Category: Artist Studios

[reading] [sounds] by Sean Zdenek pg183

by Seo Hye Lee

Page 183 of the book [reading] [sounds] by Sean Zdenek - title of chapter "Captioned Silences and Ambient Sounds" Below the title, the paragraph starts with "As counterintuitive as it may sound, silence sometimes needs to be closed captioned. Captioners not only inscribe sounds in writing but must also account for our assumptions about the nature, production, and reception of sounds. One of our most basic assumption is hat sounds are either discrete (with a clear beginning and end) or sustained (continuous). Sustained sounds, including sounds that are captioned as continuous or repeating (e.g., using the present participle verb+ing, as in [phone ringing]) may need to be identified in the captions as stopped or terminated if it's not clear from the visual context. That is, if we can't see the phone being answered or the ring being turned off, the captioner may need to mark the termination of the ringing sound. We also assume as moviegoers that the world is never technically silent. Ambient noise provides context. True silence is rare on the screen. In the real world beyond the screen, the same assumption holds.Sound waves envelop hearing viewers even in "silence." The total absence of sound can only be achieved on Earth artificially in an anechoic chamber, a room designed to block out exterior noise and absorb interior sound waves. Designed to test product noise levels (and not human tolerance levels), the chamber reportedly causes hallucinations and severe disorientation in hearing visitors who spend even a little time in one (Davies 2012):"
Page 183 from [reading] [sounds] by Sean Zdenek

This chapter of the book starts with the sentence “As counterintuitive as it may sound, silence sometimes needs to be closed captioned.” I couldn’t agree more with this line because it is so easy for captioners to oversee the importance of including silence/ambient sound and the difference this makes for viewers to understand the story better. There have been several occasions where I could hear something happening on TV (ambient sound in films that adds to the atmosphere/scene) but no word appears in the subtitle section to give me an answer to my curiosity.

Can silence be captioned? How can one interpret silence into words?

“A large proportion of the U.K. television audience relies on subtitles. The BBC’s audience research team has run two audience surveys for us over the past two years. Each used a representative sample of around 5000 participants, who were questioned on that day’s viewing. The responses indicate that about 10% of the audience use subtitles on any one day and around 6% use them for most of their viewing. This equates to an audience of around 4.5 million people in the U.K., of which over 2.5 million use them most or all of the time. Importantly, not all subtitle users have hearing difficulties, some are watching with the sound turned off and others use them to support their comprehension of the program, while around a quarter of people with hearing difficulties watch television without subtitles.” (from the article published in 2017 titled Understanding the diverse needs of subtitle users in a rapidly evolving media landscape)

It is important to note that not everyone that uses subtitles identifies as d/Deaf or hard of hearing. In my recent research, I found an article written in 2006 discussing subtitles used by 6 million people with so-called “perfect” hearing. In the comments section, some individuals have shared why they enjoy using subtitles, their answers included that of providing a distraction for kids, learning English, or being able to multi-task etc. The link to the article is here.

Can subtitle capture emotions on screen? How does reading subtitle enhance the experience of film watching? When you read the subtitle, what kind of tone do you read in?

Tweety Bird

by Laura Lulika

A meme with a black background with transparent red hearts, overlaid is an image of tweety bird, a small cartoon yellow bird from Looney Tunes. They are wearing a red bandana, a white vest, gold necklace and baggy blue jeans with black and white sneakers. Their facial expression and slouched body gives the impression that they are confident. Their left arm is on their hip and their right hand holds up a smoking gun. At the top of the image is bold capitalised shiny text with a white background that says 'OK BOTCH CALL THE COPS'. At the bottom of the image is capitalised fire flame writing that says 'I'LL HAVE SEX WITH THEM'.
Tweety Call the Cops Meme

Tweety Bird, whose gender was intentionally ambiguous in the original Looney Tunes cartoons, is one of the first and only examples of a non-binary character in mainstream media that I really relate to. I even have them tattooed on my arm with the word ‘LADETTE’ (see below).

I love how Tweety’s persona has continued to develop outside of the cartoon narrative in memes, one of my favourite being the one above, although I can’t find the original creator to credit them. Does anyone know? 

