Today I learnt about creative captioning for video, theatrical and music works. It helps the hard of hearing and deaf people to better immerse in the audio(visual) work. The workshop is led by Hannah Wallis, an artist, curator and d/Deaf activist based in the UK.
I learnt that creative captions like a kind of translation, of sonic language into words. However, the words also become part of the visual of the work, inevitably.
“So some artists are reluctant about adding creative captions into their work,” as discussed by Hannah and Celina in the workshop.
I feel like I’m the reluctant artist. When it comes to video work, I feel creative captions make a video look and experienced differently. Unless it’s the original visual idea of the work, I think maybe creative captions can be offered as a derivative version of the original work instead.
Hannah raised some points to help me to think about integrating creative captions:
- The end goal is to make the work accessible
- What is your intention with the soundscape in your work?
- How do you provide the access for people who can’t hear?
- How do you present the information before people experience your work?
I also feel like I need to understand the “end user” perspective before I can understand how does creative captions works? I mean, making artwork, is a lot about how the work expresses and evokes feeling. How does the hard of hearing and deaf people experience sound and its sensory in their daily life? How do I make the creative captions as accurate as they can experience?
But maybe there are many ways to approach this, the first and foremost, is to go back to the intention of the soundscape.
[Image description: Handwritten notes using black ink, about tips for creative captions, across two pages of the sketchbook. The sketchbook is placed on a reddish marble texture tabletop.]
