Access to art - Sophie Coppenhall

Speaker 1 00:07 (Program theme)

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Speaker 1

Hello and welcome to this episode of New Horizons, I'm Vaughan Bennison, thanks for joining us Last week you'll recall we spoke with Matt Putler from Monash University about some Ph.D scholarships for assistive technology which are currently on offer and you've still got a week or two to get your applications in This week we speak with a Ph.D candidate who is undertaking a PhD in this area - Sophie Koppenhaal joins us to discuss her Ph.D and her interest in art. Sophie, thanks for joining us, welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 01:00

Thank you so much for and appreciate you having me here. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 01:03

Tell us your story, where did you come from and what's your background?

Speaker 2 01:07

Yeah, well, you can probably hear from my accent I haven't been in Australia for such a long time. I'm actually I'm a Ph.D student at Monash University in the inclusive technology lab, so you might have heard Matt Butler chatting on New Horizons last week. It's serendipitous, but he's actually my supervisor as well. So I'm embarking on a Ph.D in inclusive tech, but I come from a background of art history and journalism in the UK.

Speaker 1 01:33

Interesting art history and journalism and you've moved into inclusive tech or as we discussed last week, it could be referred to as assistive technology. Tell us, how did that come about?

Speaker 2 01:44

That's right. So I took a bit of a roundabout way to get here. I will say that on, it's something that's motivated personally, from my end, because my granddad is an artist and was a fantastic artist, still is, and he was diagnosed with AMD, AIDS-related macular degeneration, over a decade ago. And I sort of, I was studying art history at the time when he first was diagnosed, and I began to sort of understand that, but we were both quite ocular dependent in the way that we appreciated art, the way that we visited museums and galleries. And of course, as my granddad sort of lost his vision, he didn't engage with art in the way that he used to or used to enjoy. So it got me thinking about the ways in which we do interacting galleries and the way that we share experiences with art in galleries and museums.

And of course, there are so many different ways that we can engage with different senses. And that's something that I'm going to be working on in inclusive technologies going forward, and something that my supervisor Matt and his research group and research team have worked on in the past. And so I'm here to take it that little bit further from a different background.

Speaker 1 02:53

I made the point when I was talking to Matt last week that I've been very impressed over the last 10 or 15 years with the work that Monash has done in this area. And if you think about New Horizons episodes over the last three or four years, we've spoken to Ramona Mandy about the tactile graphics and we've spoken with Leona Holloway as well. So there's a lot happening in terms of art appreciation and in terms of getting physical access, I guess you could say, to the visual environment in this day and age. Tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing and what your Ph.D is focusing on.

Speaker 2 03:26

That's fantastic. So I'm actually deskmates with Leona and Ramona at Monash, we all work together on slightly different projects, all with the same goal in mind, which is full participation in arts and culture, for example. And so my Ph.D project will be about inclusive art encounters. So what happens when you visit a gallery and a museum and how able we feel to engage with the content that's there, the intellectual content, the physical content, the artworks themselves. And it's my kind of job to investigate how we might be able to open that up a little bit more. So in the past, we've had tactile artifacts introduced, for example, to sort of help to translate artworks, or maybe we've had QR codes that provide context and information that can be accessed.

And of course, audio description, tactile tours, but not all of them are readily available in galleries and museums. It's quite common for people to have to prepare in advance and sort of think about physical access to the buildings, and then also whether you can have a tactile tour when you're in that gallery or museum. So my Ph.D is about finding out exactly what's wanted and needed and desired in that space. What people who are blind and have low vision really do feel that they would benefit from as art lovers and people who want to engage with cultural heritage.

And so that's sort of what I'm looking to investigate and together hopefully with museum professionals who I'm in touch with and gallery professionals, we can all design something that would work for everybody. And that might be quite a pleasurable experience going into a gallery or museum that would be available.

Speaker 1 05:00

One of the experiences that I've had a couple of times in recent years, and particularly in the lead up to the most recent Blind Citizens Australia Convention in 2019, going to Mona, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, and some of the work that they've been doing in making their gallery and their work accessible. And I've been involved in some of that work. One of the things that I'm really interested to find out if you're going to explore is the different ways that blind and vision impaired people, depending on their experience, want to interact and want to experience that art. What's been your experience so far in terms of the different ways that things can be done?

Speaker 2 05:44

That's a really interesting point, Vaughan. And I'm pleased to hear about Hobart working in this area also. I think this is obviously, our appreciation is something that's personal to everybody. It's meant to be transient. It's meant to be individual and singular. So we should be able to choose the ways that we interact. And based on what has been done in this area, it's extremely sort of, it's a hot issue to talk about sort of generative AI, for example, creating descriptions for artworks that people could access instantly. You could have something that recognises an image and then pulls out some parts to explain it to somebody. But from the perspective of an art historian or someone like me, I don't believe that that's giving people the meaningful experience that they deserve, because maybe the description isn't quite contextually accurate or it's not rich enough yet. And all of that stuff is possible. 

But really, the question is, would people prefer a more kind of interactive experience? For example, like you might want to go on a touch tour and discuss an artwork and feel things and be led through a narrative and really spend time getting a sense of an artwork slowly, you know, with context and contact. So that's kind of what I've been encountering so far, is that maybe these kind of high -tech interventions or augmented reality or anything that's possible, we have to really think about what's appropriate for everybody and what's really wanted in that space. So depending on what gives you the richest experience, that's the area that we want to know about. 

