Britta Evans-Fenton’s Hearing Braille
In this work, Hearing Braille, Britta Evans-Fenton, an artist from Ottawa, combines technology and art with a message about communication. As Evans-Fenton describes the piece,
“Hearing Braille is a very subtle and intimate work that requires viewer interaction. A small microphone is placed behind the paper with braille script. As the viewer runs his or her fingers across the page to feel the braille, they hear their touch on the paper. It makes the viewer extremely aware of their touch, almost heightening that sense on the sheet. It is great, because people will often spend a good amount of time at that work touching the page, almost as if they are standing there reading it, even though most of my viewers can’t read braille. Although the text does not matter to most of the viewers, it does list a bunch of colours that have more physical descriptors in them, such as forest green, lime green or midnight blue.”
This work was fueled by a variety of Evans-Fenton’s interests, such as language, codes and communication. “I use a representation of existing codes such as braille, semaphore and Morse code, taking the code out of context and changing its purpose. I also involve my viewers in my work, including as much interactive elements as I can.”
Evans-Fenton, who currently works as a technician at artengine, an artist-run centre with a focus on art and technology, also brings a focus on technology into her work. As she states, “technology is a big thing for me. It creates a kind of magic for the viewer and is able to help me incorporate all of the other elements together, usually in an installation, as I do consider myself an installation and new media artist.”
We will be featuring more of Evans-Fenton’s work on A&SJ in the next couple of days. In the meantime, to see more of her works, click here.