A close up image of the side of my arm. On it is a medium sized tattoo of Tweety Bird, a cartoon bird from Looney Tunes. It is a black outline tattoo. Tweety is wearing a hoody and large trainers, in their left hand they are holding a tinny and in their right hand a smoking cigarette. They are winking their left eye. Over the top of their hooded head it says 'LADETTE' in old school tattoo style writing.
Tweety Ladette Tattoo

In the cartoon, Tweety survives constant harassment and attacks from Sylvester the cat, all while being a physically small and sometimes unassuming creature, although a crafty and clever side is suggested. Proof that it takes more than hyperable physiques to survive the energy vampires of this world. Looney Tunes played with the ambiguity and fluidity of gender with many of their characters and it was never targeted at a specific gender audience which I think is unusual for a lot of children’s mainstream entertainment.

I made a little Tweety meme myself below using some of the vast collection of images I have of unofficial Tweety costumes.

A meme with a grid presenting nine different unofficial tweety costumes. At the top it says 'which tweety are you today?' and I would describe the costumes as follows: 1. Floating walking tweety with an elongated head and smiley face. 2. A flat faced tweety with a surprised look and hands raised. 3. a box head tweety 4. A squishy faced side eyes tweety. 5. A creepy slightly angry tweety with a comb over. 6. A cute bulbus unassuming tweety looking down like they are a bit embarrassed. 7. an intense but also somehow expressionless tweety waving one hand. 8 a smiley tweety with a long thick neck. 9. a man with a yellow onesie on and the hood is a bulbus slightly angry looking tweety head ontop of his head. He has his hands on his hips.
Tweety Meme

Nurse Stimpy

by Laura Lulika

The Ren and Stimpy Show: Nurse Stimpy Episode

I really love cartoons a lot, especially how malleable bodies and environments are. Sudden and drastic changes can occur in a short space of time which I think is a lot like the experience of being chronically sick. There is a predictable unpredictability about it. The morbid comedy of having a body is captured so well in cartoons. It also offers a world to escape into which doesn’t feel too exhausting to consume on low energy, because it’s fantasy, a playfully cutting reflection of the real world.

I have been totally drawn into this episode of Ren and Stimpy recently which highlights perfectly the ridiculousness of medical care, as well as the importance of caring for carers and the need for interdependent support systems.  

You can watch the episode in the embedded video above. It doesn’t have closed captions unfortunately but I found a transcript of the episode here.

I have included some screenshots below that I think are just SO beautiful for their colour palette and the way they illustrate the feelings of being sick, which I so strongly relate to. I love these images so much that I used them as my new website theme and I hope to turn them into memes about the sick experience one day..  

A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot is a close up of Ren's red nose and pink skin, the nose has a glistening liquid flowing from the right nostril.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we are stood over Ren's bed, his eyes are yellow and bloodshot, with many bags around them and his face is turning greenish with some drips of sweat flowing down from his left eye. Stimpy's white hands are just visible at the edge of the shot as if they are our own, peeling and stuck down blue bedsheet from Ren's face.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see a side profile of Stimpy on the left wearing a nurse's white cap with a red cross on, he is holding a wooden stick on Ren's tongue. Ren is on the right with his face stretched and his mouth open beyond what would be physically possible in our human realm.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see Stimpy on the left wearing a white skirt and a white nurse's cap with a red cross on, they are holding the tube from a blood pressure testing machine, the strap is around Ren's whole body. Ren is sat on a patient
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see the back of Ren's head, his eyes and ears are bloodshot and veiny and red, he has red spots on the crown of his head and he looks sad and fed up.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see Ren's back, he is wearing a backless white hospital style gown with his protruding spine and bum crack showing, he is slumped as though he is fed up and has no energy.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see Ren sat on a metal hospital trolley looking sad with no energy and not fully present, he has a bright metal spotlight lamp over his head shining down on him, in front of him is Stimpy in their white nurse costume with red crosses on smiling and raising a large pointed finger as if they have just the answer to all Ren's problems.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see Ren submerged in a freestanding white roll top bath with blue water and pink bubbles, only his eyes and feet are visible out of the water and he looks a little annoyed. Looking over him is Stimpy looking down on them intensely but also lovingly with their hands clasped and smiling. In the background on the right is Ren's skin hung up on a towel rail.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot we see a pink skinned Ren being held in Stimpy's white hands, half out of the water with his body curled over. Stimpy has a big yellow sponge which he is scrubbing Ren's back with. Ren looks simultaneously relieved and embarrassed.
A screenshot from the cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren is a small and hairless chihuahua dog with beige skin, pink eyes and floppy long pink ears. Stimpy is red/orange Manx cat with a white tummy and hands, wth a round blue nose and a pink tongue often hanging out of his mouth. In this screenshot Stimpy is lying in bed with his eyes sagging and his tongue hanging out of his mouth on the left side. He looks frazzled and tired.

Our Prop Mud by Joseph Noonan-Ganley

by Laura Lulika

Around ten rugby players during a game, all covered in mud so that their kits colours are no longer visible. On the right hand side of the image, the beginning of a scrum is occurring with some players bent forward and locking limbs, on the left side players lean towards the scrum, some look as though they are reaching in. It is a mess and tangle of muddy limbs in a field.
Muddy rugby players on a pitch via hartpury.ac.uk

This text was suggested to me by Linda Stupart, who is also currently doing a residency with Vital Capacities at the moment. It’s written by Joseph Noonan-Ganley and it is titled, ‘Our Prop Mud’ and you can read it in full here. It’s about rugby and mud and gay feelings. I could really relate to these contemplations on sports and queerness and the consumption of bodies and their public personas. 

Here is an excerpt that I really like,

‘The scene that stopped me was the Cardiff Park Arms rugby match from 1970, transformed by the unrelenting appearance of mud. Ironically, mud allowed me to see clearer. The scene clarified and exposed some of what I was interested in in Gareth Thomas. Mud’s addition messed up rugby’s conventional surface and allowed a view onto the base material composition of the game: people’s bodies in relation. These kinds of political derivatives seem far more generative and uncertain than Gareth Thomas’s recycled admissions of guilt and fault.’

The Champs Vol I

by Laura Lulika

I love the Champions League anthem theme song because it’s so pompous and dramatic in every way, for something that is, well, just footy. If you haven’t heard the original, you can listen to it here. I decided to do a cover to hopefully develop into a soundtrack for a video with some of my own lyrics later. I made it with my partner, carer and collaborator, Hang Linton.

My cover of The Champions.

Image Description for track video: The video has a still image of a football foul on a very green pitch involving two players. The player on the left is wearing a dark blue kit, he is on his hands and knees bent forward, his back arched and his head looking slightly to the left towards the other player on the right of the image. The player on the right is wearing a white kit, he is balanced on his right knee and right hand, the rest of his body is arching backwards, as if twisting and falling. His eyes are closed and his mouth open as though he is in some pain. On both sides of the image is a border created from the The Champions League logo which is a black and white football where the black sections are stars. They are stacked on top of each other to create a border either side of the photo.

FOUL Vol II

by Laura Lulika

A portrait format image of a person kneeling on the floor with their head in their hands. You are stood next to them looking down at their tensed up body from a side profile. The person has dark brownish auburn hair which is flopping off their head, their face hidden. They are wearing a black unitard with some holes in the bum and leg, over the top is a lilac gym tank top with some lime green text on it visible from the side. The person has white skin with some black line tattoos scattered around their body. Their floor is a deep blue carpet rug with a dusky pink and green dragon on which looks like it is curling around the person and looking straight at them. In the background is a stack of vinyl records leant against a grey wall, a small wooden stool is on the left and a purple fleece blanket on the right.
Lulika keeled over on their knees, head in hands, on their living room floor.

I wanted to be in the studio more over the past days but I got hit with a pain and migraine flare up. This usually involves at least three days of me lying in various positions, looking like I’m the slow-motion action replay of a football dive or foul. This image shows where I spent some of Saturday. It was FOUL.

Partial Gestures 2020

by Seo Hye Lee

16 sec long video of Partial Gestures (2020)

I wanted to share here my previous experimental project called Partial Gestures. This is a short 16 second video of a cropped Youtube video that shows only the subtitles that appear in two lines at a time:

“Implanted her at the age of four and a half that she would be able to develop near natural speaking skills. Have you met other deaf people who are 20 to 35 years old and who got an implant as an adult out of our 300 patients we”

Hand movements are partially cropped and hidden behind the subtitle to hinder the audience from understanding the context. Behind the subtitle, there is a conversation happening between two people, one of which is using American Sign Language to ask a question. This video is originally from a documentary called ‘Sound & Fury’ directed by Josh Aronson in 2000. You can find more information on this wiki page here. The original video can be found on Youtube on here.

This documentary shows the journey of two sets of parents discussing the future of their children in regards to how much cochlear implant surgery may be ‘beneficial’ or how it could separate the child from one’s Deaf family.

I found the film relevant as Cochlear Implant can be controversially seen as something that ‘erases’ Deaf identity because it usually encourages one to speak and hear instead of using the sign language. At the time of first watching this documentary, I also came across a book titled Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children by Dr. Laura Mauldin. The book is about the consequences of Cochlear Implant surgery for parents and medical professionals and I found it to be quite informative for me. You can find more info about the book on here. I must’ve been about 10 or 11 when I received the surgery and I do not remember anything particular about what hearing sound was like before switching to digital hearing. As my hearing started to deteriorate from the age of 4, I don’t have much recollection of listening the music with natural hearing. It was intriguing to learn about how a child gets to train the brain to reconfigure the way of listening with new cochlear implant device.

The Co-Designing the Sound Art with Cochlear Implant Users workshop I attended at V&A in 2016 has helped me to understand more about CI and its users’ experiences. Lead by artist Dr. Tom Tlalim, the workshop included a series of interviews conducted to discuss the varied experience of music within Cochlear Implant users. This website showcases multiple interviews and information about the project which can be found here.

As I have been learning more about CI, I became naturally interested in the language of British Sign Language. The mini booklet I have made as a documentation of my journey into learning the British Sign Language alphabet through fingerspelling- it was printed by Berlin based Risograph printing studio WeMakeIt.

Documentation image of four BSL booklets that is shown with its pages open laying each other- all images of hands are grey-scaled, showing bright pink alphabets of D, K, M, N, I, B in clockwise direction.
Documentation image of BSL booklet

This booklet was selected to be part of Artist Self-Publishers fair 2020- as part of showcasing the book, I made Partial Gestures as the video experimentation to accompany this project.

I am looking forward to seeing how I can expand on this process of study and continue to think about the language of subtitle in engaging way through researching!

Stills From Archives

by Seo Hye Lee

Black and White image of person's hands touching clay on top of wheel to get ready for throwing on the wheel. The person is wearing buttoned up shirt and the image only shows the hands and lower body. Behind the person, there's blurred image of shelves filled with bottles.
B&W image of a person’s hands holding the clay to throw on the wheel
A coloured image of person's both hands shaping the clay which is revolving quickly on a potter's wheel.
Coloured image of a person’s pair of hands shaping a piece of clay
The intertitle page that says "Soft spots should be eliminated." The background has textured vertical streak as it is an old archive film.
Black screen with a line that says “Soft spots should be eliminated.”
The hands of a Japanese Potter holding a brown glazed round ceramic piece. At the bottom of ceramic, there lays a yellowish white coloured bamboo mat that are lined with black lines. On the right there's another brown glazed ceramic that is long cylinder shaped with long neck.
Japanese Potter’s hands holding the ceramic piece
A pair of hands breaking up clay placed inside of a metal bin- the person is wearing suit and is only visible at bottom part and sleeves.
A pair of hands breaking up the clay in metal bin

Future of Live Captioning

by Seo Hye Lee

Remember when the Google glass came out years ago and ended up being not so popular? At the time, I wasn’t aware that the product had been designed to include the function of Live Captioning; while researching this I found this video of the product being used in a quiet setting.

Youtube Video of two people testing Google Glass’s function of Live Captioning. Closed Captions are available on this video.

