Voices in the Gallery-Phase 2
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Sch of Humanities
Abstract
Connecting us across space, our voices reach each other in ever more diverse and innovative ways. Emerging technologies are generating new conceptions of what it means to 'speak' and to have a voice. Social distancing has brought new attention to the means by which we communicate remotely. It also brings new pressures to bear-highlighting gaps in the conduits upon which individuals, communities and organisations suddenly and solely rely. This accelerated transition to conducting conversations, classes, performances, medical consultations, business and relationships via digitally mediated speech and text transforms our cultural experience of vocality. Crisis has provoked mass adaptation. Later, it will necessitate reflection.
Assistive technologies--synthetic voice assistants, text-to-speech programmes, automated transcription, closed captions--have long been used to translate sound into text and vice versa. In recent years, these systems have passed into mainstream consumer use: enhancing inclusivity in some domains and bringing obstacles to access into relief in others.
All of these innovations are registered and creatively processed by contemporary artists whose work already interrogates the potentiality of this expanded, multimodal vocality. Voices in the Gallery 2 extends the original project's theorisation of voiceover in contemporary art to engage stakeholders across the creative industries in a cross-sectoral exploration of the transformed nature of 'voice' today. Through partnership with creative industries organisations, advisory access agencies and creative practitioners it asks:
a) How are new tools of communication, remote-access and assistive technologies changing our experiences of text and voice, connection and containment, presence, absence and isolation?
b) How can art's expanded vocality be harnessed by artists and institutions to incite the development of a more inclusive art environment?
Voices in the Gallery 2 will mobilise the multisensorial, technologically-mediated nature of 'visual' art to transform how the cultural/creative industries conceive of accessibility.
-Newly commissioned artworks will explore the implications of voice technologies, and activate their potential to produce radically inclusive artworks.
-A geographically and digitally distributed exhibition and event programme will galvanise a network of institutions, practitioners, professionals and local publics to gather-virtually/in-person-to consider the changed state of vocality today.
-Articles and presentations will analyse the cultural, social and political ramifications of these technologies.
-A collection of lecture-poems will explore the relations between speaking and writing, co-presence and delayed connection through critical-creative and formally innovative means.
-Access will be enhanced and remote engagement enabled by an audio-guide produced through practice-based research collaboration with a social practice sound artist and in consultation with audio-description specialists VocalEyes.
-An education pack developed with a freelance arts educator in consultation with engagement professionals will facilitate teachers and schoolchildren in exploring expanded vocality in everyday communication.
-Site-specific community co-creation projects will activate participants in three locations to explore experiences of automated voices in public space.
-An inclusively designed accessible broadside pamphlet, developed through tripartite collaboration with Daly & Lyon and the UK Association for Accessible Formats, will facilitate audiences to engage via print and digital formats with the project concept, artworks and investigative strands.
-A co-created Inclusive Design for the Arts Toolkit will share insights, model solutions and disseminate best practice in inclusive graphic design to creative industries professionals.
Assistive technologies--synthetic voice assistants, text-to-speech programmes, automated transcription, closed captions--have long been used to translate sound into text and vice versa. In recent years, these systems have passed into mainstream consumer use: enhancing inclusivity in some domains and bringing obstacles to access into relief in others.
All of these innovations are registered and creatively processed by contemporary artists whose work already interrogates the potentiality of this expanded, multimodal vocality. Voices in the Gallery 2 extends the original project's theorisation of voiceover in contemporary art to engage stakeholders across the creative industries in a cross-sectoral exploration of the transformed nature of 'voice' today. Through partnership with creative industries organisations, advisory access agencies and creative practitioners it asks:
a) How are new tools of communication, remote-access and assistive technologies changing our experiences of text and voice, connection and containment, presence, absence and isolation?
b) How can art's expanded vocality be harnessed by artists and institutions to incite the development of a more inclusive art environment?
Voices in the Gallery 2 will mobilise the multisensorial, technologically-mediated nature of 'visual' art to transform how the cultural/creative industries conceive of accessibility.
-Newly commissioned artworks will explore the implications of voice technologies, and activate their potential to produce radically inclusive artworks.
