yes, and there was like a grassy sloped

[00:36:06.19] David Johnson: Beautiful grass slope, which I set it out on with a friend and we had great fun doing that. And ermm...it then stayed at the Royal Holloway campus for about two years. It was part of their art collection for two years and then suddenly they decided they wanted to build a new building where it was, so it had to go

[00:36:26.23] Interviewer: ok

[00:36:27.11] David Johnson: It then came back to Hitchin and we put it on a place I'll show you, when we go into town later. It's an open park, public space in the middle of Hitchin called Windmill Hill. And I set it out on the hill, which is like that bank, it's a sort of sloped park that you can see from quite a way off, in the middle of town. So you could see these wierd dots that appeared one day on Windmill Hill, overnight you know. The local twittersphere was going bezerk (laughs) with people saying...

[00:37:03.19] Interviewer: twittersphere?! (laughs)

[00:37:04.25] David Johnson: the aliens have arrived. Err and then interestingly, amusingly every evening, you see this park is where teenagers gather in the evenings, as teenagers do. And they were messing around with these domes, big meter wide domes of concrete, they'd mess around with them and alter the shapes and the layout of them, making different shapes, you know some of them rude and others just playful and we enjoyed every day going up there and photographing the different shapes that they'd created. They thought they were being mischeivous, well I suppose they were, but actually they were being part of the process of what this was about. So, erm, that's where it ended up. In fact, it ended up being trashed by the kids, they got over involved in it and started breaking the domes up, they just had to be sort of swept up one day, you know too crumbled. But that piece can always be done again..

[00:38:16.23] Interviewer: yes

[00:38:18.25] David Johnson: I've got the wherewithal here to recast them if necessary. So er, that was the life of that piece. So that's all about things being too big to understand, the scale of something being...you know, it can work the other way can't it. You know things that are too small to understand, like quantum physics.

[00:38:39.28] Interviewer: yes, yes. I was talking to my daughter about that at the weekend (laughs)

[00:38:48.13] David Johnson: So yeah, I find scale of very small things or very big things quite interesting areas to think about and do art about, if I can. I think blindness helps with that. Once again, blindness gain kicks in to assist.

[00:39:06.09] Interviewer: And what was that phrase you used earlier on...blindness?

[00:39:10.12] David Johnson: Blindness gain?

[00:39:11.10] Interviewer: Perhaps that was the phrase...

[00:39:13.15] David Johnson: Disability gain? That's the one?

[00:39:18.18] Interviewer: Perhaps it was disability gain...

[00:39:20.03] David Johnson: Disability gain is an idea that was, I think, first written about by somebody called Rosemarie Garland-Thompson twenty odd years ago. I think she was the first person to consider disability isn't all bad, there are positive generative sides to disability that we can learn from. Whereas, we all want to get rid of, you know, painful or harmful things whilst we'll probably always have them, we might as well enjoy what's good about them. There are good things that come from disability and blindness, so the idea of blindness gain came from her I think and then people like Georgina Kleege and Hannah Thompson have developed that idea. Blind Creations was all about blindness gain, the idea that blindness, whether it's her and her colleague Vanessa Warne

[00:40:22.06] Interviewer: Yes, from Canada?

[00:40:24.09] David Johnson: From Canada. They were very keen to broach this idea that, through the arts, blindness can produce some interesting and creative possiblities. Because of blindness, not in spite of it. That's the idea I think. A different way of looking at blindness or disability. And I think, you know if you talk to her, she talks about the model for disability, in disability studies, have changed you know, from this idea that disability is this sort of terrible, tragic thing, to the idea....and then it moved onto the idea that disability is actually, if you think about it, is a socially imposed thing. A lot of disability comes from the environment that we build around us. The classic way of illustrating that, is if you take away the steps from a wheelchair users life, then they will feel far less disabled

[00:41:29.17] Interviewer: yes

[00:41:31.15] David Johnson: If you just had ramps. If everywhere just had ramps then people in wheelchairs wouldn't feel nearly as disabled as they do at the moment, with steps everywhere. So the disability they feel is to do with the enviroment not to do just with their loss of ability to walk. So developing that new model, called the social model, and that social model has now led onto the idea of disability gain. Different models have emerged from the social model, that I'm interested in my research.

[00:42:08.20] Interviewer: yes

[00:42:08.23] David Johnson: So it's all moving on in quite an exciting and positive way. So, there we are.

[00:42:17.13] Interviewer: wonderful. Would you like a hand wrapping any of these up?

[00:42:21.11] David Johnson: So let's put this away, yep, erm...I'll put the pigs to bed (laughter) ok and then the other pieces that I've got around here are a similar mode to what I've been showing you (wrapping up and putting things away)

[00:42:54.23] Interviewer: Absolutely I've got the bag on the table open, with the neck of the bag open pointing to you

[00:43:00.20] David Johnson: Great, I'll just cover this up in bubblewrap...is there any more bubble wrap around?

[00:43:06.06] Interviewer: No that's it, you've got all the bubblewrap on there (guiding) so I can guide this...if you go down

[00:43:08.17] David Johnson: down

[00:43:12.11] Interviewer: And then forward, there we go and then into the bag

[00:43:22.23] David Johnson: Right there we go

[00:43:25.07] Interviewer: And then I can guide you over to the chest-of-drawers, if you just turn around one hundred and eighty degrees, you're now stood in front of the drawers and just if you lean down, that's the citrus corner...and the gap to the left, the gap to the left...

[00:43:39.20] David Johnson: to the left

[00:43:40.23] Interviewer: yes, that's about where that goes

[00:43:48.15] David Johnson: So  those elephants are much the same as the pigs, it's just that they're elephants that are cut up and set into plaster, to look as if they're emerging wierdly from the plaster.

[00:44:02.16] Interviewer: It's great to see all the objects in here, like the piano keys stacked over in the corner behind us here.

[00:44:12.00] David Johnson: Yeah, well the work. My piano tuning brings me to pianos and fixing them occassionally, well I have help to fix them. So there's lots of piano stuff here. There's a giant spike thing which is leaning precariously over there. Can you see that? It's in an expanded polystyrene sleeve?

[[00:44:35.03] Interviewer: I'm just trying to see. I can't see a spike. In front of us there are two high backed chairs and a piano that's kind of covered in cloth. And behind it that's an overhead projector and this here, there's nothing other a wall unit, that's dark wood, that's very ornate with a mirror.

