Expanding Access
Sign Language for All in Museum?: Think Universal Mediation for Deaf but also Hearing Public View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Muriel Molinier
All over the world, deaf people claim their own culture and identity through their language: the sign language. According to the 2006 "United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" (UNCRPD) and the article 21 about "Freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information", member states need to recognize and promote the use of sign languages. Currently in museums, mediation adapted to deaf public is generally sign guided tours (by deaf guide or hearing guide with interpreter) or sign videos. But visits are rare, separate, on reservation, videos do not concern every exhibit. How can we improve this mediation offer and make sign language more visible? Can we increase deaf people engagement to think about inclusion in museums? We conducte a two-year public study among the deaf public of Toulouse, France. The city is considered as the capital of deaf people and the heart of Sign Language activism. But paradoxically in the city’s museums, accessibility is not more developed than elsewhere. We present the method developed, the pitfalls and the results. Beyond, transforming museums for inclusion, seems to us, requires bringing together the hearing and deaf public in the same mediation offer. We describe our pathway of universal mediation based on understanding and learning means of communication from our fellow citizens (currently perceived as impaired). Firstly, a written mediation including sign language in each museum label. Secondly, sign guided tours by language levels combining cultural mediation and sign language learning. We believe museums could become this communication space.
Representing with Sound Materials: A Six-use Framework
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alcina Cortez
The ways in which sound materials have been deployed in museum exhibitions and the listening practices that have developed in parallel have long since been driven by a complex interplay of circumstances such as: the conceptual understanding of sound; the situational museum practices and management options of the museum; the wider social and cultural orders in which sound-based practices are enmeshed; as well as the existing and emerging technological devices. The purpose of this study is to muse on how sound materials have been exhibited in museums through time and on the signifying opportunities opened up by those uses. Indeed, sound can convey representational and interactional meanings in a way similar to the more conventional modes. In greater detail, I argue that sound-based museum practices tend to cluster into six categories, specifically, (1) sound as a mode for ''lecturing'' (2) sound as artefact; (3) sound as ''ambiance''/ soundtrack; (4) sound as art; (5) sound as a mode for crowd-curation; (6) sound as a non-sonic mode. From the methodological point of view, the framework presented emerged from the collection of two types of data: insights gathered from the academic literature covering sound-based museum multimodal practices and on my own observations of a set of eighty permanent and temporary museum exhibitions worldwide.
