Call for presentations to the first symposium on The Engaged Surface – How we can transform the ways that people with visual impairment encounter cultural heritage (deadline 2 March 2020)
Call for presentations to the first symposium on The Engaged Surface – How we can transform the ways that people with visual impairment encounter cultural heritage
Type: Call for Calls for presentations and interactive demonstrations
Deadline: Monday 2nd March 2020
Event date: Wednesday 22nd April 2020
Place: The Harbourside Pavilion, 1 Hannover Quay, Bristol BS1 5EJ
The Centre for Fine Print Research is pleased to announce a call for presentations that explore how artists and designers can transform the ways that people with visual impairment encounter cultural heritage. The objective is to develop new models of practice in academic, curatorial, research and public engagement.
Cultural institutions face a growing challenge to make their collections and digital archives accessible in innovative ways that appeal to diverse audiences – both in order to deliver public benefit in line with their civic responsibilities and to address audiences’ needs and evolving expectations. Adults and children who are blind or partially sighted constitute an audience segment who currently face significant barriers to experiencing cultural heritage in museums, galleries, libraries, archives and cognate cultural institutions. Digital technology offers high potential to transcend these barriers and help them enjoy and better understand a painting, a book, an artefact or an installation in a museum.
Our longer-term research goal is to address the question: how will the proposed activities generate genuine and novel interaction across boundaries and so lead to advances in understanding? We wish to extend the reach of the research beyond curatorial tools to navigation – for example, exploring how people with visual impairment can safely navigate from one point to another across a city or in a building, enjoy a cultural place, or gain insights of objects that are too large to apprehend.
We would welcome submissions that involve your exploration of new methods and best practice for translating images into textured surfaces and 3D objects that enhance how audiences encounter elements of tangible cultural heritage, this may include, artificial intelligence, cross-platform software and interactive artefacts, mobile technology and GPS. Possible themes include but are not limited to:
- Artists’ engagement of multi-sensory environments (soundscapes, smell, sound, light and colour, temperature, textures, objects related to memory)
- Widening access to libraries, museums and archives
- Transforming the intangible into tangible
- High tech versus low tech in haptic interfaces
- Materials and print technologies for enhanced interpretations and sensorial expansion
- Augmentation and tech-enhanced learning, software, sensors, VR, embedded technology
- New business models, open source and co-sharing
- New methods of interpretation involving storytelling (oral histories, narratives)
- Navigation tools for public spaces.
How to Apply:
Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words to CFPRinfo@uwe.ac.uk by Monday, March 2nd, 2020. Applicants will be notified of your acceptance by Friday 13th March 2020.
Please indicate whether you would prefer to make a presentation or interactive demonstration (eg. sensorial, tactile, interactive materials and objects).
Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes, with additional time for discussion.
Interactive demonstrations will take place over coffee breaks and lunchtime.
Please register as an attendee here.