-A geographically and digitally distributed exhibition and event programme will galvanise a network of institutions, practitioners, professionals and local publics to gather-virtually/in-person-to consider the changed state of vocality today.
-Articles and presentations will analyse the cultural, social and political ramifications of these technologies.
-A collection of lecture-poems will explore the relations between speaking and writing, co-presence and delayed connection through critical-creative and formally innovative means.
-Access will be enhanced and remote engagement enabled by an audio-guide produced through practice-based research collaboration with a social practice sound artist and in consultation with audio-description specialists VocalEyes.
-An education pack developed with a freelance arts educator in consultation with engagement professionals will facilitate teachers and schoolchildren in exploring expanded vocality in everyday communication.
-Site-specific community co-creation projects will activate participants in three locations to explore experiences of automated voices in public space.
-An inclusively designed accessible broadside pamphlet, developed through tripartite collaboration with Daly & Lyon and the UK Association for Accessible Formats, will facilitate audiences to engage via print and digital formats with the project concept, artworks and investigative strands.
-A co-created Inclusive Design for the Arts Toolkit will share insights, model solutions and disseminate best practice in inclusive graphic design to creative industries professionals.
Organisations
- University of Southampton (Fellow, Lead Research Organisation)
- Nottingham Contemporary (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- LUX (Collaboration)
- Wysing Arts Centre (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON (Collaboration)
- Daly & Lyon (Project Partner)
- John Hansard Gallery (Project Partner)
- UK Association for Accessible Formats (Project Partner)
Publications
Hayden S
(2023)
"A Cognitive Listening" attending to captioning via the critical "unvoiceover"
in Angelaki
Hayden S
(2021)
Caps on / Caps off: Receiving Jenny Brady's Receiver
Hayden S
(2021)
On Access via Versioning
Hayden S
(2022)
slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs
Hayden S
(2023)
Bricks from the Kiln #6
Hayden S
(2022)
slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs
| Title | A Language of Holes: Nat Raha Work in Progress Performance at Club Urania, in conjunction with Wysing Arts Centre |
| Description | Nat Raha was invited to present a new work-in-progress performance with a particular emphasis on centring captioning and access at Club Urania in Cambridge. This work-in-progress was commissioned by Sarah Hayden in partnership with Wysing Arts Centre as part of A Language of Holes, a collaboration that explores innovative approaches to captioning in live contexts. The event had live captioning, sound description and BSL interpretation and was accessible online and at Club Urania in Cambridge Junction. Club Urania is Cambridge's premium performance and music night for LGBTQ+ people and allies. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This WIP commission enabled the artist (poet-activist-academic) Nat Raha to develop new approaches to integrating creative approaches to access into live performance. Audiences in the space and online benefitted from this integration of |
| URL | http://www.wysingartscentre.org/archive/events/club_urania_16_september/2022 |
| Title | Creative Caption and Augmented Audio Description version of Black Audio Film Collective's Handsworth Songs (1986) |
| Description | Sarah Hayden worked closely with LUX (the UK agency for the support and promotion of artists working with moving image) to make Black Audio Film Collective's Handsworth Songs (1986) accessible to new audiences. Together, they commissioned Care-fuffle Working Group to write creative captions and commissioned Elaine Lillian Joseph to develop augmented audio description for this major work in the history of Black British Film. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This user-led creative process was documented in slow emergency siren, ongoing: an accessibly designed book publication, which was launched in large-print and website formats in September 2022. The newly accessible version of the film is now available for hire. |
| URL | https://lux.org.uk/event/slow-emergency-siren-ongoing/ |
| Title | Hannah Kemp-Welch, [voices surface]: An audio-documentary about Accessing Handsworth Songs |
| Description | Audio documentary about the slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs project with LUX |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Document of year-long collaborative process |
| Title | Hannah Kemp-Welch: Listening Memories Audio-Collage |
