Obraz – opis – symulakrum
Image – Description – Simulacrum

Summary/Abstract: The article compares the experience, often raised in contemporary aesthetic theories, of translating image into words, a relationship of the visible and linguistic with a translation technique, as well as museum experience, in order to indicate some regularities in the creation of audio description (AD) of works of art, understood as a new way of making artifacts accessible to people who suffer from visual impairment, as well as one of the areas of practice applied in museology, which by trial and error tries to adapt artistic means of expression to perceptive abilities of a distinct group of visitors. The first part discusses theories combining a picture with a word, as well as description of an image from the perspective of AD. Then it analyses two descriptions of the Neoplastic Room in the Museum of Art in Łódź: one provided by the art historian Janina Ładnowska, which was created in the late 1980s as a curatorial description and was not made for the blind, and the other prepared by students of the Department of the History of Art at the University of Łódź, with the support of the Audiodescription Foundation and the Culture without Barriers Foundation, and through consultations with people with visual impairments, in the academic year 2013–2014. The article also describes the methods of supporting the reception of a work of art with multi-sensory experience. The main research questions are: While creating descriptions, should we look for beauty/ moving elements/emotions (all being inalienable characteristics of all art which explores experience) or should we confine ourselves to simple descriptions? Should we create simulacra of works of art (such as typhlographics, 3D prints, referential objects that imitate the feel of the original, much praised by blind people)?

• Details
• Contents