The 2016 Sultan Mehmed Games: Opening Ceremony Pt. 4

This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 3; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-2016-sultan-mehmed-games-opening_10.html

Opening Speeches and Declaration: As with the Olympic Opening Ceremonies it is a matter of International Para-Olympic Committee (IPC) protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature a speech from the head of the local organising committee and the President of the IPC. There must also be a declaration from the Head of State of the host nation that the games have officially been opened. This Opening Ceremony was no exception.

However I have discovered that the creative sequences of this type of ceremony flow much better if you've had a little drink. Sadly the opposite is true of the speeches.

So I could spend most of today wrestling with the speeches. Alternatively I could just leave it for now and press ahead with getting the rest of the ceremony done as quickly as possible.

Visually Impaired: With the earlier "Wheels Within Wheels" sequence taking a look at wheelchair sports and the "Clear Blue Water" sequence looking at swimming it was time to take a look at some more of the type of sports you will see during these games.

However rather than looking at a particular sport this sequence took a look at a particular type of disability - blindness. After all within the games you get many blind sports such as blind cycling, blind athletics and blind football. You even get blind shooting and blind archery although they're rarely as dramatic as they sound.

This sequence began with 400 performers dressed in black walking across the darkened arena floor. They were all carrying with them sticks that lit up white. This was a reference to the white stick that blind people traditionally use to navigate their way around the world without bumping into things.

As they reached the centre of the arena floor these performers formed an illuminated circle. This was obviously another  reference to the rising sun at the centre of the flag of 2020 Summer Olympic host Japan.

However the performers then fanned to form the shape of a human eye. Particular attention was paid to the pupil of the eye that expands and contracts to allow differing amounts of light - often from the sun - into the eye forming the basis of sight. The light-sticks the performers were carrying were actually radio-controlled so they were lit up to differing degrees throughout the sequence. This obviously meant that the circle of light they projected onto the floor expanded and contracted in a sort of reverse of the function of the pupil.

After the eye had been formed the performers then broke apart as if the structure of the eye was being deconstructed in front of us.

The performers then formed up in a series of parallel, diagonal lines. These seemed to be a reference to the 120 million non-colour sensitive photoreceptors known as "Rods" that are in every healthy human eye. Colour perception comes from another group of roughly 7 million photoreceptors known as "Cones." I suspect though that people who were really into the geometry theme of the previous Opening Ceremony would have been busy trying to calculate the gradient of these diagonal lines.

Although the Para-Olympics uses the term "Blind" the more medically accurate way of describing people with sight problems is "Visually Impaired" or "Partially sighted."

That is because not only are there differing degrees of blindness there are also different types. Some people lack the edges of their vision leaving them seeing the world as is staring down a narrow tube. Other people lack the centre of their vision seeing everything partially obscured by a black blob in the centre of their eye. Others see the world as if through a white gauze meaning that they can see light and movement but can't see shape or colour.

The Opening Ceremony then emphasised this point further. On a special stage two dancers - Oscar and Renota - performed together. Oscar is totally blind with 0% of vision while Renota is only 80% blind with 20% of vision. Their dance routine was performed entirely through sound and touch.

It must be said though that after classifying them as "Blind" the Para-Olympics also assigns a number from 1 (the most severe) to 5 (least severe) to describe the specific nature and extent of the visual impairment. So you get competitors being described as; B1, B2, B3 etc.

Immediately prior to Oscar and Renota's dance the performers with their light-sticks formed what was intended to be a graphic equaliser commonly used on home stereo systems. On the wall behind the dance was projected images of raised dots rather like the "Pinscreen" toy invented by Ward Fleming. This seemed a reference to the Braille writing system used by blind people that was invented by Louis Braille back in 1824.

As the dance finished onto the screen was projected an image of Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man."  This was an attempt by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio to use geometry to detail the proportions of the ideal human man. Although I think British cyclist Jody Cundy has an image of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man tattooed on his arm I think many disabled athletes would consider this offensive because they most certainly don't fit in to this ideal of what a man should look like.