| Description | In July 2022, sound artist Hannah Kemp-Welch spent a week in Southampton working with dancer and performance artist Gabriel Galvez. Together, they led a series of workshops with elders from the city who regularly participate in Galvez's 'Dance for Parkinsons' and movement classes for older people. Their sessions explored the relationship between sound, memory, and gesture. Inviting elders into the gardens outside community centres to practice listening techniques, the group listened to birds, traffic, wind rustling leaves. They listened again via headphones, noticing the change in amplitude and detail and the filtering and selecting of sounds our ears naturally do for us. These experiences with listening triggered memories of sounds for some. As they unpacked these stories, they began to explore gestures and movement in response. Recordings of these stories triggered by sound were edited by Hannah into an audio collage which premiered at a 'listening cinema' at John Hansard Gallery. Care-fuffle Working Group then developed a creative transcript that translates the entire soundscape of Hannah's audio collage into words. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This audio-collage enabled workshop participants to document and reflect upon their experiences and memories of listening. |
| URL | https://jhg.art/events/hannah-kemp-welch-listening-memories/ |
| Title | Liza Sylvestre and Christopher R Jones: Flashlight Project |
| Description | Artist's Description of the Performance: Flashlight Project addresses a need to reconfigure conversations models in order to consider individuals with differing levels of sensory ability. Join us in a 'conversation' that is organised around a gesture of visibility and identification. Flashlight Project is interested in how exploring the intersection of learned systems of body and language disrupts systems of normativity. Participants come away from a Flashlight Project workshop questioning normative modes of communication design and pay specific attention to the demarcation between the private and social body, one that is predicated upon compulsory able-bodiedness. How are subjectivities shaped by systems of meaning and access? How can they be used to create space for others?' |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This BSL-interpreted event sold out at John Hansard Gallery on October 7th 2022, on the occasion of the exhibition Liza Sylvestre | asweetsea. |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/liza-sylvestre-flashlight-project-tickets-421258063207 |
| Title | Liza Sylvestre: asweetsea |
| Description | asweetsea explores what it means to communicate. This first solo exhibition by Liza Sylvestre artist outside of the United States comprises newly commissioned moving image, drawings, sculptures and audio. These playful, probing works investigate how we make, share and access meaning together. Liza Sylvestre is interested in how disruptions and complications of normative sensory hierarchies can function as conceptual and aesthetic material. She conceives of her work as a site to share experience and to form new ways of understanding the intersection of senses, access, and learned systems of communication. As an artist who is deaf, and whose child and partner are both hearing, Sylvestre tries to locate where her disability lives within their family structure. Through her practice, Sylvestre investigates the complicated edges of distinctions. What does hearing mean? What does deafness mean? What does disability mean? Where do these things begin and end? In a new film, Sylvestre has collaborated with her 6-year-old child to reimagine an animated cartoon from the artist's own childhood. Sylvestre's strong memories of the Sweet Sea cartoon evolved at a time when she had a very different sensory makeup. These memories were intensified by the bond she experienced with the Sweet Sea doll: a toy that accompanied her through traumatic medical interventions. Thirty years on, the cartoon's '80s aesthetic is intensely nostalgic, at once familiar and blurred. Now, as her hearing child relays their experience of the film, Sylvestre reworks the animated material to fit their description. In her ongoing Captioned series, Sylvestre intervenes upon found films, introducing a layer of essayistic reflection in place of the captions without which the film's sound-world is inaccessible. In asweetsea, captioned conversations between parent and child capture both the sound and the emotional textures of their interaction. Vividly coloured and shimmering with undersea motion, their remake engages generational experiences of disability, interdependence, sensory memory, communication, and time. To accompany the film, Sylvestre has created clear resin sculptures and diagrammatic drawings. In the Memorabilia sculptures, memories of Sweet Sea toys amalgamate with components from contemporary cochlear implants. In snapping together, they create fantastical new forms. Prototypes for future possibilities, these undersea artefacts suggest modalities of sensing and imagining as yet unknown. Translucent but ambiguous, Sylvestre's sculptures enact another kind of material, cross-modal translation. Instructions for the construction of Lego models overlap on tracing paper with diagrams for the assembly of cochlear implants in Sylvestre's new Parts drawings. Systems are layered, one on top of the other. Visual schemas become meshed. The structure of language within a family is made visible as an investigation of overlapping systems. Silent screens with captions and a separate audio piece offer alternative routes of entry to an artist's audio tour of asweetsea. Distributed throughout the gallery space, and available in multiple formats, Sylvestre's interpretative guide to the exhibition draws attention to the role of description in creating access. Sylvestre has devised a new iteration of her Flashlight Project performance collaboration with Christopher Jones for John Hansard Gallery. Flashlight Project invites participants to join the artists in a conversation situation designed to reconfigure their expectations of communication design, access and compulsory able-bodiedness. This performance will be presented at the exhibition private view on 7 October 2022. Following the live performance, a video version will be installed on the gallery's digital array for the exhibition duration. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The exhibition, featuring all new work by the artist, was on show from 8 October 2022 to 14 January 2023. It was reviewed in ArtReview and occasioned a related opinion piece by the artist in Art Quarterly. Over the exhibition run, new audiences were engaged via a separate Touch Tour (with Jo Breslin) and BSL tour (by Martin Glover). Educational support worker Vanessa Rolfe was commissioned to work with school pupils and teachers at Newlands Primary School to develop and trial a gallery pack for use by children and families. |
| URL | https://jhg.art/events/liza-sylvestre-asweetsea/ |
| Title | Teacher Voice Treatment 1 |
| Description | Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to "attend" (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. Part 1 was published in both text plus alt-text and audio formats in parallel. |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Invited serial publication for SPAM Plaza, occasioning interaction and invitations from artists to collaborate and mentor on projects. |
| URL | https://www.spamzine.co.uk/post/teacher-voice-treatment-lecture-1-by-sarah-hayden |
| Title | Teacher Voice Treatment 2 |
| Description | Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. Developed from an invited lecture delivered at the Sound/Text seminar series in Harvard University in 2020. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to "attend" (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. Part 2 was published in both text plus alt-text and audio formats in parallel, with an introduction by Sophie Seita. |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Occasioned invitations from artists to collaborate and mentor. |
| URL | https://www.spamzine.co.uk/post/teacher-voice-treatment-lecture-2-by-sarah-hayden |
| Title | Teacher Voice Treatment 3 |
| Description | Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. Developed from an invited lecture delivered at the Sound/Text seminar series in Harvard University in 2020. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to "attend" (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. Part 3 was published in both text plus alt-text and audio formats in parallel, with an introduction by Nisha Ramayya |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Occasioned invitations from artists to collaborate and mentor |
| URL | https://www.spamzine.co.uk/post/teacher-voice-treatment-lecture-3-by-sarah-hayden |
| Description | Ongoing. Artists, arts workers and arts organisations are thinking more creatively and expansively about access in the arts. |
| Exploitation Route | Broad social benefits for accessibility of contemporary art, increasing equity of engagement. Artists develop innovative ways of exploring the creative potentiality of access as ethos. Institutions commit to a more equitable and expansive concept of access in relation to exhibitions, live events, moving image presentations, commissions and existing collections. New artworks are being made, that use access as medium. Innovative approaches to the retrospective captioning and audio description of existing artworks are being discovered and documented as models of practice. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://www.voicesinthegallery.com |
| Description | Artists, arts workers and arts organisations internationally are changing their practice in response to this project's research findings on access in the arts. Through workshops, online talks, exhibitions and events, professionals in the creative sector have gained new insight into access as it relates, particularly, to artists' moving image. Individual artists in the UK and Ireland have engaged the PI as mentor on developing projects. Artists' Development and Distribution agencies including LUX and VideoClub in the UK and aemi in Ireland, EU Screen network and curatorial organisations such as the British Art Network have invited the PI to present on this research to the artists and curators they represent. Commissioned artists based in the UK and US have developed new approaches. New partnerships evidence the relevance of this research for arts workers and artists. Professional access workers engaged with on the project have reported benefits to their practice and new understanding of how that practice might develop to be both more innovative and more inclusive. Partner organisations are developing new approaches to commissioning and presenting moving image and voice-driven work. Participants in workshops have reported the acquisition of new skills and understanding. On the basis of the co-devised Caption-Conscious Ecology programme, the PI is now working with Nottingham Contemporary to develop an ambitious commission, with the support of an Artfund Reimagine Grant. . All All aspects of the curation of Liza Sylvestre's asweetsea exhibition at John Hansard Gallery were designed in response to the research findings. A year-long development with LUX led to the production and screening of a new, augmented audio-described and creatively captioned version Black Audio Collective's monumental film, Handsworth Songs. This project, slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs, was documented in an accessibly designed print book and website, soon to be joined by an audio documentary and design guide. Together, these outputs model creative, approaches to access in art, using access as medium and access as ethos. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Web Science Institute Pilot Projects Call 2021-22: Chatbots in the Gallery (Co-Investigator: Sarah Hayden, PI: Seth Giddings) |
| Amount | £7,500 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Southampton |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | John Hansard Gallery |
| Organisation | University of Southampton |
| Department | John Hansard Gallery |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Developing exhibition, workshops, training, public events. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Supporting and collaborating on all aspects of the exhibition and public programme, to take place in autumn-winter 2022. |
| Impact | Previous outputs noted in previous submissions. New outputs currently being developed |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | LUX |
| Organisation | LUX |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Knowledge exchange |
| Collaborator Contribution | Knowledge exchange. |
| Impact | Currently developing a collaborative project for summer 2022. Preface to that project is available at this address: |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Nottingham Contemporary |
| Organisation | Nottingham Contemporary |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Co-devised and led Caption-Conscious Ecology Programme: 2021 4 Events: Protest and Practice, Access and Abundance, Captioning for Artists, Captioning for Curators. Development of Caption-Conscious Commission programme in 2022. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Co-devised and led Caption-Conscious Ecology Programme: 2021 4 Events: Protest and Practice, Access and Abundance, Captioning for Artists, Captioning for Curators. Development of Caption-Conscious Commission programme in 2022. |
| Impact | Caption-Conscious Ecology Programme: 2021 4 Events: Protest and Practice, Access and Abundance, Captioning for Artists, Captioning for Curators. Development of Caption-Conscious Commission programme in 2022. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Wysing Arts Centre |
| Organisation | Wysing Arts Centre |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | New collaboration |
| Collaborator Contribution | Nature of collaboration yet to be determined (events in 2022) |
| Impact | Scope of collaboration currently being determined. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Access and Abundance |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Live, CART-captioned and BSL-interpreted online talk and screening exploring captioning abundance and access with scholar, artist and activist, Louise Hickman and Disability Studies scholar, Tanya Titchkosky. Participants and live event and those who engaged with video recording afterwards reported increased understanding and awareness. In this event, Tanya Titchkosky considers access as a language that puts us into a living relation with how we sense each other and our communities, making contours and edges of belonging. Louise Hickman adopts a performative approach in tracing the shifting tensions between the abundances and demands of creating accessible spaces. Their talks will be followed by a screening and live audio description of Captioning on Captioning, a short-film by Louise Hickman and Shannon Finnegan. This event is part of Caption Conscious Ecology, a series of talks and workshops advocating for the role of captioning in the production and display of moving-image work. Bringing scholars from D/deaf Studies and Critical Disability Studies together with artists and access workers, this series prompts conversations on the history, function, practical provision, and creative potentiality of captioning. It invites artists and arts organisers to explore how and why to embed captioning in artistic and curatorial practice. Organised by Nottingham Contemporary and Voices in the Gallery. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/talk-access-and-abundance/ |
| Description | Access as Ethos via The Art of Captioning |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Access as Ethos via The Art of Captioning British Art Network Research Group Leads Workshop, (online) 9 March 2022. Short presentation delivered with Hannah Wallis to the leads of all of the current British Art Network Research Groups. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://britishartnetwork.org.uk/research/the-art-of-captioning/ |
| Description | Art of Captioning Presentation to EU Screen 2022: Translating Media Pasts Symposium, Prague, December 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Sarah Hayden and Hannah Wallis were invited to present on "The Art of Captioning" at a "Captioning for Change" panel at this symposium on how "translation", in its broadest sense, can contribute to greater diversity, equity and inclusion in European audiovisual archives. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://blog.euscreen.eu/events/euscreen-2022-network-meeting-and-symposium/ |