[00:44:56.10] David Johnson: That's a harmonium

[00:44:58.20] Interviewer: Oh yes, I can see yes. I think my great grandmother may have had one of those

[00:45:06.11] David Johnson: Yeah they were very popular in the nineteenth century in chapels and churches

[00:45:13.09] Interviewer: Right, I think I've just spotted the spike. It's lying horizontally in front of the harmonium, so I can see an orange....

[00:45:21.27] David Johnson: tip?

[00:45:22.22] Interviewer: Tip protruding out of, what looks like, a ten foot long polystyrene obelisk?

[00:45:28.21] David Johnson: You've got it. Beautifully described, that's exactly what it is. And what it is...underneath the packaging  is a...it's a sort of staglatite coming down from the ceiling. It's made from expanded polystyrene and it was cut, manufacutred by a firm that forms expanded polystyrene. I asked them to cut this shape. Which is like a three metre long erm...cone, so it's a very formalised...

[00:46:03.17] Interviewer: Ooh, I wanted to talk to you about this! Is it black with kind of gold almost..?

[00:46:07.26] David Johnson: yes

[00:46:08.06] Interviewer: Yes. I've seen that! I was going to ask you just then! Oh, what was that about...ok, sorry!

[00:46:11.26] David Johnson: So this is it! It's called 'Time is the Essence' and again, it was actually part of the commission for this perfume firm, that I mentioned earlier. And the idea of it was to erm...think about or to suggest err...the essence of something being distilled from other things. So, I just got this very formalized stalagtite made for me and then I covered it, with help, covered it with a canvas sheet (tries to uncover it)...this sheet....

[00:46:52.00] Interviewer: No, it's completlely

[00:46:52.29] David Johnson: Oh it's completlely...you're just seeing the orange?

[00:46:55.01] Interviewer: I can just see the orange tip

[00:46:56.06] David Johnson: That's the orange tip. But it's all covered in canvas and we painted it jet black and we then covered that with sand and grit to give it a kind of natural, very textured finish, which unfortunatley you can't see. And then we painted this wonderful, well I think it's wonderful, sort of double-helix spiral around it like a vein of..

[00:47:21.17] Interviewer: yes

[00:47:22.03] David Johnson: of gold almost shining through the black and then it ended up with that golden tip at the end. And in the actual gallery we put, at the bottom, a real orange cut in half with the juice of the orange oozing out from it onto a white tile. So it hopefully suggested the idea that somehow rock was sort of oozing the essence of orange

[00:47:52.17] Interviewer: It does!

[00:47:52.24] David Johnson: (laughs)

[00:47:53.20] Interviewer: I mean when I saw it, when you used the word vein

[00:47:55.17] David Johnson: vein yeah...

[00:47:57.03] Interviewer: Yes, it's like the vein you'd get in marble

[00:48:00.07] David Johnson: yeah

[00:48:00.25] Interviewer: That shape. But it was vivid. That's what I recall when I'm thinking about it. It was kind of golden orange, almost like lava.

[00:48:08.20] David Johnson: Yeah, that's right almost like hot lava. So deciding on that orange was a fascinating process of collaboration with my assistant. When we just went to the art shop and stood in front of the orange counter (laughter). She listed all these oranges and I said 'no I don't like that one', from her descriptions you know, 'I do like that one, yeah that one sounds good'. So we shortlisted a few oranges and decided on one or two I think and that was the orange we used. And I'll never know whether it was the right one, but in my head it shines out. So, it's fascinating revisiting visuality. You start to see these things with great strength again in your head. And that's what's so bloody amazing, thrilling. So, if you really start talking to people and listening to people and using materials in this sort of way, the visualisation in your head becomes so strong erm, so it's quite a thrilling experience to go through

[00:49:19.14] Interviewer: yes

[00:49:20.06] David Johnson: To go through. Totally unexpected. When I was in my late thirties and this was happening I thought, wow, this is quite incredible. So I try and instill this into people that are prepared to listen to  me and you know and other visually impaired people without being, hopefully without being, condisending. Like the workshop I did yesterday, I was trying to say, really what I described as active or deep touching and listening. Really listen to not just what the person, the audio describer is saying, but listen to the sound or his or her voice and the sound around with the voice. You might loose track of what they're saying but if you listen more intently and actively to what's going on, you derive so much more, in this case, about spatiality the space we're in. Learning about the space from the sounds that are around, it's all part of this process of using your sensory toolkit more effectively, I suppose.

[00:50:33.16] Interviewer: yes

[00:50:34.06] David Johnson: I think there's a lot that we don't.... I'm learning this as I go along, that there's alot that we...sort of untapped still in our sensory toolkit.

[00:50:45.24] Interviewer: hmm. Yes, I'd like to do a bit of research on that, you know, as part of this thesis, synaesthesia, or just you know a bit more understanding of it. So did you have full sight until you were in your thirties?

[00:51:00.08] David Johnson: Not really. I've got this thing called Retinisis Pigmentosa. Have you heard of that?

[00:51:05.10] Interviewer: I have

[00:51:05.21] David Johnson: It's a degenerative condition of the retina and it's hereditary. So my parents probably both have the faulty gene. Neither of them sort of had the condition, but erm...and I've got three brothers and none of them have got the condition, such as it presents itself. They think that all of us have got the faulty gene, so all our children will have the faulty gene. But, the prognosis is that they'd have to meet someone else with the same faulty gene for it to become a problem and the chances of that happening are very slight. So retinisis pigmentosa is a degenerative thing, well it varies from person to person. But with me it was a very slow degeneration of eyesight over my entire life. As a child I had pretty good vision, I had normal schooling and I learnt to read normally. My mobility wasn't affected at all until my late teens really. I could do sport and stuff and it was only in my teens that it showed itself with night vision going. Seeing in the dark was beginning to be difficult.

[00:52:27.15] Interviewer: ok

[00:52:28.26] David Johnson: So I found going out in the dark quite tricky erm... and because I did a lot of art, I was drawing and painting then a lot, it started to show itself then. Colour perception started to go a bit I think. I started to enjoy just doing monochrome stuff and went away from colour. And because of that I think...

[00:52:53.17] Interviewer: And was there a particular colour that went first?

