SHAPE 2017 TateExchange Book FINAL Draft - Flipbook - Page 8
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What is Audio Description?
Zoe Partington
Audio Description is spoken language, either recorded or spoken live,
describing visual images or objects for enabling blind and partially sighted
audiences to engage and pursue their own journey in theatre and film, and in
relation to visual art and sculpture.
Audio Description has been developed over a long period, at least the last
30 years, to a professional level. I’m a keen advocate for audio description
ensuring that the development and creative art form doesn’t stop – that it
continues to develop creatively and in partnership with blind and partially
sighted people and professional describers.
Having experienced sight loss I’m concerned primarily about the way I
perceive the world around me, and make art work that questions and
challenges the stereotypical perspective surrounding the portrayal of
disabled people. My own art work and installations are often developed and
explored through my experience of sight loss and creative development. I
invite the viewer to move into a space of speculation with the pieces I create.
I experiment with conventions for viewing and engaging with artworks in
my own practice. Such as with my series of photographs capturing portraits
of people I’ve met on my international travels (e.g. through Arts Council
England and British Council’s Artists’ International Development Fund 2015).
I began to engage with the framing of the image and overlaying text with
sound and audio files immersed into this. This is a snippet of one of the
scripts developed in partnership with audio describer Louise Fryer:
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