The action then returned to the arena floor where there were six couples lying on the ground. All of these performers were dressed in costumes where one side was black while the other was white. As they were lying on the floor the performers arranged themselves into various geometric patterns in a sort of horizontal dance. Around them was video projected a complex and elaborate array of different geometric shapes that were primarily black and white but also featured splashes of colour - particularly red.

You could take this as a reference to all the other ways that geometry had been used in the previous ceremonies. However it was intended as an exploration of the way that the human senses work and one sense can be used to compensate for the loss of others.

A rather famous example of this is Helen Keller who was born deaf, blind and mute in Alabama, US 1880. By using touch to form out the shapes of letters on the palms of her hands Helen Keller was taught to read and write. From there she not only went on to attend university but to graduate to become a university lecturer and writer.

Another famous example is Louis Braille's system of writing. This uses raised bumps on a page rather than the reflected light from inkmarks to allow people without sight to read using the sensation of touch.

An example that I'm particularly familiar and most viewers will be familiar with too is subtitling or closed captioning. For people who are deaf this takes the speech of people on TV and in movies and translates it into the visual medium of written words on screen.

There is also Audio Description that is becoming increasingly common as broadcasting technology develops.  For partially sighted people this takes the things they can't see on screen and converts it into the audio medium. It must be said that there are few things funnier in this life then listening to TV or movie sex scenes being audio described.

Although I've yet to hear of anyone achieving it there has long been talk of using radar technology to aid blind people. This involves a person wearing a headset that emits and then re-absorbs radio waves. This is then translated into audible sound allowing the person to build up an audio map of their surroundings rather like a bat.

There is also a rare but extremely interesting neurological condition known as; "Synesthesia." In this sufferers experience a sensory input in the form of the perception of another sense. So for example they might smell noise or hear colour. To them the noise of an Olympic crowd may appear in the form of the sort of the vast and chaotic colourful video projection like the one we've just been shown.

The way that Synesthesia sufferers brains get muddled has long fuelled a hope that the brain of a deaf person or a blind person can be rewired so their sense of sight becomes their sense of hearing or vice versa.

The Brazilian hosts are making this a big theme of the games by changing the design of the medals.

Para-Olympic medal have long featured Braille text on one side so they can be read by the blind. However the medals at this games also feature a compartment filled with small beads that make a noise when shaken. The Gold, Silver and Bronze medals all have different sized beads so different coloured medals all make different sounds allowing blind medal winners to tell them apart. 

Perhaps to prove a point the UK broadcaster Channel 4 then decided to cut away from this sequence to go to a long commercial break. As a result I did not get to see the rest of the sequence.

I and no doubt other UK viewers now have a greater sense of empathy for those who are not able to see everything clearly.

The Agitos:  As with the Olympics it is a matter of IPC protocol that every Opening Ceremony must featuring a revealing of the Agitos emblem of the Para-Olympic movement.

The word "Agito" is Latin for "I Move." However the emblem itself has no specific meaning. It is simply how the advertising agency Scholz & Friends interpreted this concept of movement back in 2003.

This organisers of this ceremony decided to interpret this concept of movement in the form of a sail that uses the wind to move a ship. Specifically they used the fan-type sail synonymous with the ancient Chinese "Junk" type ship. However I think the only significance of this was that this type of sail design is much easier to use to form the flowing lines of a the Agitos than the rectangular design used on western sailing ships.

So dozens of performers all carried their white 'sails' around the arena floor until the wind blew them together in the centre where they formed a circle that again resembled the pupil of an eye. They then placed their sails together to form the Agitos which was then lit up in the traditional red, blue and green prompting fireworks to be set off around the arena roof.

This is actually the first time that the Agitos has been revealed in such a creative way. Normally they just have a sculpture of it nestling beneath a cover that is then pulled back for the big reveal.

As such this formed a small bit of Para-Olympic history.

15:25 on 12/9/16 (UK date).

Edited at around 14:20 on 14/9/16 (UK date) to add: Can you believe that I forgot all about the medals. By getting bogged down amid the complex detail I seem to have missed the big and the obvious.