[00:52:56.27] David Johnson: Ooh, good question. Err...I don't think so, really. I think it was just more...well there probably is. If you  talk to opthalmic experts its...in my case it started in the peripherary of the retina. That's where the disease first struck, as it were and worked it's way inwards to the central vision. So I retained central vision for a long time. I could read print, normal print until my kind of early twenties and it was ok. And then it wasn't ok and I had to use maginfying glasses erm and my mobility was ok until late twenties. I started using a white cane in my late twenties. I think there are colours that are more percieved in the periphery than in the middle of the field. I'm not entirely sure about that, so yeah, I wasn't aware of particular colours going before other colours. It was just the whole lot that started going. And I started thinking more in monochrome, from the art point of view anyway. Erm...and now, even though I think in colour, as it were, I do quite often still go to monochrome. I think quite a lot of my work is sort of black and white or....simple sort of

[00:54:37.05] Interviewer: yes

[00:54:39.02] David Johnson: You know, I don't mix colours at all very much. They tend to be stark primaries or stark blacks, stark whites

[00:54:46.24] Interviewer: yes, I was thinking that when we were looking at the red man

[00:54:49.06] David Johnson: yeah, that red man

[00:54:52.01] Interviewer: the yellow on citrus corners

[00:54:52.27] David Johnson: yeah, they're quite stark colours, they're not sort of subtle blends or pastelly

[00:54:57.02] Interviewer:  no, no. There's no white in any of it.

[00:55:00.25] David Johnson: No no.

[00:55:01.17] Interviewer: No opaqueness

[00:55:03.26] David Johnson: No that's right. That's interesting, I've only just thought about that. But yeah, so err...what we've got here is very much the stuff I've been doing for quite a few years. But since being at college at the RCA, as I said earlier, I think they're introducing me to lots of new things and giving me the support to do new processess and new materials. And I'm beginning to stretch out a bit. Things are moving a bit, you know, which is quite exciting at this stage.

[00:55:41.00] Interviewer: And this was the plastic you were talking about with life drawing?

[00:55:44.14] David Johnson: Plastic. Yeah, well 3D printing is really interesting. I'm using that it's really thrilling, which is a piece called 'transient objects caught in a multi-dimensional moment of improbable pringles'

[00:56:04.26] Interviewer: Improbable pringles?

[00:56:07.09] David Johnson: Pringles

[00:56:07.18] Interviewer: Like the crisp?

[00:56:08.26] David Johnson: Yes (laughter). That's the snappytitle. I'll see if I can repeat that. 'Transient objects caught in a multi-dimensional moment of improbable pringles!' (laughter). So the idea is, I'll explain. The idea of that is to try and capture that moment of touch, that I mentioned earlier, when you're just introduced to something and you put your hand on it. So, err...I don't know, just any object you put your hand on if I can find one (reaches out)

[00:56:40.18] Interviewer: Yeah you're near an office chair. That's the back of it

[00:56:43.10] David Johnson: Office chair....ok, not the best object, but ok. You place your hand on something and you're immediate err relationship with this thing, is the points of touch that the fingers have with the object. In this case you've got four point on the back of the chair, the hard plastic, which is quite an interesting piece, because my thumb is on the soft inner bit, you know the upholstered bit (laughs). So you know I'm getting a kind of weird, I mean I happen to know what this is so it's not so weird, but if you were to show this in ignorance of what it was, you'd get this reading of four points of sort of erm...hardness on your fingers and one point of softness on your thumb. And you'd think 'ooh, interesting object' it's got multiple textures here, what's going on. Immediately you'd be thinking around that interesting coincidence of textures. Err, so anyway this piece is about capturing that sensation, that experience just touching something. So what we've done, I've used, I think the first thing was a coffee cup, a batch of coffee cups.... you can tell I do a lot of drinking of coffee (laughter) I held a coffee beaker, a ceramic coffee beaker with my four fingers and my thumb like that (demonstrates miming holding a coffee cup) and we just, what we do we...oh yeah, this guy drew a coffee beaker on a screen a typical coffee beaker. He then drew a hand holding the coffee beaker, over the beaker...in that way, holding it like that. He took away the beaker, he deleted the beaker from the screen, deleted the hand and we were left with these five points of touch. Four floating like little spots, floating on screen and err...he said 'oh my goodness they look like pringles!' (laughter) because they were little oval curved oval shapes, which is what the point of touch were these little oval

[00:59:02.04] Interviewer: yes

[00:59:03.14] David Johnson: Points. And he sort of called someone over who'd been involved in what we were doing and said 'look at the screen and what do you think it is?' and she said 'err, right well I think it's a sort of coffee, some sort of conical shaped object being delineated by these five points. So she could you see what the points of touch were implying

[00:59:28.27] Interviewer: And was she sighted?

[00:59:31.16] David Johnson: Yes, she was sighted. Yes, two sighted people and me were in this conversation. The guy was at the screen drawing, I was telling him what to draw and she was just sort of seeing what she thought of these five floating pringles on the screen. Do you see what I mean?

[00:59:48.19] Interviewer: Yes

[00:59:50.19] David Johnson: So a bit like...and we thought it was a bit like a mime of Marcel Marceau, where he delinitates the shape of something with his hand...

[01:00:00.11] Interviewer: oh yes, like a box or a wall or a ceiling

[01:00:03.09] David Johnson: You know. He just does that. Crazy guy with his hands and sets into your head the idea of something being there when it isn't there. Exactly the same idea I think, that these points of touch, these pringles...floating...we called it a constellation of pringles floating there, implied an object that wasn't there (laughter) so...

[01:00:24.28] Interviewer: And that's that negative space that you were talking about?

[01:00:28.12] David Johnson: Err...it's more about....it's not so much negative space, it's about...well I suppose it is about negative space, but it's about a moment of touch, a moment of touch. It's about the experience of touch, which I think blindness helps you get more readily. Because as a sighted person, you can obviously look at what you're about to touch out of, usually, cautious careful in case it's harmful or fragile. So you look first with a big sweep of the eye over the object and then you reach out and touch. The blind person, you know they reach out and touch and often get themselves into trouble. So you don't have that intial kind of erm...sweep of awareness. That's right, that's right, that initial overview of what you're about to touch. With blindness you just touch because that's your way of understanding the world usually. Or one of the ways. Err...so it's about trying to record that moment of touch. Sorry, let's get round to the original point about 3D printing, so we thought 'right, we want to try and find a sculptural way of recording this. Making an object that communicated this idea. So with 3D printing we tried to create pieces that encaptured that, those pringles, those points of touch on an object that sort of isn't there, that is there, you know?

