"Private Eye"

2021-2023

recycled objects, vintage Apple computer speaker, photograph, speaker, ping pong ball, glass, metal brackets, mini amp, audio components, audio file

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and language of expression. This ongoing work led to his establishment of VibraFusionLab originally in London, Ontario, a creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre that has gained a reputation as a leader in accessibility for the Deaf and disability arts movement in Canada and internationally. The Lab has recently been re-established in Hamilton, Ontario. As a practicing artist his exhibition career includes 18 solo and over 30 group exhibition projects across Canada and in the United States, France, Costa Rica and the UK.

Bobier has served in advisory roles in developing Deaf and disability arts Equity programs for both Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was an invited participant in the Canada Council for the Arts – The Arts in a Digital World Summit and a panel presenter at the Global Disability Summit in London, UK. Bobier twice received Canada Council for the Arts funding to do ongoing research of the Deaf and disability arts movement in the United Kingdom and the United States.

‘Private Eye’ dismantles colonial traditions of filmmaking and photography by underscoring the experience of sound as vibration and as having a visual context. Instead of looking into a viewfinder we are confronted with an enlarged image of an eye peering out at the viewer. An audio of underwater recordings emanates from a vintage Apple computer speaker causing its surface to vibrate. The same audio is passed into a speaker under a glass dome activating a ping pong ball in response to the audio frequency thus offering the viewer an added medium and sensory perception of sound. By incorporating the underwater recording it offers the viewer a multi-sensory transformative experience unavailable to many from the Deaf and disabled Communities.