If you’ve ever thought of, or are already, integrating multi-sensory experiences into your art practice then you may be interested in knowing more about VibraFusionLab, a media arts centre based in Hamilton.
As an interactive creative media studio, VibraFusionLab “promotes and encourages the creation of new accessible art forms, including the vibrotactile, and focuses on inclusive technologies that have the potential of expanding art-making practices in the deaf, blind, disabled and hearing communities, and for creating more inclusive experiences for deaf, blind, disabled and hearing audiences.”
VibraFusionLab’s principals David Bobier and Jim Ruxton are both media artists themselves who also partner with individual artists, including Deirdre Logue (admiring all we accomplish), Salima Punjani (Progression) and Chisato Minamimura (Scored in Silence), and arts presenters like Montreal’s MAI, Edmonton’s SOUND OFF: A Deaf Theatre Festival, and more.
Connor Yuzwenko-Martin + VibraFusionLab collaboration for Carbon Movements, SOUND OFF Festival, 2023. Photos: AR Bladon.
This fall, VibraFusionLab partnered with Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice to offer, for the first time, two three-week residencies in Hamilton and I was fortunate to participate in the first cohort along with three other Canadian artists. The two organizations offered access to vibrotactile technologies, motion sensor and sound visualization technologies, digital and hand printing studios, textiles, laser cutting, video and audio studios. Within a comfortable and encouraging environment for creation, and informed by workshops on these technologies and with Indigenous Elders and Deaf artists, I was able to further a video/sound/vibrotactile project I’ve been working on.
Sonia Bustos + VibraFusionLab collaboration for Je ne vais pas inonder la mer, MAI 2024. Photos: David Wong and David Bobier.
I’m working with a raised floor that has transducers (electronic devices that convert sound to vibration) underneath it, which enable audiences to sit, stand, lay or roll on the floor to experience the sound from my video as vibration. I also learned how to make a vibrotactile pillow containing a transducer that a viewer can hold to experience sound as vibration within it. Interestingly, some of the vibrotactile technologies we were working with, such as Woojer haptic belts and vests, are actually made for the gaming community which Woojer promotes with this fitting tagline: "Elevate your games. Feel your music. Get lost in your movies. Connect with your inner self. Catapult any multimedia experience to another dimension."
Future residencies are funding-dependent and a call for participants will go out if they are successful.
