Andy Slater - Unseen Sound

Room with a circular table against the back wall. A chair sits in front of the table, facing the wall. A large monitor displays text “Some of them will be loud and some of them will be quiet” Across from the monitor is a short bench. — Above: Unseen Sound by Andy Slater

Artist Statement

Andy Slater (b. 1975 Milford, CT) is a blind Chicago-based media artist, writer, performer, and Disability advocate/loudmouth. Andy holds a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2022 United States Artists fellow, 2022-2023 Leonardo Crip Tech Incubator fellow and a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago

He is a teaching artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts’ Young SoundSeekers program, Midwest Society For Acoustic Ecology, and Creative Users’ Sensory Shift program.

Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy for accessible art and technology, Alt-Text for sound and image, the phonology of the blind body, spatial audio for extended reality, and sound design for film, dance, and digital scent design..

Andy was the feature on an episode of BBC Outlook in 2023. In 2020 Andy was acknowledged for his art by the New York Times in their article, “28 Ways To Learn About Disability Culture.” His research on Crypto Acoustic Auditory Non-Hallucination was published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern volume 61. Andy’s audio description production for Alison O’Daniel’s film,” The Tuba Thieves”, was featured at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He was music director for the 2022-2023 Lit y Luz festival in Mexico City. His sound description of Molly Joyce’s, “Side By Side”, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in 2022. Andy has been published in Array: The International Computer Music Journal, Curating Access:Disability Art Activism AndCreative Accommodation, English Studies in Canada, the Chicago Reader, There Plant Eyes (Godin 2021), and Jane magazine. He has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Fonoteca Nacional in Mexico City, , the Contemporary Jewish Museum SF, Massechussettes Museum of Contemporary Art, American Writers and Publishers conference, Transmediale Festival Berlin, Kinetic Light’s “Wired”, Technosonics Festival University of Virginia, , Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne, Meyer Sound Lab SF, Critical Distance Toronto, Gallery 400 Chicago, Experimental Sound Studios, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Inclusive Dance Festival..

Andy is a member of the 3Arts Disability Culture Leadership Initiative New Art City accessibility board, and the founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists..

And last but not least, he is a member of the acid-soul band, the Velcro Lewis Group, and performs solo as electronic melting pot, Calculator Font.

Above: Unseen Sound Documentation (Final Version)

Project Description

In Unseen Sound, Andy Slater uses spatial audio as a wayfinding tool to remap and reorient lived experiences of real and virtual space. Created with virtual gallery New Art City’s space-building engine, this virtual experience invites players to navigate a nonvisual space entirely by sound. As players use a joystick to wander and explore, they encounter and trigger sonic events that seem to emanate from unknown worlds. Referencing the phenomena of Crypto Acoustic Auditory Non-Hallucinations, or phantom sounds heard by individuals that defy scientific explanation, Unseen Sound uses audio as material for science fiction worldbuilding. These sounds activate real-time sonic descriptive texts that appear on a large monitor in the installation. Just as the sounds encountered in the virtual world are enigmatic, these sonic descriptions guide visitors through another uncharted form of access that at times clarify, and at other moments confuse. Embodying blind modalities of being, Slater’s work reimagines drifting as aural adventure through a speculative sonic environment.