[01:02:14.21] Interviewer: hmm hmmm

[01:02:08.03] David Johnson: So we've done various things using something called Voronoi Logic where it's a sort of way of 3D printing using a system called Voronoi, that architects use, to make models of plan buildings. You know, buildings they're planning to do. They use a similar idea. We're using it to construct coffee cups that aren't there, or apples that aren't there or...at the moment those are the only two objects we've tried. Erm...so you we're kind of using 3D printing to do that kind of thing err...which is quite interesting and err... I'm beginning to use sound quite a lot as well. This is where I'm tying to bring my musical activities into the picture a bit more....because they have been quite... I've used sound a little bit in the past but in college I'm starting to use sound a lot more. So, I've done a piece about pianos actually, about the struck string. I've recorded a piano string being struck and things I'm doing with that, with sound technology which is quite new to me. But I'm having to learn alot quite quickly about that side of things. So, as I say, college has introduced me to a whole new realm of things that's quite interesting and stretching me out a bit.

[01:03:57.25] Interviewer: Yeah. That's great. Well I'd be interested to hear the sound elements to see if that might feed into the sound-track at some point, if that would be ok?

[01:04:10.01] David Johnson: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean sound and film is something I've been wrestling with. The idea of accessible films, which is always a bit of a problematic area. I don't know whether you've come across audio descriptions of films for visually impaired people? I'm trying to think about how to use sound in a more, in a way to bring films and therefore the visual I suppose, more into blind people's, visually impaired people's lives. There's a big debate in the world of accessible film making and accessible theatre as to whether audio description should be bolted on to the end, like it is at the moment, or whether it should be integrated into the making of film. Like some people think it should be integrated, other people throw their hands up in horror at the idea that an artist should be limited by having to work towards accessiblity that way. They feel it would be a terrible constraint on the creative process if they have to do that. I disagree with that. I think, again, disability gain comes in here. I think if you do think about access, from the outset of when you're creating something it can produce an interesting asthetic results, which would be good for everyone, not just blind people.

[01:05:56.26] Interviewer: Yeah, Vocaleyes were talking about that when I met with them last year.

[01:06:00.06] David Johnson: Ahh! yeah Vocaleyes, yeah. Well I've done a bit of work for them. They're the sort of leading lights on that in audio description. Have you come across Louise Fryer?

[01:06:20.01] Interviewer: Yes, I think she...

[01:06:22.22] David Johnson: She's a guru, she's written a book, a guide to audio description

[01:06:27.29] Interviewer: Maybe I'm getting confused with some of the people that I met there. But I'll look her up

[01:06:33.03] David Johnson: Yeah, I'm not sure she works. She had a terrible stroke a few years ago, so she's...

[01:06:39.02] Interviewer: Right, no. I havent' met her, I was thinking of somebody else.

[01:06:41.22] David Johnson: Was Roz Chalmers there?

[01:06:44.05] Interviewer: Who did I meet...I met Matthew Cock

[01:06:45.17] David Johnson: Oh yeah, Matthew, he's the boss...

[01:06:47.13] Interviewer: And Anna...I want to say Friedman. Fineman

[01:06:54.11] David Johnson: Ok, yeah...I think so.

[01:06:56.16] Interviewer: And there was somebody called Rachel, can't recall her name.
And she was a PhD studnet. Her supervisor is Alison Eardley at Westminster

[01:07:07.23] David Johnson: ok

[01:07:12.11] Interviewer: Who was somebody that put me in touch with her? I trying to remember now, I think so. No,

I found Alison Eardley via the Scottish Sensory Centre in Edinburgh University. She was listed as one of the people involved in that, so I then met her in London and she knew people. And she knew John Kennedy in Canada, or does know him, so...

[01:07:31.02] David Johnson: Oh yeah, he's an interesting chap

[01:07:33.02] Interviewer: I've been introduced via email and outlined at that point what I was doing. So, we have made a connection but it's yet to be developed.

[01:07:43.01] David Johnson: Liz Axel, have you come across her?

[01:07:45.06] Interviewer: no

[01:07:47.00] David Johnson: She's a sort of colleague I supppose. She started the organisation 'Art Beyond Sight'

[01:07:52.14] Interviewer: Oh, I've heard of that

[01:07:53.17] David Johnson: Yeah, that's her baby...America. Both John and her are quite elderly now so I think, they're sort of...not so active...but they're key players in the whole pitch. So there's a lot of stuff going on isn't there. And it's all quite...I'm finding I'm having with my work, I'm having to be quite strong about...and failing miserably most of the time...about you know, not trying to keep all of these plates spinning and to try and narrow things down a bit. Because, otherwise you're pulled in so many different directions you end up not being in any direction at all.

[01:08:40.01] Interviewer: yes

[01:08:42.14] David Johnson: I'm finding....

[01:08:43.17] Interviewer: Yeah, I definitely...

[01:08:44.00] David Johnson: it's still a good problem. But it is a problem.

[01:08:47.09] Interviewer:  yes

[01:08:47.05] David Johnson: Do you know what I mean?

[01:08:47.27] Interviewer: It does have to get focused.

[01:08:48.20] David Johnson: yeah

[01:08:49.16] Interviewer: And decide what not to include

[01:08:51.03] David Johnson: yeah! (laughs)

[01:08:51.25] Interviewer: That's what I've been finding in the first year

[01:08:57.02] David Johnson: I need to find out about your work, because this has all been about me. And you haven't talked about you at all!

[01:09:01.15] Interviewer: (laughs).

[01:09:05.06] David Johnson: I'm fascinated to hear about that

[01:09:10.03] Interviewer: Absolutely

[01:09:12.23] David Johnson: But I mean, I don't want..so, shall we..I mean...I'm not sure there's much more I can...

[01:09:17.26] Interviewer: that's ok. Maybe if I turn my phone off from recording, I could just take a few photos?

[01:09:24.11] David Johnson: yeah, oh yeah, sure...

[01:09:26.05] Interviewer:  of what we've laid out and then we can pack that away? If that's ok?

