[TAGS] Invitation to "SoVISA Galactic: Listening Through Space" // June 15th at The Contemporary Jewish Museum

Tue Jun 12 16:15:21 UTC 2018

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

On Friday, June 15th from 2-4pm The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) is thrilled to host SoVISA Galactic: Listening Through Space<https://thecjm.org/programs/365>, a collaborative performance by Australia-based artist Fayen d'Evie and Chicago-based sound artist Andy Slater.  Artists Andy Slater and Fayen d'Evie invite you to join them on a sonar wayfinding journey, from the outer architecture of The CJM to The Museum's Blue Cube space. The performance will include a sculptural contribution from Bay Area artist Jennifer Justice. Following the performance, the artists will share their ambitions for SoVISA, the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists, a group founded by Andy Slater advocating for the inclusion of sound art in art education for the blind, and a greater presence in museums. They will share examples from their solo projects, including Space for the Overactive Ear and The Radical Potential of Blindness and current collaborations that traverse extraterrestrial listening sites and a haunted panopticon prison. SoVISA technical advisors include Dr. Josh Miele (sonic technologies) and Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen (xenolinguistics).

The CJM is thrilled to host this performance as a way to generate new pathways for creating access to The Museum, and to highlight artists who are stretching our understanding of disability, access, and art in progressive and unexpected ways. The post-performance discussion will aim to engage attendees in conversations around tactile and sonic modes of engaging with art, vibration as a form of haptic audio description, and shifting representations of blindness in museums and the arts more broadly.

Co-sponsored by Bay Area Arts Access Collective (BAAAC) and SoVISA, the Society for Visually Impaired Sound Artists.

DATE: Friday, June 15, 2018
TIME: 2:00-4:00pm
LOCATION: The Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103
ACCESSIBILITY: The Museum is wheelchair and mobility device accessible. We ask that attendees refrain from wearing fragrances in an effort to maintain a scent-free environment. Sign language interpretation can be requested with at least 1 week notice by emailing access at thecjm.org<mailto:access at thecjm.org> or by calling 415.655.7856 (relay calls welcome). FM assistive listening devices and microphones for sound enhancement will be provided for the post-performance discussion.
LEARN MORE: https://thecjm.org/programs/365

