Each year the amount of stage performances with traditional audio-description (AD) grows in Flanders. It is an objective, factual description of visual information, without any interpretation or stylistic experiments, which is transmitted live to the audience by head phones. The target audience consists of people that are blind, visually impaired, hard of hearing, non-Dutch-speaking newcomers, people with concentration disorder, etc.
In actual practice, audio-describers sometimes experience this traditional method as too limited to fully allow the artistic creation to be conveyed and are increasingly looking for alternatives. The ArtInAD project chooses to take this traditional form as a starting point and to explore the integration of AD in the artistic creation process as an alternative. This way the project aims to achieve both an artistic and a social surplus value.
The added artistic value arises in the dialogue between artists and the audio-describer, when he or she makes enquiries for the creative and dramatic need of the creators and performers. Furthermore integrated AD can create social inclusion, a social topic that is increasingly becoming more relevant.
ArtInAD is an artistic research project that aims for an output of: an academic publication of experimental methods of creation, the creation of integrated AD in the professional musical theatre productions Voyeurs in BXL and ImPArt and the implementation of new methods in art education.
(Image: Marco Bianchetti, theatre space)
