Blindness, Acoustic Environing and Sensing Technologies (ca. 1950-1980)

Abstract

This article approaches the intersecting histories of blindness (Koestler 1967) and ultrasound by questioning the specific environments and filtering processes enacted through electronic travel aids. I propose to question ultrasound technologies as epistemic filtering techniques and environmental production frameworks situated at the crossroads of different and diverging interests of military, social, scientific and economic and cultural endeavours. Non-innocent devices such as the travel aids and related practices aim to filter physical-spatial relations, thereby transducing acoustic-spatial or visual scenarios in order to render relevant structures and objects recognizable. In the second half of the 20th century, the production of such filter-based ultrasound environments was disseminated into heterogeneous fields such as medicine, automobility, robotics as well as assistive technologies for disabled people. The article traces trajectories of ultrasound knowledges that culminated in ETA in physics (sonar), biology (bat sensing) and experimental psychology (blind(folded) echolocation). The article elaborates on and extends works in the media history of technology and critical disability studies. Scrutinizing techniques of hearing (Schillmeier, Stock and Ochsner, 2022) and the construction of acoustic environments in the context of blindness, institutional ableism and assistive technologies allows us to complement the genealogy of listening devices and hearing aids. By analyzing selected electronic travel aids as a specific hearing aid, the article sheds light on the aspects of sensory environing, disability technoscience (Hamraie and Fritsch, 2019) and the question of assistive technology design. Ultrasound devices developed from 1945–1980 never accomplished the aim of substituting orientation and mobility based on the long cane, service dogs or echolocation techniques. Hence, a historical framing of the efforts to build electronic travel aids enables a critique of the technological fixing of a bodily variation and non-visual sensory practices. I argue that blindness should be acknowledged as a mode of existence which through its rich lived experiences significantly contributes to the multi-faceted panorama of contemporary societies rather than understood as a mere sensory deficit that needs to be treated via technological means.