Title
A method to create audio descriptions with a synaesthetic approach
Conference name
Media for All 10 Conference
City
Country
Belgium
Modalities
Date
06/07/2023-07/07/2023
Abstract
Researchers and practitioners, in visual art, television, theater, and film audio description (AD), such as Szarkowska (2013) and Hutchinson and Eardley (2019), among others, have called for alternative AD approaches, while others, including Bardini (2020), Walczak and Fryer (2017), and Ramos (2016), to cite a few, have demonstrated their potential benefit for users in reception studies.
This article discusses a reception study of minority visual art AD styles and features identified in a number of corpus-based studies (Luque and Soler 2020; Soler 2021) and focuses on one of them, namely the synaesthetic metaphor feature.
In neuroscience, the word synaesthesia is used to name a perceptual phenomenon “in which sensations or sensory qualities are evoked automatically in the absence of adequate stimulation” (Marks and Pierce 2014, 33). In art and design, synaesthetic representations are practices involving a transfer from one sense to another or various senses acting synchronously (Riccò 2014, 167-68), while linguistic synaesthesias are metaphors that recreate a sensation through a sense that, while being alien to it, helps to understand it through bodily experience (Steen et al. 2010, 175).
The method used for creating the synaesthetic AD materials for the study is based on a deep observation of the work of art and the sensations elicited by it. A list of sensory categories (Bayod 1999) is used to translate the sensations produced by seeing the work into sensations of time, space, and touch. The resulting synaesthesias are compared, selected, and added to an objective audio description of the work. This process is carried out by the authors along with Rubén Rámila, the third researcher in the project, who is blind and has both training and experience as instructor in sensory and synaesthetic development for blind and partially sighted people organizations, schools, and museums.
In this article, we present the elaboration of the synaesthetic ADs of two sets of antagonistic works of art, since opposition often facilitates understanding of the synaesthetic attributes. These are: “Aha Oe Feii?”, by Gauguin, and “Portrait of Empress Maria Fedorovna”, by Makovsky, together with “Panels for Edwin R. Campbell”, by Kandinsky, and “Vir Heroicus Sublimis”, by Newman. We will present different examples of both the stages of the method and the final synaesthetic AD, along with a discussion of these materials and its application in the reception study.
This article discusses a reception study of minority visual art AD styles and features identified in a number of corpus-based studies (Luque and Soler 2020; Soler 2021) and focuses on one of them, namely the synaesthetic metaphor feature.
In neuroscience, the word synaesthesia is used to name a perceptual phenomenon “in which sensations or sensory qualities are evoked automatically in the absence of adequate stimulation” (Marks and Pierce 2014, 33). In art and design, synaesthetic representations are practices involving a transfer from one sense to another or various senses acting synchronously (Riccò 2014, 167-68), while linguistic synaesthesias are metaphors that recreate a sensation through a sense that, while being alien to it, helps to understand it through bodily experience (Steen et al. 2010, 175).
The method used for creating the synaesthetic AD materials for the study is based on a deep observation of the work of art and the sensations elicited by it. A list of sensory categories (Bayod 1999) is used to translate the sensations produced by seeing the work into sensations of time, space, and touch. The resulting synaesthesias are compared, selected, and added to an objective audio description of the work. This process is carried out by the authors along with Rubén Rámila, the third researcher in the project, who is blind and has both training and experience as instructor in sensory and synaesthetic development for blind and partially sighted people organizations, schools, and museums.
In this article, we present the elaboration of the synaesthetic ADs of two sets of antagonistic works of art, since opposition often facilitates understanding of the synaesthetic attributes. These are: “Aha Oe Feii?”, by Gauguin, and “Portrait of Empress Maria Fedorovna”, by Makovsky, together with “Panels for Edwin R. Campbell”, by Kandinsky, and “Vir Heroicus Sublimis”, by Newman. We will present different examples of both the stages of the method and the final synaesthetic AD, along with a discussion of these materials and its application in the reception study.