“There’s something happening across WESTERN SYDNEY”

29 September, 2007
New Media as Accessible Art panel
Electrofringe (This Is Not Art Festival, Newcastle)
Newcastle Regional Art Gallery


Image: (left to right) Tess O’Brien; Alex White; Daniel Kojta; Jennifer Teo

Audio recording of panel

View photos from the panel

Panel summary:
“Interactive and immersive digital artforms offer an enormous potential as inclusive and accessible practices. This panel of artists and facilitators will explore these ideas and look at accessibility issues in the field of electronic arts” (Electrofringe 2007).

Jennifer Teo (Accessible Arts, Strategic Initiatives Coordinator)
Jen talked about Accessible Arts and set the context for the panel by providing a definition of disability as stated in the Disability Discrimination Act 1972. Jen described the change in societies perception of disability in history as represented in the Medical and Social models of disability. New Media Arts and new technologies create new pathways for access and offer exciting new potential for people with disabilities to participate and engage in the arts. New media and electronic arts is recognised by Accessible Arts as a field with great potential.

Alex White (Electrofringe Director / Panel facilitator)
Alex declared Electrofringe’s interest and commitment to accessibility. Moving beyond the aesthetics of new media Alex suggested that it is time to start talking about how new media can be more useful and meaningful to people and benefit the community at large. Alex discussed the enormous potential for electronic arts and new media work in the field of accessibility, highlighting that multimedia works in their nature are multi-sensory by having video, audio, vibration, movement and tactile components, immediately broadening audience access.

Alex presented the idea of broadening ways you can engage by expanding interface systems so that they are multi-modal. Perhaps an interface system that becomes a new medium in itself, opening up art making to a whole new sector of people. As an example Alex described a wand-type tool fitted with a motion tracking system that could allow the artist to draw or create works on a large screen. The benefit of this being the ability to independently control and change your environment.

Dan Kojta (New Media Artist)
Daniel introduced himself as a practicing new media artist who uses interactive technology, video and audio in his works. To begin the presentation Dan showed a video work that he completed in 2002 depicting the notion of disability from a different perspective.

Dan told how he picked up on the original story whilst travelling, he heard the story on the radio. A ‘paraplegic man’ had been mugged and was left hanging upside down on a fence. The muggers were reported to have taken the mans wallet, mobile phone and wheelchair. The video later reveals the deception involved in the crime where the so-called victim turned out to be a fraud. Video footage was taken of the man walking around in his flat, exposing his fraudulent claim of being a victim of crime and having a disability. The man was never sentenced or held accountable in any way for his actions.

As an artist Dan’s practice has never focused on the notion of disability as an individual subject or looked at it as part of himself. It has only been a recent move for Dan to consider disability in his arts practice and through his art works and in particular using new media technology in order to manipulate the idea of ‘being disabled’ and the ‘notion of healing’. Dan talks about his experiences as an artist and his perspective on disability as it relates to his personal identity and art works.

Dan highlights the need for a greater focus on grants and residencies that are more accessible to people with a disability and reinforces the enormous benefits of collaborations with other artists.

Tess O’Brien (Researcher / Teacher for Australian Signing Choir)
Tess delivered an inspirational presentation and spoke about the experience of music for a person who is deaf. Tess firstly explained to the audience that she is deaf and that ’sign’ is her first language. As a listener Tess has perfect speech but it has only been through hard work that Tess has learned how to speak.

Tess introduced Dancing Hands Sing, a music program she has been developing that enables deaf people to access music through the implementation of alternate teaching and learning strategies.“For a deaf child to be able to access the same educational, social and therapeutic benefits of music as their hearing peers alternate teaching strategies need to be available and implemented.”

The program is designed to help deaf people access music and learn to sing, particularly deaf children in their learning years. A deaf student is a very visual learner and takes in information through observation and vibration. The Dancing Hands Sing music program takes a multi-modal approach to teaching by integrating the use of vibration, tactile support, recording and interpretation of visual sound waves to assist with learning as well as hands-on peer support.

Over the past 4 years Tess has been involved in the development of a computer program specifically designed “to teach deaf children to sing with their hearing peers”. The program has been designed so that it is simple to use with a child friendly interface and that is memory efficient to allow greater accessibility to the ‘average home computer user’. The development is still ongoing. Tess foresees the music program as being available in future as an educational package including the music software, instructional CD-ROM, and syllabus teaching notes.

Tess played an audio recording of a deaf student at different stages of learning to sing using the music program over an 8 month period. An amazing transition can be heard in the development of the child’s singing voice and musicality.

Tess ended the presentation by providing a practical demonstration on ‘learning how to sing through vibration’ with a group of people from the audience. To demonstrate how singing voices harmonise a solo voice was heard first followed by two voices singing together. The two voices harmonised and the original solo voice had changed tempo. A group of people selected from the audience were asked to stand in a circle and sing “Jingle Bells” together. The group was then asked to stand in the circle with their heads together, cheek-to-cheek with the persons next to them. They were asked to sing “Jingle Bells” together again. A significant difference in sound could be heard as the voices began to harmonise, quite powerful and beautiful.

[end panel]

Panel summary provided by Jennifer Teo.