[01:09:27.22] David Johnson: yeah. Of course

[01:09:31.04] Interviewer: Brilliant. And yeah I'm happy to tell you...

[01:09:33.26] David Johnson: And shall I...how are we doing... have we been up here for a while?

[01:09:37.21] Interviewer: Well that recordings saying one hour and nine

[01:09:42.05] David Johnson: Good heavens, wow...time...amazing

[01:09:44.15] Interviewer: I know, it's easily done...

[01:09:47.08] David Johnson: Shall I get a taxi on it's way?

[01:09:51.06] Interviewer: That sounds good. What is it...six minutes past two.

[01:09:53.06] David Johnson: Six minutes past two...three...

[01:09:55.00] Interviewer: Right I'll just wander round

[01:09:56.16] David Johnson: Yeah, just carry on...yeah, if you were to visit me in six months time, I think things would be very different

[01:10:02.12] Interviewer: Do you?

[01:10:03.05] David Johnson: I do. Not the work, but in the location, I think I would be in a different space and err...better, but  anyway. So...that's for the future. Err....I'm going to call a cab (holds phone) Call zero one four six two. Eight, eight, eight. Eight, eight, eight (phone replies) Calling zero one four six two. Eight, eight, eight. Eight, eight, eight. Hello it's David here again. Is Goldie availaible or someone to pick us up from Hill End farm again? Sorry, yeah. Thank you bye.

[01:10:59.27] Interviewer: Good stuff.

Continued….     (in the Hitchin Kitchen café) Recording R07_0009

[00:00:06.08] Interviewer: So yeah, you were just saying that it was the audio description that gave you...

[00:00:15.12] David Johnson: I think if you lose your sight totally, like I did, you go into almost like a bereavement, although it's not necessarily sad. It's a kind of process of accepting or acknowledging that you don't have any sight perception anymore, but you then start going through audio decriptions and that process seemed to revive visual memories and in a very powerful and vivid way. Which was just unexpected and thrilling, erm and I happen to be interested in art and making art again and I suppose that strengthened my resolve to do that and gave me a lot of thoughts to use in doing that. Which were very visual thoughts, er, so yeah, so particular paintings that I had described to me, that I remember very vividly, the colours of the paintings were brought back to me very strongly. That was quite exciting. So, I use those thoughts, very much sort of thought-fore, when I'm working. The thinking process is quite important to me, you know where you might find a more traditional artist might use a sketch-book to work through thoughts, I think I do that, but just by thinking. It's very much a conceptual way of preparing a work.

[00:02:04.26] Interviewer: yeah

[00:02:06.22] David Johnson: And then sit down and think about it and maybe talk to a few people about it, like my poor support worker or my wife gets the initial thoughts about an idea and I'll talk it through with them. Just to see their reaction, it might be frustration on occasion, because I'm boring them, but I like to talk an idea through with somebody. And increasingly, having gone back to college, I can do that to people who are quite interested in art anyway, it's a better environment for that. So yeah, I think the conceptual...you know, thanks to Marcel Duchamp bringing conceptual art into the world, or at least giving new life, a different life or prominence maybe, it's more acceptable these days to think conception. To think about art in a conceptual way, than it used to be.

[00:03:27.00] Interviewer: Yeah, I don't use sketchbooks

[00:03:29.14] David Johnson: You don't?

[00:03:29.20] Interviewer: Nope

[00:03:31.06] David Johnson: So how do you develop your artistic..?

[00:03:35.19] Interviewer: Similar to what you've described. Yeah, a lot of thought. I'll visualise it in my mind, but I might look on line for photographs, to confirm those thoughts and lead it different ways. And then dive straight in..

[00:03:56.29] David Johnson: This is with your animation?

[00:04:00.04] Interviewer: Yeah, yep.

[00:04:02.18] David Johnson: So what sort of icons do you tend to...I mean, how would you describe your...do you have a style?

[00:04:19.12] Interviewer: So from a drawn style, if I'm doing life-drawing, my style is very much about the line and different line weights. Very fluid like Egon Schiele? That kind of approach. And I've just been branching out with a new life drawing class, with a tutor who's a mature PhD student at the art college, where I'm at in Dundee, and he's taking the classes. And he asked me, how am I going beyond the line, to then do shading or form. And I said well I've had problems with that, in the past, because if I'm working in charcoal, I don't like the effect of charcoal when it's smudged.

[00:05:05.02] David Johnson: No, no

[00:05:06.00] Interviewer: Against a sharp line. It's too much of a contrast. I don't like it, it makes it look too domestic...

[00:05:13.16] David Johnson: yeah, yeah, I know what you mean

[00:05:14.04] Interviewer: and just ughh, kills it. So I said to him 'I've veered away from that because I don't like shading. Because I'm so practised at doing line and picking the shadow and form with how light the pencil could be and then go in, very hard and then whisp it off again. You know, just sort of dance with the pen really.

[00:05:37.01] David Johnson: Yeah, yeah. What did he say to that?

[00:05:39.00] Interviewer: He said 'you're not a blender'. So blending and smudging, with charcoal wouldn't work because you're not a blender.

[00:05:47.17] David Johnson: No, it's about the line. The purity of line?

[00:05:49.26] Interviewer: Yes. But he said, it would be interesting to see where you could take it with colour.

[00:05:56.14] David Johnson: Ok, oh yeah

[00:05:58.04] Interviewer: So I could feel myself getting apprehensive about it as he was talking. So, it's like, I'm not sure and then it will depend on what the medium is, because I didn't want to use acrylic or guache, I've done all that in the past. And I can do that...I like it if it's just that. I don't like it if it's mixed with line. For me, I can't do both at once. And erm...by fluke, I think I'd posted just one of my simple line drawings on Instagram, so it's a photographic app and somebody in America liked it. They must clearly know somebody I know and I caught a glimpse of their work. And it was line that was so similar, almost identical to how I draw, but they used chalk pastels. I thought it was oil pastels, but it wasn't it was chalk pastels and absolutely vivid. So it would be life drawings and maybe the shadows are lime-green mixed with tangerine, shocking pink, yellow, navy blue. I mean staggering to look at and quite simple, but you could definitely still see the line. And simple forms. He's done one of a dog, his dog just curled up in amongst lots of blankets and the blankets are quite stylized. Different patterns all in vivid colours and this dog was right in the middle in a pale blonde pastel, with this vivid line.