REGISTER: This event is FREE and open to the public, to register email access at thecjm.org<mailto:access at thecjm.org>
ABOUT ARTISTS
Andy Slater is a legally blind musician, sound artist, author, and performer. He is a 2018 3Arts/Bodies Of Work fellow at the University Of Illinois Chicago and Institutional Incubation Artist at High Concept Labs. His sonic work has always been informed by blindness but it wasn't until recently that he introduced the subject of disability into his work. In 2016, after an unsuccessful search for blind noisemakers, Andy founded the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists (SoVISA), a group advocating for the inclusion of sound art in art education for the blind, and a greater presence in museums and institutions. SoVISA has developed training for accessible audio recording through the Sound As Sight project. The group offers grants for studio access, exhibition and performance opportunities, and a supportive network of fellow members. As part of his residency at High Concept Labs, Andy has worked to develop the SoVISA manifesto. He began by introducing Sound As Sight, a field recording project where blind participants record the world around them and encourage the exploration of their unique relationships with sound. The first completed work was Andy's "Inside Mana Contemporary" (2017). The piece was created from sounds recorded on the Mana campus using accessible audio technology. Sound As Sight received a grant from the Cliff Dwellers Club helping fund the project's development in 2018.
Due to Andy's visual impairment his ears function as navigation, safety, and problem solving tools. Because of this, he listens with great detail and focus, making it hard not to listen critically. Andy began composing experimental music as a teen in the early 90s. He moved to Chicago in 1994 to attend classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sound Department. After a decade away from school he returned in 2010 to complete his education. He graduated from SAIC in 2013 with a BFA focusing on sound composition and sonic art. During his 2018 3Arts residency at UIC, Andy will work to realize some of SoVISA's goals through Sound As Sight workshops and training, public listening projects, and leading discussions on museum accessibility. His latest work in progress, A Space For The Overactive Ear, is a multichannel sound installation composed of field recordings created with accessible IOS recording technology. Andy has a large catalog of recorded music dating back 30 years that includes robotic synthesizer music, art-metal, acid-rock, musique-concrete, as well as film scores and sound design. He currently heads the experimental funk septet, the Velcro Lewis Group. Andy is an engineer at Chicago's Frogg Mountain Recording studio and will barter his services for pizza and beer.
Fayen d'Evie is an artist, writer, and curator based in Muckleford, Australia. Her projects are often conversational and collaborative, and resist spectatorship by activating diverse audiences in embodied readings of artworks. Fayen advocates the radical potential for blindness. By agitating ocularcentric norms of exhibition-making, she argues that blindness offers critical positions and methods for artistic and curatorial practice attuned to sensory translations, ephemerality, vibrational poetics, the tangible and intangible, hallucination, concealment, uncertainty, and the invisible. With artist Katie West, Fayen co-founded the Museum Incognita, which revisits neglected, concealed, or obscured histories, activates embodied readings, and archives ephemeral artworks and practices. Fayen is also the founder of 3-ply, which investigates artist-led publishing as an experimental site for the creation, dispersal, translation, and archiving of texts. Since 2017, Fayen has been collaborating with the SFMOMA Artist Initiative to explore how performative, ephemeral and degrading artworks can be sensed, archived, conserved, and remembered through creative practice. This project evolved out of research in 2016 with Georgina Kleege and Devon Bella at KADIST on haptic dialogue and how audiodescription may be approached as an artistic and literary form. Fayen is currently a Phd candidate in curatorial practice at Monash University."
Jennifer Justice is a multimedia artist, writer, and educator, whose art practice explores the epistemologies that shape understanding of disability, technology, science, and art. She develops speculative sculptural environments that invite multi sensory, performative encounters with handmade, machined, and computer-generated artifacts. Her work has been exhibited at StoreFrontLab and the African American Cultural Center in San Francisco, the Chicago Cultural Center, Zolla/ Lieberman Gallery, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Josh Miele is Associate Director of Technology Research and Development, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Low Vision and Blindness, Smith Kettlewell Eye REsearch Institute. He is a blind scientist, designer, and educator with decades of active involvement in the world of technology, accessibility, and disability. His work in information accessibility has impacted technologies including screen readers, auditory displays, audio/tactile maps and graphics, wayfinding, braille input, video description, and STEM education.

Sheri Wells-Jensen is an associate professor in the Department of English at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. She is on the board of directors of METI International. Her research interests include psycholinguistics, xenolinguistics, phonetics, braille, language preservation, TESOL, language creation, astrobiology and disability studies. In 2018, she was co-chair of the SETI/METI Panel on Communication, Semiotics and Linguistics, at the International Space Development Conference. Recent presentations include "Beware the blind aliens: They come to eat your hypotheses" and "Things you didn't see because you were looking: Blind aliens, science and interspecies miscommunication".

COMMUNITY PARTNERS:

Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists (SoVISA): SoVISA is a group of blind and visually impaired sound artists, composers, and thinkers. We are working to strengthen the presence of sonic based art in museums and art education. We encourage other visually impaired artists to work in the medium of sound. As a community we collaborate on projects, discuss the challenges and rewards of being blind artists, and support each other's creative goals.
To learn more about SoVISA Manifesto: http://www.thisisandyslater.com/sovisa/

Bay Area Arts Access Collective (BAAAC): BAAAC is a volunteer-run network of arts and cultural workers, disability advocates, artists, and educators who are dedicated to enhancing access to the Bay Area's arts and cultural sector for people with disabilities. Through professional development workshops, BAAAC provides a forum for sharing best practices and resources around making Bay Area cultural organizations more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities, as audience members, artists, and culture-makers. Join our network: https://www.facebook.com/bayareaaccess/

Hope you can join us!
Cecile

Cecile Puretz
Access and Community Engagement Manager
e cpuretz at thecjm.org  t 415.655.7856    f 415.655.7815

ON VIEW
Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists<https://thecjm.org/exhibitions/100?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=staff_email&utm_term=Contraption> Feb 22-Jul 29, 2018
The Art of Rube Goldberg<https://thecjm.org/exhibitions/99?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=staff_email&utm_term=Rube_Goldberg> Mar 15-July 8, 2018

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