| Description | British Art Network Research Group (with Hannah Wallis): Making Access Work |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Making Access Work explored arts access from the perspective of those who translate, interpret and describe sound and image. Presentations were made by audio-describer Elaine Lillian Joseph, artist and access d/Deaf activist Nina Thomas and BSL-interpreter Natasha Trantom, followed by a q&a. Making Access Work was live-streamed to members and the public via Zoom and Twitch and subsequently hosted on Wysing Broadcast, where it has drawn hundreds of new viewers and listeners. This event was organised with Hannah Wallis as part of our Art of Captioning research group, supported by the British Art Network |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://wysingbroadcasts.art/discover/the-art-of-captioning-making-access-work |
| Description | Captioning for Artists |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Online, CART-captioned and BSL-interpreted workshop for artists, hosted in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary. Participants reported increased interest and understanding of captioning as creative medium. Join us for a live, online workshop for artists to experiment with the poetics and pragmatics of captioning. This session is led by artist, Asad Raza and translator Olivia Fairweather. Thinking together about subjectivity, sound, and interpretation, we explore captioning as creative practice. During this workshop, participants collaborate in real-time on Raza's film project, Ge to develop a collectively authored caption-track. No prior experience, expertise, or specialist software is required. This event is part of Caption Conscious Ecology, a series of talks and workshops advocating for the role of captioning in the production and display of moving-image work. Bringing scholars from D/deaf Studies and Critical Disability Studies together with artists and access workers, this series prompts conversations on the history, function, practical provision, and creative potentiality of captioning. It invites artists and arts organisers to explore how and why to embed captioning in artistic and curatorial practice. Organised by Nottingham Contemporary and Voices in the Gallery. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/workshop-captioning-for-artists/ |
| Description | Captioning for Curators |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Online, CART-captioned and BSL-interpreted workshop for Curators, co-hosted with Hannah Wallis and facilitated by Elinor Morgan. Participants reported enhanced understanding of access barriers and opportunities in their institutions and practices. Join us for a live, online workshop inviting arts organisers to explore the embedding of captioning across commissioning and curatorial practice. This event is part of Caption Conscious Ecology, a series of talks and workshops advocating for the role of captioning in the production and display of moving-image work. Bringing scholars from D/deaf Studies and Critical Disability Studies together with artists and access workers, this series prompts conversations on the history, function, practical provision, and creative potentiality of captioning. It invites artists and arts organisers to explore how and why to embed captioning in artistic and curatorial practice. Organised by Nottingham Contemporary and Voices in the Gallery. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/workshop-captioning-for-curators/ |
| Description | Chatbots in the Gallery AI Jam |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 'Chatbots in the Gallery AI Jam' at the Winchester School of Art Gallery on Friday 23rd July. A playful and participatory design event to generate ideas for the characterisation of chatbots and the kinds of conversations, information or stories that might take place in a gallery and in interaction with art works. Co-I on this project, for which the AI Jam was a pilot. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.southampton.ac.uk/wsi/research/pilot-projects/sg.page |
| Description | Creative Captioning in the Archive |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The Art of Captioning is a British Art Network research group that brings together artists, curators, researchers, activists and access workers to address the state of captioning and access awareness in British Art, led by Sarah Hayden ad Hannah Wallis. Hannah and Sarah began the workshop by delivering a presentation about The Art of Captioning's ongoing work on access as ethos, which was made available for participants to join remotely as well as in-person at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning. This was then followed by an in-person practical workshop on access-thinking in archives, with the opportunity for participants to work directly with materials held in collection of the Women's Art Library and 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning. This workshop was open to all, although aimed in particular at PhD researchers who are working creatively and politically with archival material. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://sites.gold.ac.uk/animatingarchives/animating-archives-workshop-4-creative-captioning-in-the-... |
