Sonoqualia 2.0

Concha García

Sonoqualia is a project aimed at people with visual impairment, whose main objective is the creation of sound artistic experiences linked to pictorial works housed in museums of the city of Madrid. The name (Sono-qualia) refers to the subjective qualities of the sounds we feel and perceive each one of us, so its intention is far from objective criteria translators of visual material in sound material. Pictorial works are the frames of reference from which the spaces and sound experiences are created. The audio-descriptions offered by museums, understood as descriptive narratives of the elements put in relation in the pictures, are the starting point of the project, conceived as a 5-week workshop in which the participants work in groups, assisted by technicians who facilitate them the access to sound-composition software. Sonoqualia focuses on the construction, enrichment and communication of the mental images of the participants, generated from these descriptive narratives, understood as internal representations shaped from our multimodal experiences, in which all the senses intervene. Various elements are used for this purpose, such as symbolic values and emotional meanings of the sounds daily used in our interpersonal and environmental relationships; the sound imagination, which has the capacity of development, sophistication and complexity; previous sound experiences or "sonorous culture", variable in each participant, but enriched when shared and put together; sound material chosen simply by "as it sounds", i.e. by aesthetic criteria... The result is the creation of sound pieces with a duration around 2 minutes. This project has been the beneficiary of an aid for the artistic creation of the city Council of Madrid 2017 and so far, two editions of it have been made.

Sonoqualia 2.0 has as its main objective the creation of musical experiences related to pictorial works housed in museums of Madrid. It is aimed at people with visual disabilities, but the methodology can be in subsequent phases, applied to be experienced by people without disabilities, considered as an expanded and independent aesthetic experience. The project, is conceived as a 5-week workshop in which the participants work in groups, assisted by technicians who facilitate them the access to sound-composition software. The result is the creation of sound pieces with a duration around 2 minutes made by the participants.

The version described here is the second one, carried out in collaboration with the Territorial delegation of the ONCE Foundation for Cooperation and the Social Inclusion of the Disabled in Madrid, where we worked with two groups of people with varying degrees of visual impairment, corresponding to the age ranges of adults and seniors. This project has been the beneficiary of an Aid for the Artistic Creation of the city Council of Madrid 2017 and so far, two editions of it have been made.

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