[00:07:25.10] David Johnson: So, the outline of the dog is a vivid line? A very stark black line?

[00:07:30.05] Interviewer: Yes. With depth to  it, because there's depth to the line weight. But I've also seen him draw in biro, where one things called 'My Therapist's Waiting Room' and there was a door and a pot-plant and that was all done with biro, almost on the move, but still stunning.

[00:07:47.06] David Johnson: How amazing.

[00:07:48.03] Interviewer: So I said to Alan, the life-drawing tutor, I'm going to try and get some chalk pastels and I'm going to see. But I don't want to blend them. I don't want to mix the colours, I'd like to keep it really bright and fresh like that. So I've had one lesson so far with that and immediately used too many colours, so it started to get dingy and brown and grey and just heavy

[00:08:13.13] David Johnson: Messy, yeah.

[00:08:15.21] Interviewer: And it's like...'oh, what's the point' (laughing) 'why am I doing this' and then I thought, 'no, come on. Perservere'. And then at the end I thought, 'right, I'll just use two colours', even if they bare no resemblance to the model and Alan was saying 'Your drawing will live on. That life model's pose won't. As they move off that stool, that's that moment gone. But your life drawing, that's what will last. And no-one will know if it looked like the model or not.

[00:08:41.26] David Johnson: (laughs) quite

[00:08:42.19] Interviewer: So don't worry about it. So that gave me the confidence to think well I'll just use, you know, maybe three colours and I'll colour them all in the same direction, at a forty-five degree angle, so I'm right-handed. But I still did the line from bottom right up to the top left, even though I was right-handed. And Alan was saying 'are you left handed?' and I said 'no I'm not, but this feels like I can really get in there and push it into the paper that way...

[00:09:13.15] David Johnson: wow, yeah

[00:09:14.20] Interviewer: rather than skimming

[00:09:16.03] David Johnson: because it's going against your natural art

[00:09:18.24] Interviewer: Yes, I'm really pushing in and committing to it. And yeah, exactly that movement and quite hard

[00:09:26.01] David Johnson: yeah, not natural or comfortable really.

[00:09:28.12] Interviewer: no

[00:09:28.22] David Johnson: Not intuitive anyway

[00:09:30.24] Interviewer: no. And yet I can draw quite...I can't draw, I can write certainly legibly with my left hand as well. I don't because I'm not fast, but I can do very neat hand-writing with my left hand.

[00:09:42.08] David Johnson: You're right-handed I take it?

[00:09:43.21] Interviewer: Yes, so...

[00:09:47.07] David Johnson: How interesting. So reducing the palette, as it were, the number of colours, helped?

[00:09:52.09] Interviewer: Yes, but the box I bought had the most colours possible. So, I didn't want to buy a box with say a dozen big jumps between the greens. You know dark bottle-green, lime-green and then you're into blue. That's not too much choice. So I think it was sixteen maybe colours and they're stubby little pastels that are almost triangular in their form, so you can get a sharp point or flat edge...

[00:10:20.09] David Johnson: Talking about the smudging. Didn't that make it difficult not to smudge?

[00:10:23.26] Interviewer: yes. I've managed not to though and I have to just commit to the colour and then the next colour will come up and overlap, just a little bit...

[00:10:33.14] David Johnson: Ok, do they mix, I can't remember? You can mix the colours in pastels.

[00:10:38.06] Interviewer: And I had done oil pastel work before and I can't bear it. Because, it dominates the drawing it's just 'no! I'm this pastel and dominates. I'm doing this colour and you haven't got any choice.'

[00:10:50.03] David Johnson: Yeah

[00:10:50.19] Interviewer: It's like no. There's no subtlety to it and I don't like how it can skip over the page and reveal white pieces of paper. I don't like that, so this is the first time I've ever tried real chalk pastels and I think it was a vivid bright satsuma yellow, that I chose. And I think I might have had royal blue or electric pink, were the other colours against this vivid black line. So that's where I've got to so far (laughs). So that's how I work

[00:11:27.18] David Johnson: So when you choose your colours, I mean you're looking at the...the colours are instead of erm...shading?

[00:11:36.00] Interviewer: hmm hmm, yep

[00:11:38.07] David Johnson: So if you see a bit of dark form in the body, you'll choose a colour

[00:11:43.07] Interviewer: Yes, so if you imagine there'll just be a life model, posed sitting on a plinth with their arm resting on a higher plinth and there's an angle-poise lamp pointing down and highlighting the shoulder and the top of the arm, I'll squint so I can see what the brightest points are. So say that shoulder and the top of the arm are bright, that might go in as a pale satsuma electric colour and the underside may go in as a dark blue, or a dark purple. Because that would be the opposite on the colour wheel

[00:12:14.24] David Johnson: Interesting that you say you squint. In other words you impair your vision...

[00:12:18.26] Interviewer: Deliberately

[00:12:20.24] David Johnson: Deliberately in order to...like people close one eye to measure

[00:12:23.01] Interviewer: Yes

[00:12:25.10] David Johnson: And sometimes they'll close their eyes completely, to think about what they're seeing.

[00:12:30.09] Interviewer: And my training at art school...so I was sixteen when I went to art school to do fashion, to begin with but the complimentaries studies, on a whenever it was, we had to do still life drawing or life drawing. It was all a bit of mixture. But the still life drawing, the tutor would just say to us, 'don't knit. Don't stand at the drawing board, with a pencil right close and just start knitting, really tiny little perfect...

[00:12:58.28] David Johnson: Don't do that?

[00:12:59.26] Interviewer: Don't. He said, do not do that. If I see you doing it you're going to either draw with your eyes closed, so that's how I was trained (laughing) draw with your eyes closed, or you're going to be drawing with your opposite hand to the one you naturally draw with, or you're going to put a piece of charcoal sellotaped to a long bamboo cane

[00:13:18.08] David Johnson: (laughing)

[00:13:19.06] Interviewer: So you'll stand five foot away from the drawing and you won't be able to control how it looks. So that was my training

[00:13:28.07] David Johnson: Quite tough. Where did you go?

