Andy Slater

Part of a series of experimental sound compositions entitled Waiting Rooms, At Arm's Length is one of four visceral evocations of spatial experience within a beleaguered arts building in downtown Toronto. Even before the pandemic, the media arts consortium occupying the purpose-built space negotiated as part of a Section 37 deal had been embroiled in a protracted legal battle with the city over whether they could complete construction and begin hosting programming. As a result, fit-out was halted midstream and the consortium's space within the building remained for years in legal limbo. Walking within the half-finished hallways, already falling into dusty disrepair, felt akin to exploring an abandoned spaceship (Tarkovsky's Solaris comes to mind), an uncanny and pathological future ruin.

It was into this strange void that I invited Andy Slater to enter and explore with his mic-enabled white-tipped cane. In the Fall of 2020, Slater was exhibiting a 15-minute sound composition accompanied by a written sound description in print and braille at my gallery as part of the exhibition Access is Love and Love is Complicated (curated by our Education and Accessibility Programs Director, Emily Cook, and co-presenting partner, Tangled Art + Disability's Director of Programming, Sean Lee). Both sound and text evinced to me a spirit of joyful improvisation and freedom of experience and expression that resonate with my own interests in communicative poetics and possibility. Before returning to Chicago, Slater devoted an afternoon to probing the eerily empty hallways, cavernous unfinished cinema, and claustrophobic closets and offices of the space now formerly known as TMAC (Toronto Media Arts Centre). Using his own body, voice, and cane, as well as found objects, materials, and surfaces in the various rooms and passageways he explored, Slater tested his perception against what he knew of this troubled location. The resulting compositions are records of his movement with and through the architectural environment, a kind of synthesis between research, documentation, and performance, aka "the blind body navigating different acoustic spaces," as Slater himself describes it.

Thus capturing and combining an extraordinary diversity of noises and sounds, from reverberant echoes and high pitched whistles to the visceral crackle and crunch between two slowly scraped surfaces, and on down the sonic register toward deep and ambient drone, soft subtle clicks and taps, and the sheer space-time of silence, Slater provides access to an audible world uniquely his own. It is a world that does not exclude on the basis of one's sightedness, but rather invites listeners to spend time, pay closer attention, and through this encounter, perhaps begin to afford a more meaningful recognition, respect, interest, and care for lived, embodied difference, particularly as it conditions the experiences of d/Deaf and disabled individuals and communities.

In fact it is specifically for members of d/Deaf communities that Slater writes his imaginative and sensorial sound descriptions. Filled with tactile, spatial, and psychological imagery, they intentionally do not reference the visual. Presented as asynchronous "alt texts" that in fact exceed what alt text is conventionally used for (to provide the bare minimum of straightforward visual description), this writing is tied to Slater's ongoing advocacy for more consistent use — and usefulness — of descriptions across communications platforms and presentations of visual and media art, contexts and worlds that have summarily excluded d/Deaf and disabled participation for far too long. Slater provided valued feedback on both visual and screen reader accessibility for his artist page (as well as the rest of the exhibition website), and the resulting choices of type size, colour, and placement of his descriptions are a direct reflection of conversations on ways to enhance legibility for partially sighted and legally blind visitors.

Before the pandemic, these works were originally planned to be made available within the context of a physical exhibition, through the use of mobile media players and headphones that visitors could wear as they navigated spaces Slater had experienced months prior. With physical access no longer a possibility, this work has become the echoic ghost of both the in-person exhibition and the place that was to host it — a place that no longer exists now that the consortium has been evicted.

At Arm's Length was recorded from within the unfinished cinema's projection booth, where Slater's sensitive microphones captured the sounds bouncing back from the double-height space beyond, a space that still quietly yawns within the heart of the now-vacated base of this building. (For a visual and verbal — via alt text for screen readers — sense of the spaces circumscribed by Slater’s sound works, see Vera Frenkel's artwork page, which features a series of photographs taken before TMAC’s eviction; slides 9 and 10 depict spaces adjacent to the unfinished cinema.)

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Screaming Baseboards is an experimental audio composition produced by Andy Slater in response to spaces he experienced within a beleaguered arts building in downtown Toronto. One of four site-responsive sound works that comprise the series Waiting Rooms, Screaming Baseboards was recorded within an open area proximate to an open stairwell and elevator landing on the vacant second floor of the building. For the full story behind the development of this work, please visit the About the Artwork tab in the first work on this page, titled At Arm’s Length. (For a visual and verbal — via alt text for screen readers — sense of the spaces circumscribed by Slater’s sound works, see Vera Frenkel's artwork page, which features a series of photographs taken before TMAC’s eviction; slides 23 and 25 depict spaces adjacent to the open stairwell and second floor landing.)

Alone in the Drone is an experimental audio composition produced by Andy Slater in response to spaces he experienced within a beleaguered arts building in downtown Toronto. One of four site-responsive sound works that comprise the series Waiting Rooms, Alone in the Drone was recorded from within the vacant second floor of the building, including within unfinished bathrooms with an inoperable shower and sinks. It was also recorded on the second floor mezzanine overlooking an expansive double-height space featuring a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows with a view toward a decommissioned Canada Post building that also happens to be a contested site for development. For the full story behind the development of this work, please visit the About the Artwork tab in the first work on this page, titled At Arm’s Length. (For a visual and verbal — via alt text for screen readers — sense of the spaces circumscribed by Slater’s sound works, see Vera Frenkel's artwork page, which features a series of photographs taken before TMAC’s eviction; slides 7 and 20 depict the kinds of spaces Slater recorded for the making of Alone in the Drone.)

Shape of a Room is an experimental audio composition produced by Andy Slater in response to spaces he experienced within a beleaguered arts building in downtown Toronto. One of four site-responsive sound works that comprise the series Waiting Rooms, Shape of a Room was recorded within a storage closet on the building's vacant second floor. For the full story behind the development of this work, please visit the About the Artwork tab in the first work on this page, titled At Arm’s Length. (For a visual and verbal — via alt text for screen readers — sense of the spaces circumscribed by Slater’s sound works, see Vera Frenkel's artwork page, which features a series of photographs taken before TMAC’s eviction; slides 15 and 30 depict the kinds of spaces Slater recorded for the making of Shape of a Room.)