Exhibition of Deaf and disability arts
I worked on this exhibition as a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University. Throughout the process I learned a lot about Deaf and disability arts, and issues of accessibility in media arts.
The Vibrations exhibition – happening simultaneously in Montreal, Quebec and East London, UK – was the culmination of a collaboration between VibraFusionLab (London, Ontario), Together! 2012 CIC (East London, UK), and the Participatory Media cluster of Milieux: Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec). The project brought Deaf and disabled artists and their communities from Montreal and East London together to co-produce a suite of new digital artworks and experimental prototypes that explore our sensorial relationship to the world through ‘vibrational’ tactility, including the skin, and the body as a resonant chamber. The project asked how artistic creation can contribute to challenging ableism (discrimination against disabled people) and audism (discrimination against Deaf people). Vibrations featured a wide range of approaches to Deaf and disability arts and imagined multiple intersections of tactile vibration, sound, and image.
For the exhibition in Montreal, I oversaw the production and installation of 9 new projects utilizing vibrational media, sound and video. Additionally, I collaborated with Deaf musicians Véro Leduc, Pamela Witcher, Daz Saunders, and Hodan Youssouf on their project Nos Mains Qui Vibrent, creating a new vibrational floor prototype with Ivan Ruby. We used Arduino and vibration motors to build a floor on which users could record and playback sequences of vibrations. I also collaborated with the artist Laurence Parent, helping her to record 6 channels of audio for her video installation; this included 4 channels recorded with contact microphones attached to her motorized wheel chair, capturing the vibrations of her wheeling through Montreal.
My work on diabetic self-tracking, Hemo-resonance #1, was exhibited as part of Vibrations.
Year: 2018
Role: Co-Curator, Organizer, Exhibiting Artist, Technical Collaborator