So my kind of question to art lovers and people who are blind and have low vision is what does your imaginary museum appear like? What would that be like? You know, what should it be like when we enter the doors of a museum or gallery? What's the first thing we want to come into contact with? And what will give you that meaningful experience of leisure and education and pleasure?

Speaker 1 07:30

many of us will not understand what true appreciation is until we've had that experience. And I think part of that is to talk about, isn't it, the experiences that people have had both good and bad and how those experiences have impacted on people. And I highlighted earlier the couple of times that I've been to Mona in Tasmania. And one of the key reasons that changed my view of art generally is the fact that a number of the art exhibitions that they have can benefit from pretty good audio descriptions. But many of them are tactile and many of them are interactive and many of them are auditory. And so you can get a really good sense of different artifacts. What sort of people are you looking to hear from in connection with this and how can people get in touch.

Speaker 2 08:25

That's really interesting, Vaughan, because obviously as somebody who's sort of grown up in environments with artists, my parents are both fine artists, my granddad was an artist, it's always been a given for me that art is an important part of your kind of cultural wellbeing and your engagement, but I do realise there are people out there who maybe haven't engaged in that way before and I have encountered people who've said, I don't like art and you're not going to convince me otherwise, you know, it's all full of loose ideas and there's nothing for me in it, but I think that I'm really keen to hear from all different kinds of people. Especially people like yourself, Vaughan, who've gone to an art institution and actually have found that they're a source of inspiration through multi-sensory engagement for one. 

So it sounds like Hobart have a really interesting programme there where it's called sort of this movement towards the multi -sensory museum, which is about the fact that we think in so many different senses and we can get our kind of learning and enjoyment from using all of those senses at the same time or lots of different combinations of senses. So it's a complete misnomer that art is a visual interest only and that it depends on ocular perception. It's absolutely not true. So I'm looking to hear from anybody who's interested in even being interested in engaging with arts and culture and especially in the context of galleries and museums, which are a social space somewhere that you could take friends or family.

And I think that those institutions maybe haven't had the chance to hear from everybody that they need to when they're designing their exhibitions and they move at speed some of the bigger ones. So we're hoping to be able to sort of create relationships between galleries and ourselves and also communities who are blind or have low vision who might want to visit those galleries and engage with artworks on a deeper level.

Speaker 1 10:05

Historically, the UK and Europe have been significantly more advanced in terms of access to art galleries and museums and things like that, compared with Australia and New Zealand and other countries. Why are you doing this in Australia?

Speaker 2 10:19

That's a great question, Vaughan. Well, to be honest, the opportunity afforded by Monash to pursue something specific like this, but also to join a project where we're all working towards the same goal, I think that's what really drew me towards this Ph.D, because obviously I had research interests in the UK. And yes, of course, there's different funding models between the countries. And there's a lot of interest and momentum in certain areas of the world at the moment in this particular area. But this, for me, is a really nice sort of practice-based community where researchers are working in so many different ways, using so many different methods to engage with communities properly from a human-centred perspective on a human level.

And the community here is very open. And I mean, everybody has been, especially people who are blind or have a little vision in the community, who I engage with, I feel are very accepting of my research interests and positions and are more than willing to help and to feed back. And I find that really inspiring. And that's exactly the kind of research I want to engage with is people-first research. And I feel that this is sort of the right place for me to do that. And it would have only been through this route, having met my supervisors at Monash. I sort of, it's a flow of events that have led to this place, but it really was sort of chance encounters that led me here, having jumped into Australia to be a carer for my other granddad. So it was a bit of a roundabout journey, but I feel that I've landed in just the right place at the right time to meet the right people.

Speaker 1 11:49

So how can people get in touch if they would like more information or to to get involved and help you out?

Speaker 2 11:55

I'd love to hear from people on, so I'm hoping to be able to stay in touch with people over the course of a couple of years while I meet lots of gallery professionals and we start to sort of create interesting artefacts and maybe interventions in the galleries together, all of us. And I'd really, I've developed a sort of early questionnaire and survey where I would really like to invite people to tell us their experiences past and present and desired in just a short survey. So you're more than welcome to email me any time at my Monash email address and I'd be happy to be in touch or even just to chat. I'm a little bit of a chatterbox and I just love hearing from people. 

Everything you say inspires me to think harder and deeper about what we're doing and especially because I'm somebody who doesn't have direct lived experience of blindness or low vision and I don't have lived experience of disability but I'm trying my best to learn and always be open-minded. I know that's a continuous process so anything that I hear from you is always extremely valued to me and I'd be more than happy to be in touch.

Speaker 1 12:56

And if you'd like to fill out Sophie's survey or get in touch generally, her email address, and I'll spell it, sophie.coppenhall@monash.edu - so Sophie, usual spelling, S-O-P-H-I-E, dot C-O-P-P-E-N-H-A-L-L at Monash dot E-D-U.

If you'd like to get in touch with Blind Citizens Australia, you can call 1-800-033-660..... 1-800-033-660, or you can email: bca@bca.org.au ... Don't forget that Blind Citizens Australia relies on donations from the public and from its members. If you'd like to donate to Blind Citizens Australia, when you call them, you can ask them how you can do that. There are a number of ways you can donate regularly as part of the BCA backers program, or you can make a one-off tax deductible donation.

Check the website if you'd like more information. In the meantime, I'll talk to you again next week. 

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