In the spatial cognition and concept formation of people with visual impairments, the substitution of alternative sensory modalities such as touch and hearing, together with the notion of dimension of information, plays a critical role. Braille expresses one-dimensional written information through a two-dimensional pattern of six dots, and tactile diagrams provide two-dimensional graphic representations of objects and concepts. However, three-dimensional tactile observation tools are currently limited mainly to educational replicas and museum exhibits.
The sculptor Mitsunobu Matsuo has proposed "INFORMART" — a system of original polyhedral blocks based on geometric construction principles such as the silver ratio — and has long taught art students at universities abroad. In parallel, he has developed assembly-support tools, including tactile-form notation (shokei-fu), that aid modeling activities relying solely on the sense of touch, and has devised a wide range of tactile modeling blocks that allow people with visual impairments to enjoy three-dimensional creative activities.
When Matsuo joined Tsukuba University of Technology as a Joint Researcher in 2021, a project team named "Tactile Art" was launched, bringing together diverse expertise spanning education for the visually impaired, mathematics, and art education. The team was further joined by a researcher in comparative folklore studies, in order to investigate the cultural and historical significance of tactile forms for people with visual impairments.
As a first step, Matsuo's cube-assembly units and tactile-form notation were filed as a joint patent of Tsukuba University of Technology and Matsuo, under the title "Assembly Blocks and Block Assembly Set." Going forward, the project will pursue a mathematical analysis of the composition principles of forms built with these assembly blocks, and will develop and evaluate a range of tools and educational programs to further advance tactile-form education.
The goal of this research is to nurture the modeling system and educational programs developed in this project into tools that, as three-dimensional tactile forms following one-dimensional Braille and two-dimensional tactile diagrams, will contribute to art education and geometry education for people with visual impairments, as well as to fields such as healthcare and rehabilitation.