[00:13:29.02] Interviewer: That was Medway. Down in Chatham, Medway Towns. Medway College of Art, it's now Kiad, Kent Institute of Art & Design. Yeah, and then we were taught that whatever drawing we did to hold it up in a mirror and that way we could see where it was flawed in proportion or perspective. So that was my foundation training

[00:13:55.03] David Johnson: Sounds pretty good actually

[00:13:56.04] Interviewer: Hmmm...and drawing people running. That was at school actually. That was my first experience of life-drawing at an after school club. We were given felt-tips. A whole rainbow spectrum of felt-tips, so again you can't rub it out. And there was a special felt-tip that was white in all of it, that would remove the coloured ones.

[00:14:20.15] David Johnson: wow

[00:14:22.23] Interviewer:  So the tutor, Mr Smitherman, would just have a man running round the room, so it was really difficult to draw. I mean you're just drawing a series of skipping little flicks and lines to represent movement, and then to go over it with a pen that removed the ink, so then it distorts it even more. So it was quite a free way of working alongside proper training of life-drawing from somebody that had us learning latin terminology for the anatomy

[00:14:52.23] David Johnson: (laughing)

[00:14:54.07] Interviewer: So that was good.

[00:14:57.03] David Johnson: You've had a really good training by the sounds of it

[00:14:58.17] Interviewer: It was really good. Yeah, really good. So that was in the 1980's. And then I went to Wimbledon School of Art to study Theatre Design.

[00:15:08.25] David Johnson: Ok, oh right

[00:15:10.12] Interviewer: That was my degree. So then that was a real focus on light

[00:15:15.10] David Johnson: yeah

[00:15:17.12] Interviewer:  And I took that into my film set design, when I did a masters. It was called a post-graduate certificate for three years, so you didn't come out with a proper masters of art, but it was the equivalent of that and it was all practice-based. This was at the National Film and Television School. But that training in theatre really came into it's own in film, particularly with one director when, I think it was one evening during the shoot, I had nine sets to do in this particular film, that was called 'Tonight's Performance' all about a composer and his life, leading up to this performance of his life and erm...anyway, she decided she wanted to have a flashback scene of him in a Greek temple. That was the night before the shoot and she said 'in the morning, I'd like to have a Greek temple set'. I mean the budget was, you know, 10p, it was just 'what?!' (laughing). So I just thought, well what did we learn in theatre. Well it was just to draw attention to one, one thing out of the whole set, with a beam of light, so the rest can just disappear. So I just thought well if I got some, they had some old, huge columns, probably fifteen foot high columns, square in form, so just these elongated cubes right up to the ceiling...

[00:16:38.29] David Johnson: Wow, these are props?

[00:16:39.01] Interviewer: Yep, so scenery, so yeah just square columns basically. So I just put four of those in a row, with a big gap of about three feet inbetween each one, just all positioned in a line. And just flooded light from behind them, so you get shafts of light coming through, like four shafts of light and then I just found, I think it was a white and blue enamel bowl in the props store, and thought 'well that looks Greek' (laughing) kind of colours and put that on the floor with just a spot light on it. And that was it and it was 'there's your Greek temple. It's at night with a bit of moonlight on the bowl'.

[00:17:17.22] David Johnson: Brilliant

[00:17:17.22] Interviewer: So those are things, that's my way of working. I'll think about it, imagine it and draw attention to it with colour or light.

[00:17:27.07] David Johnson: Or icons or...

[00:17:29.10] Interviewer: Simple, quite simple

[00:17:31.25] David Johnson: Sounds amazing.

[00:17:33.20] Interviewer: And all my works been like that.

[00:17:44.00] David Johnson: How does that all tie in with what you do now? What is it... a blind person's perception using virtual-reality and animation

[00:18:02.06] Interviewer: Yes. So my masters was an animated film, in 3D animation. And that was exploring a theme of transformation and loss. So, I had a real actress that I filmed. And I filmed her in a studio that was bright green, so they call that like a green-screen studio, which means you can film a person in front of a green wall and then in the computer, at the click of a button you can remove the screen, so you're just left with a transparent background and your actor. Which means you can then put them ontop of a layer of something else

[00:18:46.01] David Johnson: Anything else you want?

[00:18:46.28] Interviewer: Yeah and it looks like they're in that environment. That's the general principle of it. So I'd gone outside in winter time in Dundee and filmed...well actaully to go back, the inspiration for that was an artist, a Brazilian artist called Nele Azevedo I think. And she makes all these little ice figures. They're little men, probably, I don't know about eight inches high in a sitting position with their legs dangling as if they're sat on a wall. And their arms are by their sides with the hands by the side on the wall as well. So they're just kind of sat there. And she has a big juganaut full of chest-freezers with hundreds of these little ice-figures in and she'll turn up to, I don't know, the opening of a musuem and she just hands out rubber gloves to members of the public who are milling around and showing interest and they get to take out these ice-figures, so they don't burn themselves or stick their tongues to the freezer, like we were talking about earlier with my friend, and she just puts these ice figures on steps and they melt. And you just watch the general public watching them melt.

[00:20:00.18] David Johnson: Oh wow

[00:20:00.20] Interviewer: And it's kind of quite meditative you know just interesting to see, well I wonder what they think. And I saw some photographs of this and there was one particular photograph of a child and he was looking at these two ice-figures who had slumped together in their process of melting and he was holding a flower. And I thought 'oh I wonder if he's looking at grandparents or a friend or confidence, or a pet or something that's maybe gone. And it really struck me and I liked it that he had a flower, because I thought 'once that ice melts it becomes a pool of water that could, I don't know, help a seed grow. It sounds a bit cheesy but I just thought 'ooh, that's a nice little circle of life'

[00:20:44.27] David Johnson: clyclical

[00:20:45.21] Interviewer: yeah. So I just thought I'd like to experiment and see if I could recreate those ice-men in the computer and so I filmed an actress in the green-screen studio, so I could then remove all the background and just have her and I had her stood, with her head stooped, so she was just very still and stood in a stooped, quite a depressed position for probably about forty seconds. She didn't do anything other than breathe and just looked. And it was to represent her being stuck in loss. Contemplating loss, not actually moving forward, not aware of anything else going on behind her

[00:21:29.26] David Johnson: Introspecting

[00:21:31.13] Interviewer: Yes, exactly. And what I put...but without awareness I suppose. Introspection but without any understanding or awareness...just in there

[00:21:40.27] David Johnson: yeah, yeah, locked in

[00:21:41.27] Interviewer: Yeah, and the background. I went out into Dundee in the winter time and filmed clouds with sunglight pouring below them. Shafts of sunglight. Again, similar to this Greek thing that I've just described. Those shafts of light that come out from clouds

[00:21:57.15] David Johnson: So amazing isnt' it, when you remember seeing that, as a child. And being amazed by the effect. That natural effect, of shafts of sunlight

[00:22:09.05] Interviewer: God's fingers, I've heard them called

[00:22:11.27] David Johnson: yeah

[00:22:13.02] Interviewer: And erm...so I did lots of filming and I sped it up and did it on a timelapse, so it was fast moving clouds, sunglight coming in and out and then in the computer, in animation, I created a tree all with bark that looked very realistic. Lit it all to match the scene with lights in the computer that replicate real lights. And then I made....

