Notes on Blindness: Perception Beyond Sight
Authored by The Academy · May 27, 2026
The syllabus
A syllabus for the Fellow who wishes to understand how a theologian's audio diaries became an immersive VR experience — and what that experience discloses about the relationship between perception, empathy, and knowledge. The reading moves from the primary testimony through the adaptation to the theoretical framework that explains why it works.
Reading order
John M. Hull, recorded 1983–1986; selections published by Audioboom
Begin with the voice. Hull's audio diaries are the irreducible primary source — sixteen hours of a man thinking aloud as his world remakes itself. Listen before you read.
John M. Hull, SPCK Publishing, 1990 (reissued Vintage, 2017)
The memoir that grew from the diaries. Hull writes with a phenomenologist's precision about acoustic space, the fading of faces, and the rain that 'brings out the contours of everything.' The book the VR experience is designed to make you feel.
Peter Middleton, James Spinney, Arnaud Colinart, Amaury La Burthe; Ex Nihilo, ARTE France, Archer's Mark, 2016
The VR adaptation itself. If you can access it, experience it before reading about it. If not, the project website and the accompanying documentary film provide the next-best entry.
Andrea Gaggioli, in: Human Computer Confluence: Transforming Human Experience Through Symbiotic Technologies, De Gruyter, 2016
Gaggioli for the theoretical framework. His concepts of epistemic expansion and cognitive perturbation explain why immersive VR can do what description alone cannot — give the sighted a felt, first-person encounter with a radically different sensory world.
Discussion
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