Janneke Schoene, 'Transmediations. Audio guides for visually impaired visitors in art museums'

This seminar is in English.

This week we will have Janneke Schoene presenting/discussing an article she has under development, which analyses specific examples related to her larger research project on: Transmediations. Audio guides for visually impaired visitors in art museums.

Abstract:

The project Transmediations is, in broader terms, concerned with the question of how museums can narrate and mediate meaning and information. It examines audio guides as exemplary complex transmedial formats on which objects, for instance, are translated into spoken texts, and thus into a different medium with different characteristics regarding the perception of the artwork. The project therewith ties up on essential intermedial research which makes it possible to analyse basic media properties and moreover enhances inter-/transmedial research by focusing on a format that features multiple media shifts.

Audio guides are not simple forms of art description; they do not just (or actually not at all) describe artworks, but construct and stage meaning, e.g. by creating certain interferences between objects and artistic ‘intention’ on which many guides focus. This is especially relevant when it comes to modern and contemporary art, moreover within abstract, conceptual, and political connoted art, because these art forms all assert a certain correlation between the ‘intention’ of the artist and the object. On (most) audio guides, the set out meaning they refer to only exists within the narration and performance in a juxtaposition to the displayed artworks. Audio guides therewith do not necessarily create an understanding of art but create a tension between ‘what was said to be demonstrated’ and ‘what was seen/actually shown’ – and they become the object of aesthetic experience instead of being adidactic medium which open new creative and artistic ways of creating audio guides for specific visitor groups, which shows a necessity for more open approaches.

A past-due detailed examination of audio guides is also crucial for the design and actual production of audio guides, and from a practical perspective, the project aims towards the production of the first audio guide for visually impaired visitors in a Swedish art museum, who as visitor group are widely excluded from museum visits and thus the art discourse in a more general way. Rather a few museums worldwide provide information for visually impaired visitors by supplying texts in Braille, tactile guiding systems or at most palpation models. Hitherto, there are only a few specific audio guides in historical museums, almost none in art museums. Thus, this specific group of visitors is not only excluded from museum visits, but also from the art discourse in a more general way, namely from the societal reception of art. 

The goal of the planned guide and the project is, of course, not to ‘educate’ specific visitor groups, but to address and discuss the production of meaning in the art field, and it moreover (potentially) encourages the awareness of exclusion/inclusion in museums. 

You are welcome to join the seminar on zoom by emailing us at ims@lnu.se

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen