Facial Vision - John Hull

At one point in his book, Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, John M. Hull recounts the phenomenon that became particularly noticeable to him a few months after his descent into complete blindness.  In the following passage he describes 'facial vision' or 'echolocation,' when the body senses the presence of a nearby obstacle neither with sight, nor deliberate listening:

"The experience itself is quite extraordinary, and I cannot compare it with anything else I have ever known.  It is like a sense of physical pressure.  One wants to put up a hand to protect oneself, so intense is the awareness.  One shrinks from whatever it is.  It seems to be characterized by a certain stillness in the atmosphere.  Where one should perceive the movement of air and a certain openness, somehow one becomes aware of a stillness, and intensity instead of an emptiness, a sense of vague solidity.  The exact source of the sensation is difficult to locate.  It seems to be the head, yet often it seems to extend to the shoulders and even the arms.  Awareness is greater when the environment is less polluted by sound, and in the silence of my late evening walk home, I am more intensely aware of it.  In a crowded noisy street, the experience is less noticeable, and if I am travelling on somebody's elbow, I never seem to notice the experience at all.  Presumably, I just switch off whatever it is."  (pg. 27)

In addition to this sensitive description of the phenomenon, what I find fascinating is that Hull specifically states that the 'echo location' only becomes apparent when there was absolutely no visual input.  It is a sensing skill that is deeply embedded within the body which emerges only through the complete suppression of the visual sense, almost as a backup guidance system.  Concurrently, the ability to perceive one's environment in such a way is dependent on movement, and the continually shifting relationships between the body the space he inhabits.  Hull also describes that this type of sensing had a definitive spatial range.  At first, his ability to sense presence would only extend 3-5 feet from him, however, with time, and the body's calibration to increased sensitivity, that space stretched to 6-8 feet. 

"I gather from conversations that this experience is essentially acoustic and is based upon awareness of echoes. This certainly fits in with my experience, but at the same time it is important to emphasize that one is not aware of listening.  One is simply aware of becoming aware.  The sense of pressure is upon the skin of the face, rather than upon or within the ears.  That must be why the older name for the experience was "facial vision" (pg. 28)

This description immediately reminded me of the Alvin Lucier piece "Vespers" (1969) in which performers with Sondols (sonar-dolphin), hand-held pulse wave oscillators, explore the acoustic characteristics of given indoor or outdoor spaces by monitoring the echoes of the pulse waves off the walls, floors and ceilings, as well as any objects or obstacles in range of the sound waves. Over time, the listener receives an acoustic signature of the room.  Though the method is both imposed and much more coarse in the composition than in the similar phenomenon that occurs within the body, the concept is the same.