Title
A multisensory approach to audio description
Conference name
9th International conference Media for all
City
Country
Spain
Modalities
Date
27/01/2021-29/01/2021
Abstract
A multi-sensory experience may enhance the ‘seeing’ ability of all people, whether they have sight or not. For individuals who are blind or visually impaired (B/VIP), the alternative senses have predominantly been touch and hearing. In the case of theater performances and museum exhibitions, descriptions may be combined with touch tours, which constitute an essential part of the audience experience. On the one hand, the audience can feel the exhibits and showpieces and on the other hand the audience can feel the set, props, and costumes. Can the tactile experience also apply to animation films?
The work explores the usage of touch as a secondary communication channel to deliver additional information along with AD. The research is user-oriented and aims at presenting the results arising from reception studies and round-table discussions with the audience, based on a prescreening touch tour and audio description of “Negative Space”, a short, foreign, stop-motion animation film, projected to the Greek B/VIP audience with the use of audio subtitles (AST). After the screening, the questionnaires were read including questions from a sensory and linguistic point of view.
Animation uses objects that have some sort of emotional inner life that is somehow conserved and liberated by touch (“tactile memory”) (Wells, 2014). What is more, stop-motion, as a technique, evokes a tactile perception by the use of materials and textures that appeal to the audience experience and address the sense of touch. In this framework, prior to the screening of the film, the audience had the opportunity to touch the original puppets and set which were provided by the production company solely for the purpose of our project. This experience was found to engage the audience, as they felt the objects and protagonists, their clothes, features, material, and textures used. They also received further information that was difficult to convey due to time constraints between the AD and the dialogue. Of course, through carefully selected vocabulary, “the feel of the scene” (Udo and Fels, 2009:181) can be better recreated.
Wells defines the fabrication of objects as “the re-animation of materiality for narrative purposes” (1998:90). The tactile knowledge of the world is fundamental for the cognitive development of the Blind because they use touch to learn how to explore the world around them (Miles 2003, Rochat 1989, Stilwell and Cermak 1995). Therefore, the AD could be expanded beyond the visual elements of animation films, encompassing a more engaging and entertaining experience for the audience.
The work explores the usage of touch as a secondary communication channel to deliver additional information along with AD. The research is user-oriented and aims at presenting the results arising from reception studies and round-table discussions with the audience, based on a prescreening touch tour and audio description of “Negative Space”, a short, foreign, stop-motion animation film, projected to the Greek B/VIP audience with the use of audio subtitles (AST). After the screening, the questionnaires were read including questions from a sensory and linguistic point of view.
Animation uses objects that have some sort of emotional inner life that is somehow conserved and liberated by touch (“tactile memory”) (Wells, 2014). What is more, stop-motion, as a technique, evokes a tactile perception by the use of materials and textures that appeal to the audience experience and address the sense of touch. In this framework, prior to the screening of the film, the audience had the opportunity to touch the original puppets and set which were provided by the production company solely for the purpose of our project. This experience was found to engage the audience, as they felt the objects and protagonists, their clothes, features, material, and textures used. They also received further information that was difficult to convey due to time constraints between the AD and the dialogue. Of course, through carefully selected vocabulary, “the feel of the scene” (Udo and Fels, 2009:181) can be better recreated.
Wells defines the fabrication of objects as “the re-animation of materiality for narrative purposes” (1998:90). The tactile knowledge of the world is fundamental for the cognitive development of the Blind because they use touch to learn how to explore the world around them (Miles 2003, Rochat 1989, Stilwell and Cermak 1995). Therefore, the AD could be expanded beyond the visual elements of animation films, encompassing a more engaging and entertaining experience for the audience.