There are many great resources you can use to transcribe speech to text on apps/browsers online. These resources work by either turning on the live transcribing function or uploading prerecorded audio files – a few I have used in the past are Webcaptioner, Google Transcribe App, Descript. (Each mentioned names are all hyper-linked which will lead you to its own websites)

Continue reading “Future of Live Captioning”

Pissing Contest

by Laura Lulika

An infographic image with a photo of two lobsters in what looks like a white tank with their pincers held shut by red and green rubber bands. They are facing each other. Underneith there is white text on a black background which says, 'Lobsters pee out of their faces. Their bladders are located in their heads and they urinate through nozzles under their antennae. When fighting another lobster, they'll pee in the face of their opponent.'
Lobsters pee out of their faces via reddit.com

As someone who has to catheterise themselves regularly, due to my disability, I’m understandably quite into anything related to piss and urinating. I often use cardboard hospital bedpans in my work and simulate pissing in live performances.

A pissing contest or pissing match, as many probably already know, is an idiom that describes a situation where two or more people are competing with each other to show superiority, usually pointlessly.

I was happy to discover that pissing contests also exist in a literal sense where participants compete to see who can piss the longest, farthest, highest or most accurately. There are even Guinness World Records held in the sport. A woman in Italy is the current world record holder for the farthest piss created a 30 foot golden arch, although I can’t find her name.

Not only that, during combat, lobsters accompany their largest blows with a large squirt of piss out of their faces. Their bladders are located in their heads and they have nozzles under their eyes and antennae, where they release urine to communicate during mating or fighting.

Sounds within Subtitles

by Seo Hye Lee

When watching films, I have often paid attention to subtitles that show sound effects such as:

Cropped image of film only showing the subtitle that says [Vehicle pulling up]. Behind the subtitle you can see cropped image of wooden table with paper stacks on it.
Cropped image of film subtitle that says [vehicle pulling up]
Cropped image of film only showing two lines of subtitle that says (PEOPLE LAUGHING) and (INDISTINCT CHATTERING). Behind the text, there's blurred image of dumplings on plate.
Cropped image of film subtitle that says (PEOPLE LAUGHING) and (INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
Cropped image of film only showing the subtitle that says [clock ticking]. Behind the text, there's blurred shape of someone's shoulder wearing a suit.
Cropped image of film that says [clock ticking]

BBC Academy has online guidelines for subtitles that would be shown across its platforms. I found this line interesting under the Music and songs section – “All music that is part of the action, or significant to the plot, must be indicated in some way.”

Description of music can prepare us for what is about to happen in a film – examples of this are subtitles such as EERIE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYS, TENSE MUSIC PLAYS, SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS. It can also tell us what the person is feeling – such as HEROIC MUSIC, DRAMATIC MUSIC SWELLS, SENTIMENTAL MUSIC.

I recently watched the well-known 1982 film Blade Runner, during which I noticed that while dramatic music was played, it was shown as (***) – how does (***) convey the atmosphere of the music that is being played? There are cases where the subtitle can be clever with showing context but its importance can be easily neglected.

Regulations for closed captioning started to be introduced in the UK in the 1990s to make video content accessible for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Whilst in the USA, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, following which the majority of network providers of programs had to contribute part of their income on captioning to ensure access to verbal information on televisions and films. In 1993 with the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 going into effect, TV receivers with picture screens that were 13 inches or larger that were imported in the US had to have built-in decoder circuitry to show closed captions. Decoders used to be sold for $250 at Sears in the 1980s which meant they were not very accessible for some people. Closed captioning started out as an experiment intended only for people who were deaf, yet it became something of an everyday commodity that helped millions of people to connect. A brief history of CC can be found here.

When I was younger, I remember renting VHS tapes from Blockbusters with my family. Specifically, I remember trying to select ones that had the CC logo on them to ensure that I can watch them without worrying. Fast-forwarding to 2021, unfortunately, not all 100% of UK TV shows/films and online video services have subtitles. The UK charity The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (previously known as Action on Hearing Loss) currently has a campaign called Subtitle It! which has been tackling the issue since 2015.

There is still a long way to make existing/future web content fully accessible for everyone- but I am glad there are resources that we can learn from regarding accessibility.

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