[00:22:41.17] David Johnson: Is this the virtual side of it coming out?

[00:22:45.04] Interviewer: Erm...this is 3D animation so not yet virtual. This was just my masters project that was viewed on what you would call a regular TV screen. I'm just aware that they might be closing....I just want to check...

[00:22:56.13] David Johnson:oh

[00:22:58.06] Interviewer: Excuse me, have you closed now? (talks to waitress and laughing) you have? Ok, we'd better hurry up! I'll be quick! (eats quickly) a few chips and a bit of burger left

[00:23:29.09] David Johnson: That's amazing..(eating)....did you say there's some serviettes somewhere?

[00:24:17.11] Interviewer: Yes, just there....I'll check aswell about where we pay. Whether it's up at the counter or not

[00:24:51.25] David Johnson: It's ok, I'll do this. I hope they take cards? Probably

[00:24:55.17] Interviewer: Erm...I don't know. I'll ask. Excuse me, do you accept card payments? And do we come up to the counter to pay? Yes.

[00:25:36.18] David Johnson: What time we did order your cab for?

[00:25:38.22] Interviewer: Half past four

[00:25:39.14] David Johnson: Oh, fine then

[00:25:41.04] Interviewer: Three twenty-nine, yep

[00:25:42.24] David Johnson: Yeah, it'll be fine

[00:25:43.20] Interviewer: Ok, I'm done

[00:25:48.09] David Johnson: I'll go up and pay.

[00:25:47.16] Interviewer: Can I give you some money?

[00:25:48.25] David Johnson: No, it's fine

[00:25:50.19] Interviewer: Oh, well thank you very much.

[00:25:54.13] David Johnson: It's a pleasure

Continued….     (walking along Hitchin High St. David Johnson using white cane and being guided by interviewer) Recording R07_0011

[00:00:11.13] Interviewer: Ok, we're heading down the hill to the street to the High Street?

[00:00:13.22] David Johnson: So, yeah this is....like a comfortable pair of old shoes

[00:00:21.11] Interviewer: oh right (laughter)

[00:00:21.29] David Johnson: I know every nook, cranny of every pavement. I've lived here so long, I've walked

around endlessly around the streets. So, you know, I'm familiar with it. Still spend quite a lot of time ambling around

[00:00:41.13] Interviewer: yes

[00:00:43.08] David Johnson: Getting lost! Erm, so bizzarely, I suprise myself, when I'm in a car I also know every nook and cranny, pretty well every speed bump, every drain cover, every pothole, every twist and turn that the car takes, I can usually tell the driver where we are, just by the twists and turns of the car.

[00:01:11.13] Interviewer: yeah

[00:01:13.10] David Johnson: Just the familiarity and it's interesting, it's sort of tactile isn't it. Haptic. You know, body movement and bumps, shapes and little movements that the car will tell you where you are, if you know an area by feel, so well.

[00:01:29.05] Interviewer: yes

[00:01:30.20] David Johnson: I don't do it by visual clues, landmarks for me are not pubs, they're pot-holes and drains (laughter) and speed-bumps. So this is the thing about being able to read the world in a sort of different way. I heard someone put it very well recently and, again it's a blind person commenting on this sort of thing, he sees similarities between blind experience and wilderness training. If you go on these wildnerness, survival courses, they teach you these sort of skills, as a means of survival, you know being able to read the sounds

[00:02:19.09] Interviewer: yes

[00:02:23.19] David Johnson: in a more profound way and read natural events in a profound way. So, we turn left here into Bancroft....

what does throw me is the way the shops changing, I'm a bit unsure about what shops are along here but I know...

[00:02:50.02] Interviewer: oops, if we just move over to your right a little bit, that's it. It's just they've put quite a few 'A' frames out, which I've never noticed as a bit of a pain until just that minute

[00:03:02.11] David Johnson: (laughing) pavement furniture isn't it

[00:03:04.06] Interviewer: Obstacle, yeah

[00:03:05.02] David Johnson: Most of the blind campaigns, they campaign against pavement furniture, I love pavement furniture (laughing) if you took all the furniture off the pavements it would be desolate rather grim...I mean, you know, I don't like walking into things that hurt me

[00:03:19.19] Interviewer: no

[00:03:21.04] David Johnson: On the other hand they do give you reference points

[00:03:24.18] Interviewer: Ok, so the pavement here is kind of split. This bit's all one level and to the right there's three shallow steps

[00:03:32.04] David Johnson: It goes up onto a raised bit there. Things happen, like Christmas you get Salvation Army band playing up there you get buskers playing. I think people...isn't there a bench there that you can sit on?

[00:03:46.05] Interviewer: Yes, there is a bench

[00:03:47.29] David Johnson: You can meet there I think. And err...you've got the Vodafone shop ahead of us

[00:03:51.01] Interviewer: That's it....right in front

[00:03:52.10] David Johnson: So we go to the right of that

[00:03:53.22] Interviewer: To the right of that, ok

[00:03:55.05] David Johnson: And it's really starting to piss-down now.

[00:04:12.18] Interviewer: Ooh, so this is the wall and we're just going round to the right. Yep, that's it we can now turn left (indecipherable)...I know I wasn't sure whether to cut through it or not. So the road sweeps round to the right and there's NatWest in front of us

[00:04:31.01] David Johnson: Yeah, so we'll keep on the left and go down the High Street straight ahead of us

[00:04:36.04] Interviewer: This is what I did earlier and then through a funny little alleyway.

End of recording (to avoid rain on equipment)