Coming Soon: Australia’s First Audio Festival

Photograph of a girl wearing pink lipstick, lying on the floor listening to headphones. Her dark hair swirles around her head, covering her eyes and the top of her head..
Image by whoalice-moore from Pixabay

To celebrate their 30th anniversary, audio specialists Eardrum have commissioned 30 artists, thinkers, and entertainers to release a new piece of audio each day of September. The result is Earfest 2020: Australia’s first audio festival.

“[W]e guarantee you the best seat in the theatre of your mind.”

Earfest 2020

With participants including comedians, musicians, poets and actors, the lineup promises a treat for sound-lovers everywhere. ARIA winning singer/songwriter Ruel, Cold Chisel guitarist Ian Moss, and satirist John Safran are just the beginning. You can find the full list of performers here.

“Covid-19 has devastated the art’s sector. This Festival allows us to celebrate the power of audio but more importantly support those with the skills to harness it at the time they need it most.”

Ralph van Dijk, Eardrum founder

To participate, you just need to register your name and email address on the festival website. Each day of September, they will release a new piece of audio and email you the link.

Admission is free, but they invite donations to The Shepherd Centre, raising money for hearing impaired children.

VCR Fest: Melbourne Fringe Goes Online

Image depicts a colourful montage of simple 80s style graphics including the text 'Welcome to the Internet' and 'Learn to use the Internet: level 3'
Festival icon / Harriet Gillies and Solomon Thomas

Many performances and events have been cancelled recently as a result of the ongoing pandemic. Some organisers, however, decide to adapt and shift their content online. This can result in innovative new forms of sharing and collaborating with others, and has the potential to expose fresh audiences to content that is otherwise inaccessible for reasons such as geography, finances, or disability.

Streaming Fri 31 July – Sun 2 August, VCR Fest is three days of digital events coming from our home, to yours.

The Melbourne Fringe‘s VCR Fest is an example of one such event, offering 13 diverse shows and workshops that can be accessed from home. There is even a “digital foyer” where viewers can discuss things with others, just like a live performance.

The full program of VCR Fest events can be accessed here. Aiming to be inclusive, they offer detailed accessibility information about each activity or performance. Although audio description does not appear to be immediately available, recordings of each event are made that could potentially be audio described afterwards.

“For accessibility reasons we understand you may need to watch the event outside of the specified time or require longer viewing. While it is impossible to recreate the entire digital live experience (including interacting with other audience members in our digital foyer), we are pleased to be able to offer a replay of the majority of our digital content. If you require longer or flexible event access or would like to know more, please email info@melbournefringe.com.au or call (03) 9660 9600. Please note that we are unable to offer this for all events, and access will not be immediate.”

If you are interested in one or more of the 13 events, visit the Melbourne Fringe website.

Feedback is invited, if you have any thoughts or requests regarding accessibility:

“As we navigate this digital world, we welcome your feedback and ideas on how we can make our digital events as accessible as possible. Get in touch with our Access and Inclusion Coordinator, Carly Findlay, on carly@melbournefringe.com.au or call the office on (03) 9660 9600. You can also reach us through the National Relay Service, just give them our number.”

In response to COVID-19 the organisation also aims to develop “a bespoke digital platform to host digital art on our website.” We look forward to seeing more exciting developments!

Upcoming Perth Event: Audio Described Theatre

Photograph of a night sky speckled with many stars, over a dark slope punctuated by several trees. A meteor is passing, and the line of its bright tail is visible among the stars.
Night sky image via Wikimedia Commons

This month, the acclaimed Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company are presenting Djinda Kaatijin (to understand stars), a collection of Dreaming stories from various countries around the world.

Yirra Yaakin (Yir-raarh Yaarh-kin] which means “Stand Tall” in Noongar language, is one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal performing arts organisations producing award-winning, world-class theatre that is exciting, entertaining, educational, authentic and culturally appropriate.

Through a mix of traditional Noongar dreaming stories and contemporary Indigenous storytelling, Djinda Kaatijin explores the importance of the stars and how they are culturally important to us all.

Join Weitj (Emu), Dwert (Dingo) and Wardong (Crow) as they take us on a journey through the milky way to learn about the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) while interweaving star stories from around Australia and the world, including stories from India, Spain and Scotland as well as Noongar Boodjar. After all, it’s all our stars. It’s all our dreaming.

(https://coogeelive.com/events/djinda-kaatijin/)

The Sunday 8 March performance at 12.45pm on the LiveLighter Community Stage will be Audio Described by DADAA.

  • Venue: Livelighter Community Stage, Powell Road, Coogee Beach
  • Date: 8 March 2020
  • Day: Sunday
  • Time: 12:45 pm (Tactile Tour at 11:30am)
  • Cost: Free
  • See map:
    https://coogeelive.com/map-times/

The performance is free, but bookings are essential. Email: jacqueline@dadaa.org.au.

For Audio Description at the event, you will need to download the Sennheiser MobileConnect app (available for iOS and Android) and connect to the DADAA Wifi Mobileconnect WiFi network (available at the show) with your own mobile device. You will need to bring your own earphones.

For more information, please contact Jacqueline Homer:

Jacqueline Homer
Head of Production
DADAA
Email: jacqueline@dadaa.org.au
Mobile: 0400111018
Phone: 9430 6616
Address: 92 Adelaide Street Fremantle WA 6160
www.dadaa.org.au

AD on the ABC: Get Krack!n

Promotional image showing Get Krack!n hosts Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney posing cheerfully on a couch. Text states "New season starts Wed 6th Feb 9pm on ABC iview #getkrackin"

Good news for comedy fans: the second season of ABC’s morning show parody Get Krack!n debuts tonight and will be audio described. The series stars Australian comedians Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan, who have recorded their own AD tracks as shown in this video posted on their Facebook page today.

According to their Facebook post, Vision Australia will be making audio description available for the entire season of Get Krack!n on Vision Australia Radio at 9:30pm in Melbourne, Victoria and Perth and 10:30pm in Adelaide. A podcast will also be available the day after each episode has aired at https://radio.visionaustralia.org/

This season looks set to address disability in skits that target accessibility issues and ‘inspirational’ narratives.

The provision of AD for this popular comedy is a promising development and will hopefully lead to more shows being audio described in future, on the ABC and elsewhere.

Study finds blind people watch almost as much TV as sighted people

Image depicting a closed Apple laptop, with a pair of glasses and a smartphone resting on top. The phone is showing the Netflix logo.
CC image via www.quotecatalog.com

A 2017 survey undertaken by Comcast and the American Foundation for the Blind has found that vision impaired people are watching almost as much television as sighted viewers.

Released earlier this year, the press release outlines some important findings, such as:

  • 96% of visually impaired adults watch television on a regular basis.
  • 81% watch more than an hour per day and 55% watch four or more hours per day.

Importantly, this is happening despite ongoing difficulties with access:

  • 65% of those surveyed encountered problems with looking up what’s on TV.
  • 53% experienced difficulty in following along with key visual elements.
  • Less than half are aware of assistive technologies like video description and talking TV guides.

The provision of more readily available assistive technologies, including audio description, would therefore benefit a large percentage of the vision impaired community.

Read more here.