Double Blind is a sculptural installation situated in the atrium of the new Vancouver Community College’s Broadway Campus building. The work mounts domed mirrors on the side of the wall, using these structures to create braille patterns that imitate the Snellen chart used by optometrists to test visual acuity. With this work, Hirsch questions the relationship of visuality and surveillance, public safety and control by organizing the familiar form of the domed mirror—common security devices—in an unfamiliar way. In Hirsch’s own words, “Double Blind deliberately and emphatically utilizes elements that are commonly found in public space and re-purposes them, thereby highlighting the quality of the space itself, rather than offering a pictorial escape from its reality. Double Blind queries the interlinked ideas of seeing and controlling, acknowledging the importance of the context in which information is acquired and processed, whether that context is a scientific doctrine, social matrix, or language system.”
