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

[Peter Slatin]

Hi Cecile,

How goes? This sounds great – wish I could be there. I’m going to pass it
along to someone I met last night who is involved in an arts education
program at Harvard – I’ll let you know what he has to say.

Yours, Peter



*From:* TAGS [mailto:tags-bounces at nfbnet.org] *On Behalf Of *Cecile Puretz
via TAGS
*Sent:* Tuesday, June 12, 2018 12:15 PM
*To:* Tactile Art and Tactile Graphics Specialist list <tags at nfbnet.org>
*Cc:* Cecile Puretz <CPuretz at thecjm.org>
*Subject:* [TAGS] Invitation to "SoVISA Galactic: Listening Through Space"
// June 15th at The Contemporary Jewish Museum



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 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

*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 PuretzAccess 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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