Wednesday 1 June 2016

Audio Description: the Art of Access CFP


Audio Description: the Art of Access

Friday October 21st, 10am-6pm, central London (venue to be announced)

Sponsored by Royal Holloway University of London

Organised by Hannah Thompson and Eleanor Margolies



Featuring a keynote talk by Louise Fryer, author of An Introduction to Audio Description: A Practical Guide (Routledge, 2016)



 Call for Presentations

This one-day workshop aims to explore some of the aesthetic and technological questions around the practice of audio description for live performance and in museums and galleries. Proposals for 20-minute presentations or workshop sessions are welcome from researchers and practitioners working in fields such as theatre and performance, museums and galleries, disability studies, the senses, writing and translation, voice and sound design. Presentations might consider – but are not limited to – the following themes:



* Audio description in promenade, site-specific and multi-media performance

* Integrated audio description

* Audio description for dance

* Audio description for opera

* Indeterminacy and surprise: what is ‘access’ for post-dramatic and non-narrative performance?

* Other resources for access to the visual elements of performance such as

performer-guides, recorded introductions, touch tours and haptic tools

* Access to theatre for blind and partially-sighted children and young people – is a different approach needed?

* The relationship between verbal description and tactile and kinaesthetic experience in the touch tour and pre-show movement workshop

* Other people making use of audio description: theatre-goers on the autistic spectrum, sighted museum visitors, students of visual culture

* Blind and partially-sighted performers’ experience of audio description and touch tours

* Talking about diversity, bodies, sex and violence

* The museum experience: orientation, audio information, tactile guides and handling collections

* The describing voice: whose voice? live or recorded? human or synthesised?

* The strengths and limitations of infrared, radio and wireless systems; in-ear, on-ear and bone conduction headphones; new directions in sound technology

* Achieving a balance between speech, music, recorded sound and description

* Archives – the potential of description scripts as performance documentation



Proposals (200 words) and a short biography (200 words) should be sent to Hannah Thompson by 30 June: successful applicants will be contacted by 21st July. There is no cost to attend the event and refreshments and lunch will be provided.