Word In Transit

Sid Smith and Jim Bicknell-Knight

Word In Transit #1

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Verbal description is a way of using words to represent the visual world. This kind of description enables persons who are blind or visually impaired to form a mental image of what they cannot see. Verbal description has been used to make visual information accessible in film, television, and, more recently, in museums. In museums, verbal description may be used before, after, or during a standard gallery tour. Having a lecturer who can respond to particular questions and engage museum visitors in thought-provoking conversation is one way of providing descriptions of works of art. Additionally, descriptions may be provided in the form of an audioguide, enabling museums to develop an archive of narratives for specific works of art.
Usually verbal descriptions might start with the standard information found on a museum's object label: artist, nationality, title, date, mediums, dimensions, and the custodian or location of the work. These are bits of information available to one set of people (the visually able) but not to another (the visually impaired). Ideas on the other hand are not something rooted in physicality, they are neither hard or soft, long or short, here or there. It is these ideas that will take president during our time, taking the audience through the cognitive process around the conceptual production of a work (or works) in question.