Building on the Shared Mat, I wanted to explore how relational access might unfold through sound. Collaborating with artist Jay Afrisando, we ran a workshop that invited participants to listen across cultures, notice differences and co-develop meaning together.
We began by listening to everyday sounds from Southeast Asia and noticing how they are interpreted differently across countries. Participants co-created captions collaboratively in a shared Google Doc, allowing everyone to see, edit and respond in real time. They experimented with onomatopoeia, font size, layout, timing and emphasis, noticing how even subtle changes could alter tone, emotion and interpretation. As captions emerged in Tamil, Filipino, Thai and other linguistic contexts, the group began to reflect on how sound is never neutral – it carries cultural humour, rhythm and social cues.
Small examples made this visible. In Thai digital culture, ‘555’ reads as laughter because the number five is pronounced ‘ha’. Meanwhile in Indonesia and Malaysia (neighbouring countries with closely related languages), even something as ordinary as a car horn is named differently – klakson in Indonesia while the term is rarely used in Malaysia. These everyday sonic differences revealed how meaning shifts across contexts and how conventional access frameworks can unintentionally flatten nuance.
Through the exercises, relational access emerged not as a fixed framework but as a shared practice. Participants were simultaneously hosting and being hosted, attending to each other’s interpretations, offering feedback and experimenting together. Translation became an act of care – an attempt to represent sound without imposing assumptions or erasing cultural difference.
Listening itself became a relational gesture. Attentive listening requires humility – recognising that we cannot fully know what a sound means in another cultural or social context – and openness to multiple interpretations existing at once. Rather than positioning accessibility as a top down provision, the workshop explored how access might be co-authored through responsiveness, negotiation and shared attention.
Further reflections from the workshop included:
- Noticing how the collaborative process of captioning began to mirror the way access needs are negotiated in creative collaborations. How misunderstandings didn’t feel like failures but moments that asked for adjustment, care and ongoing dialogue.
- Even collaborative tools like Google Docs can reproduce hierarchies if some voices dominate, reminding us that mutuality requires active facilitation.
- How might relational attentiveness survive asynchronous or online collaboration? What changes when listening happens across distance or time?
- Sound, text, visual layouts each shape how access is experienced. How might relational access work across different cultural communities in the UK and what might a flexible baseline look like?
This research by Celina Loh draws on Southeast Asian communal practices such as eating together as a starting point to explore how relational approaches might enrich UK structural access frameworks, fostering togetherness, mutual hospitality and belonging. From this grounding, the work extends into collaborative listening, sound and facilitation practices, aiming to inform more holistic and culturally responsive approaches to inclusion in the UK arts and cultural sector.
Loh’s research is supported by the British Art Network (BAN). BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
