SHAPE 2017 TateExchange Book FINAL Draft - Flipbook - Page 12
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Audio Description: Art or Access?
Louise Fryer
Audio description (AD) is a commentary designed to make images accessible
to people who cannot perceive those images themselves, usually because
of a visual impairment. It is used in a variety of contexts: theatres, cinemas,
broadcast media and also in museums and galleries. The art of description
has been likened to poetry as it seeks to replicate the emotional and sensory
impact of the original in words, but is AD simply an interpretation or a
translation? Can it claim to be an art form in its own right?
This raises many questions, not least “what is art?” alongside “who decides
what art is? ” Added to this, describers have to grapple with Dr Hannah
Thompson’s problematic irony that AD is designed to help give blind users
independence, yet “blind cinemagoers [or gallery visitors] are reliant on
choices made by sighted describers.”
In this short contribution, I would like to explore the claim that AD is itself art
by probing some of the links between the two.
Grayson Perry (2015) says that what is judged to be “good art” changes
over time.
Ernst Gombrich1 (1995) suggests that the conclusion also depends on the
audience. He claims that “what newcomers to art like best are paintings which
look real.” This emphasis on accuracy and fidelity was also true of description
in its early days but in my view it is problematic as no two sighted people will
view an artwork in the same way. We are all subject to our own sighted biases.
When watching Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’ and its famous shower scene
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