| Description | Exploring Alt-Text as Poetry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This workshop took place on 24 November 2021, as part of the University of Southampton's Arts and Humanities Festival, in connection with Disability History Month. Participants reported greater understanding and planned to incorporate learning in future practice as artists and arts workers. Alt-text is what makes digital images accessible to blind and low-vision internet users. In alt-text, visual information is translated into a verbal description, usually stored as an image caption. Alt-text is an important consideration for anyone who puts pictures online-whether on social media, in teaching materials or on websites. It also a site for experimentation and creativity: a place, potentially, for poetry. In this workshop, join Sarah Hayden to explore the ideas developed by artists Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan in their ongoing Alt-Text as Poetry project. You will learn about the access functions of alt-text, discuss some ongoing debates, and experiment with writing poetic, accessible alt-text. Moving through a sequence of enjoyable, stimulating exercises, we will produce individual and collaborative descriptions image-descriptions that test and stretch the limits of alt-text as poetry. Live captioning will be provided for this event. No experience or expertise is required to take part. Exploring Alt-Text as Poetry is open to anyone interested in thinking openly, creatively and inclusively about digital accessibility. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.southamptonartshumfest.co.uk/wider-festival/whats-on/?id=18 |
| Description | Hannah Kemp Welch: Listening Memories Workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In July 2022, sound artist Hannah Kemp-Welch spent a week in Southampton working with dancer and performance artist Gabriel Galvez as part of Voices in the Gallery: Phase 2. Together, they led a series of workshops with elders from the city who regularly participate in Galvez's 'Dance for Parkinsons' and movement classes for older people. Their sessions explored the relationship between sound, memory, and gesture. Inviting elders into the gardens outside community centres to practice listening techniques, the group listened to birds, traffic, wind rustling leaves. They listened again via headphones, noticing the change in amplitude and detail and the filtering and selecting of sounds our ears naturally do for us. These experiences with listening triggered memories of sounds for some. As they unpacked these stories, they began to explore gestures and movement in response. Recordings of these stories triggered by sound were edited into an audio collage which premiered at a 'listening cinema' at John Hansard Gallery. Care-fuffle Working Group then developed a creative transcript that translates the entire soundscape of Hannah's audio collage into words. . |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://jhg.art/events/hannah-kemp-welch-listening-memories/ |
| Description | Hannah Kemp-Welch: Workshops at Wysing Arts Centre as part of A Language of Holes |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In September and October 2022, Hannah Kemp Welch led a project with young people with different hearing profiles, building homemade radios. They were supported by the Sensory Support Service and commissioned by Voices in the Gallery, as part of the 'A Language of Holes' project with Wysing Arts Centre. During each of 4 sessions, young people built a different kind of radio receiver or transmitter, learning about the physics of radio. The project was designed with maximum access in mind, and leaves behind a series of new 'how-to' guides for constructing basic radios. The project culminated in a final celebration for the young people and their friends and families, sharing the results of the workshops and sound experiments. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.sound-art-hannah.com/o-o-radio |
| Description | In Conversation with Liza Sylvestre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Having collaborated for over a year to realise the asweetsea exhibition, Liza Sylvestre and Sarah Hayden explored the themes and ideas of the exhibition in an in-depth discussion. This online In-Conversation event was followed by an audience Q&A and was live-captioned and BSL-interpreted. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://jhg.art/events/in-conversation-liza-sylvestre-and-dr-sarah-hayden/ |
| Description | In Conversation with Seo Hye Lee |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In Conversation with artist Seo Hye Lee at John Hansard Gallery on the occasion of their screening as part of VideoClub Selected 12 Tour. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://videoclub.org.uk/selected-12-uk-tour/ |
| Description | On Audio Description |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On Audio Description: In Conversation with Elaine Lillian Joseph To mark the beginning of a new collaboration exploring audio description, LUX invited me to interview Elaine Lillian Joseph about her practice as a professional audio describer in a video-recorded discussion with captions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://lux.org.uk/writing/on-audio-description-elaine-lillian-joseph-and-sarah-hayden-in-conversati... |
| Description | Protest and Practice |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Live, CART-captioned, BSL-interepreted online talk and screening exploring captioning as protest and in practice with historian and disability scholar-activist, Jaipreet Virdi and creative captioners, Collective Text. High engagement from viewers live and after the event, with requests and further collaborations as consequence. In this event, Jaipreet Virdi considers the social history of captioning and its roots in resistance, while Collective Text discuss their collaborative work as a form of protest. As part of Protest and Practice, we are delighted to screen three short videos: Seo Hye Lee, [sound of subtitles] (2021) 1 minute 38 seconds Jordan Lord, I Can Hear My Mother's Voice (2017) 5 minutes. Directed and edited by Jordan Lord; shot and narrated by Deborah Lord. Abi Palmer, What Now? (2020) 3 minutes 45 seconds. Audio Description by Elaine Lillian Joseph. This event is part of Caption Conscious Ecology, a series of talks and workshops advocating for the role of captioning in the production and display of moving-image work. Bringing scholars from D/deaf Studies and Critical Disability Studies together with artists and access workers, this series prompts conversations on the history, function, practical provision, and creative potentiality of captioning. It invites artists and arts organisers to explore how and why to embed captioning in artistic and curatorial practice. Organised by Nottingham Contemporary and Voices in the Gallery. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/talk-protest-and-practice/ |
| Description | Starting to think about Access and the Moving Image |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | aemi Online: 'Opportunities for Film Artists: Funding and Access' event for artists with Arts Council Ireland, 21 January 2022 What does it mean, and what does it take, to make moving image more accessible? What purposes do captioning and audio description serve, and what possibilities do they open? Video recording with captions and transcript made available |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://aemi.ie/event/opportunities-for-film-artists-funding-and-access/ |
| Description | Temporalities of Access |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Temporalities of Access took place in conjunction with the British Art Network: Art of Captioning research group, which Hayden co-leads with Hannah Wallis, as part of Hayden's A Language of Holes collaboration with Wysing Arts Centre. This was an afternoon-long exploration of access in relation to time, liveness, literary arts and time-based media. First, writer and artist Sandra Alland presented a special preview excerpted from her forthcoming Locked World video essay, and engaged in a discussion of queer disabled hope, Crip Lit, and the Idea of Access in the art today. We hosted a conversation on access in time-based and live art contexts with Tarik Elmoutawakil of Marlborough Productions and Kitty Anderson and Annie Crabtree of Lux Scotland. The day closed with an In-Conversation with artist Liza Sylvestre, focused on the impetus for, and development of, her ongoing Captioned series. This event was live-streamed via Zoom and will shortly be made available as a suite of CART-captioned and BSL-interpreted videos via Wysing Art Centre's digital platform. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://www.wysingartscentre.org/archive/events/a_language_of_holes/2022 |
| Description | The Art of Captioning (with Hannah Wallis): Intr |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This workshop introduced ways to start thinking about implementing captions in moving image work, from early preparations for approaching caption-writing to exercises concerning interpreting and describing sound work. It was a practical and interactive workshop where participants will have an opportunity to engage in creative tasks and experiment with translating sound into captions to encourage them to start forming their own methods for caption-writing, all in a welcoming and supportive atmosphere. This event was organised with Hannah Wallis in conjunction with Wysing Arts Centre as part of our Art of Captioning research group activity, supported by the British Art Network |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://www.wysingartscentre.org/archive/events/the_art_of_captioning_introduction_to_caption_writing... |
| Description | Watching along with a voice made visible |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Watching along with a voice made visible, UEA (University of East Anglia) School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, Twentieth Century Research Seminar, 10 November 2021 This is a talk about writing in art. It asks: what happens when functions typically assigned to a sonorous voiceover are taken up instead by soundless "unvoiceover"? What are the aesthetic and affective affordances of text that variously streams across or is "popped" on and off the screen? In Liza Sylvestre's Captioned series (2017-) and Tony Cokes' The Book of Love (1992), writing interjects across found moving image footage that is, thereby, reframed. Via the interventions of a legible, inaudible artist's voice, distinctions between text and paratext are made to dissolve and moving-image figure becomes the ground to transient words. This paper explores how the unvoiceover deploys a fugacity it borrows from sound to undermine objectivity, compromise legibility and foreclose the luxury of redundancy. Through formal analysis of fugitive commentary, I will first argue that Cokes' unvoiceover undermines the status of the document and the ethics of mining family history. Then, by close-reading Sylvestre's emphatically embodied and situated unvoiceover as an articulation of Deaf Gain, I will show how the Captioned series' hijacked caption-tracks train reader-receivers in the politics of media access. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |