♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kollin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Malicious Sheep who is a
multidisciplinary artist, a photographer, a vocalist, and a community scientist.
You can find the resources mentioned by Malicious Sheep during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
Welcome everybody.
Today I am with an artist called Malicious Sheep
and they are a lot of different things,
lots of different identity, but a multidisciplinary artist and
I will let them introduce themselves.
Welcome, Malicious Sheep.
Thank you so much.
Yes, I'm Malicious Sheep.
I am a non binary queer and multiply disabled multidisciplinary artist,
photographer and vocalist, as well as a poet from rural Canada.
I'm a disability justice advocate, policy writer,
community organizer for multiple communities,
and a kind artist that is short for chronically ill, immunocompromised,
neurodivergent, and disabled, and I experience all of those identities.
I am a chronic volunteer and I provide peer support and artist support
and I do all of this virtually as I am immunocompromised
and quarantine is still very much on for me and probably will be in perpetuity.
I have no visual description to share with you as is custom, as I exist
as a somewhat tangible identity within my artist community solely through my voice,
my disembodied voice, but my identifying profile picture I can describe for you.
It is a macro photograph of a small jumping spider nestled in
a flowering and seed bearing portion of a red root pigweed in autumn
with tones of pinks and greens and this photograph was captured by yours truly.
This little spider friend followed me around my garden the first year
I seriously started to explore photography as a medium and this photograph was
the moment that I knew it would become one of my favorite mediums
because of its accessibility.
Very good, thank you.
So on your website there are many great things that you are presenting
and the first thing that I really saw was your photography because your photograph,
your photographic work explores small details about nature, about plants,
still lifes, something like that, and it's really being in the eye of the nature.
And I was wondering if you could present this part of your work, but also
some other parts of your works that are related, such as painting and
everything else you're doing.
Sure, of course. Yeah.
So with my photographic process -
I'll give you a little bit of a backstory.
Then the context will be a bit more clear, I think.
So.
I went to school for post secondary education for about a year
before a lot of my health concerns started to accelerate to the point where
I experienced sudden and rapid wasting.
Still undetermined as the cause of that, almost 15 years on.
But it left me unable to care for myself, unable to do what I had traditionally done,
which was hyper realistic, detailed paintings, as well as mixed media
sculpture, lots of physical work.
And that period of wasting and being unable to care for myself
lasted almost ten years.
In order to get myself reengaged creatively, I took it upon myself.
I got a camera.
So glad I did.
And in my space in the yard of the property, I made a goal for every day.
I would go outside for as long as I could tolerate.
Be that 15 minutes or 4 hours.
Whatever it happened to me that day, I would photograph as much as I could.
As soon as I got tired, I would sit down for 15 minutes, I would rest, and then I
would make my way back inside and then study everything that I had photographed.
Because a lot of my movement was very slow, very deliberate,
because I was being very aware of my own body.
I was being very aware of where I could and could not step.
Nature kind of didn't mind me so much, so I would always get all the little bugs.
Like, usually a bug will fly away if you get too close, or a squirrel
will take off if you're too close.
But I was definitely not a threat.
And so I think that gave me an opportunity to photograph the little bit more.
And also because my world had become so small, because I wasn't able
to explore outward like I used to.
Like I used to live in Toronto, I used to run around all over the place and,
you know, explore the city.
At this point, I was definitely not able to do that.
I was barely able to access the space around me.
So when I did explore, I wanted to take a look at the little moments
that were often left unnoticed.
Little scenes.
I really enjoyed capturing textures and repeating patterns.
That's part, I believe, in myself for the musical quality that I also have.
I really love that patterning, how it's appearing in nature.
I love biomimetics as well.
Things that look like or could be used in real life, that occur in nature as well.
A lot of my photographs have been explorations of my symptoms
as I'm experiencing them as well.
So if I - I'm a synesthet, so many types of synesthesia as well.
Textures and pain are associated in my brain, and so I wanted to capture
colour palettes or textures that were associated with the pain sensations
that I was experiencing, because I do have six different pain disorders.
So there's a lot of variety there.
But, yeah, a lot of my favorite things were finding little scenes,
little mating dances of spiders or a bird feather that had fallen just so
perfectly and was captured in some sort of vines or, like,
little things that if you weren't paying attention to them,
you would never see that they were there.
And we have such busy lives, like,
especially, like, having remembered what it was like in the city.
Like, there's just so much going on.
There's so much going on in our heads.
I wanted to just be very present with the space
and understand it fundamentally, as
my neighbour and my home and my friends,
I wanted to really get a sense of
where I was sharing my space and how the different individuals within
that shared space were interacting with one another.
And over time, I have now developed, as I've started to get stronger
and be more able to spend more time outside, I've developed a permaculture
organic garden with many layers to provide homes for all of the different critters
and things in a way that has grown over the last few years.
I wonder, with synesthesia, I know you're also a vocalist,
so sound is important for you.
And does this affect - when you're taking pictures, are you thinking
inside your creative process,
are you thinking about the sound?
Yes, very much so.
So I'll usually pretty much all day, every day.
I have one earbud in one ear.
I switch them back and forth so that I'm balancing.
I have one earbud in my ear, and it will have music in it
and the other one, I'll be able to listen to the ambient sounds,
and I love doing this in nature because I compare the music with my pain,
and I compare my visualization with my pain and explore that through
the photography, but also through the storytelling and the lyricism.
Sometimes I'll pick something in particular that will pair well with that,
and then I will also sometimes use my own voice as the secondary.
So if I'm feeling like I need to vocalize, I need to process something
through vocals, I will do that as I'm moving through the space.
So sometimes I actually end up calling a bunch of birds over,
which is really nice. like some sort of cartoon character or something.
I've made many a friend with the birds. The chickadees are my favourite.
They like to sit on my shoulder and follow me around the garden.
Nice.
Yeah.
And you're also a community scientist, so I think that that also
contributed the exploration of your garden, led you to that? or -
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I.
When my body was in a state that could move around space
more easily when I was much younger, I would spend hours hiking, going through
conservation authority areas and parks, identifying things there.
And so my photography at that point was more documentarian to identify things
and to be able to send little reports to the conservation authorities
about invasive species or about potential endangered species that I had seen.
And so having that framework and enjoyment of science and then blending
that with art, like, both of those two focuses have always been there for me
as long as I can remember I've always wanted to be an artist
because it's a way that I can communicate that I can't -
I feel like I can't do verbally.
But also the trying to understand things through science has always
really fascinated me as well.
I really excelled at both of those in school and had actually applied to
two different types of universities for both of those and then had to pick,
so I chose art.
But in the end, I was only able to go for about a year, so I had top grades.
But, yeah, it was being able to.
I'm also an autodidact, so I'm able to really teach myself
anything which is helpful.
And having that space outside of the regular
framework of education, like in a self directed,
flexible, and accessible way, I feel like I was able to
explore what I needed to explore in each realm, to be able to blend them together in a way
that has really benefited me through being able to communicate outwardly about
things that I'm experiencing or, you know, disability justice,
or things like that.
And then has lent into my.
Also my community organizing, which has been lovely.
You also have access needs, so how do you -
How do you fit these access needs in your creative practices?
Yes.
So I have many a condition,
many a fluctuation in symptom expression.
I have, like, an Alphabet soup of conditions.
So it is a lot to manage.
So many of my access needs are dependent on what
symptom expression is occurring at that time,
so with my painting, what I used to do was
very high detailed paintings, and
I was unable to do that at a certain point
because I started to develop tremors,
and I became very frustrated with the output that I was creating
because it was not what I knew that I could do, aside from the tremors.
And so it was very disheartening and, like, a difficult grieving process
that I had to go through for that.
I switched to the photography because it was a more accessible option to me.
But what I end up doing, I have done for a very long time, is because of my tremors.
I have to compensate for them while I'm taking the photograph.
So in almost like a reverse syncopation, I'm following the pendulum swing of where
the tremor is and capturing it right in the middle when there's clarity,
which is difficult just in any photography, but, like,
macro photography, especially because there's just so many details that could go
unseen and uncaptured.
So I do that compensation.
I anchor my arm into my body, or I'm resting against something physically
to anchor that so that the tremor isn't as significant.
And now it has, um.
It has become almost second nature for me.
I'm kind of flowing and swaying as I'm taking pictures. I kind of -
I look a little bit strange, but, compensating for, like, the wind and my -
And my body and trying to capture that very still moment.
But I did - Recently,
one of my friends, a fellow photographer, asked me about my process
because he knew about my hand tremors, and he wanted to understand a little bit
about why that wasn't in my work.
Like, he couldn't see that in my work.
And so then I took a little bit of a mental, like, a self reflecting dive
on that, of why I was trying to hide that a little bit of internalized
ableism to unpack.
And so immediately I went out, and it was the middle of the night,
in the middle of winter.
I took photographs of the moon, but I let my hand tremors fly free, and I ended up
capturing these really beautiful.
They looked almost generative, almost like paint strokes,
photographs of the moon, where you can see all of those tremors in full view.
And it was very freeing.
And I really want to incorporate that more into my work.
But, yeah, for other access needs, I feel like, for me, like, I cannot leave home.
I am ordered home by my doctor forever.
Like, I cannot leave.
So the only way that I can access art community is to do so virtually.
And so I really try to, as a community organizer,
connect people who I know are interested in creating virtual spaces
and accessible spaces to help them connect and then be able to facilitate
their creation of those spaces, as well as connecting disabled artists
with those developers and those other community organizers and things.
So, yeah, most of what my experience with the art world prior to the pandemic
was simply not accessible to me, either physically or
in some cases, socially as well.
I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user.
I use a cane.
I have.
It's like, as I move my body, as I move, different muscle groupings,
regardless of where they occur in my body, the weaker they will get.
So a lot of - even just a car ride to a gallery, first and foremost,
would take a lot out of me, and then my cognition would be down, so I wouldn't
be able to as actively participate.
But then most of the gallery spaces that I was interacting with also had no ramp or
were up or down a full flight of stairs, you know, historical buildings.
It was very tight and, like, no handrails.
So, like, a lot of the spaces that I was trying to access,
I just physically couldn't.
It was dangerous for me to.
And then learning about my immunodeficiency, that made it even more
difficult, even prior to the pandemic, because it is not something that
people tend to see, because it's not -
It wasn't as known as an issue until the pandemic.
But then after the pandemic, my world opened up in a way that it never had.
Everybody switched to virtual because it was the accessible option
for everybody at that time. Right?
So a lot of spaces that I really wanted to participate in, I finally
could, and I thrived in them.
So disability justice, political organizing,
things that I never would have had access to otherwise finally opened up for me.
And I decided to keep pushing for that for other people.
The positive side about this pandemic is that it was able,
it gave an opportunity to -
an opening to dialog with people who were used to
always being outside at the office.
And as disabled people, we found a way to create accessibility
with the digital tools that we had, and that stayed after the pandemic.
So that is, I am really thankful for that.
To be able to connect with many people all around Canada and the world
from an office and create a notion of accessible dialog.
I really appreciate that, and I also appreciate the fact that this is a tool.
So when we are talking about adaptations and access needs, there are
a lot of access needs that we were able to add with these digital connections.
And now, as you said, some galleries are not accessible for
wheelchairs or mobility aids users.
I am a mobility aid user.
I'm a wheelchair user, and I am confronted to that all the time.
But now we have streaming, we have possibilities of doing meetings
with artists, or online exhibitions, or just a visit of a physical exhibition
that would then be an online visit for people who cannot come physically.
Yeah, the hybrid access, I think, is the key.
It is something that, in my community organizing, I really try to push for
as well, especially because the community that I do organize for is a global one.
So generally, if there's an event like Art Basel, most people,
unless they live in the States or have a high income
or don't have other responsibilities
that they can't accommodate for, they just aren't able to go.
Whereas with the hybrid option, where there is a bit of both,
it makes it so that, you know, those folks who maybe in Australia
who can't make it to the US, or someone like me who is multiply
disabled and cannot leave home, can still participate.
And I think it's just the most beautiful thing I really do.
I was also wondering if you have developed other -
in the research of
accommodating your access needs, do you have -
Did you use special tools or did you try to use, I don't know,
a stabilizer for your camera, for example,
or something to help you being more in your garden
or a longer time, for example?
Yeah, actually, not the stabilizer, but the garden itself.
I slowly established layers to the garden, as well as seating sprinkled throughout,
so that there would be somewhere for me to sit, as well as smooth paths.
So depending on my symptom expression of the day, I could either use my chair
or my cane, or walk freely, but still need rest periods where I would,
you know, take 15 minutes to rest and then decide whether or not
that was enough for the day or if I could continue.
But there was, you know, every - I believe it's about every 15ft or so,
there is somewhere to sit in those gardens, be it a stump or a rock or
something, there's something to sit on.
And so that's really helped.
As well as providing things like shade for myself through
specific types of planting and organizing of how the gardens lay,
like where the sun exposure is going to be, because I'm also very sensitive to that.
So there's a lot of -
A lot of different considerations and I've applied them all and I feel like
it is a beautiful, accessible space for me where I can play and create
without having to spend a lot of my cognitive energy on self protection.
I can be a little bit more relaxed and really dive into my work.
It seems like a great place to rest and see the seasons change in nature.
Absolutely.
So do you have -
Speaking of exhibitions, do you expose your work?
So I had a couple of opportunities through this digital community that I'm part of.
Digital art community.
I've had a few opportunities to exhibit my work.
One was at NFT NYC in 2023,
which was great, as well as
with a project from The Selfie Institute called
Throwing Digital Bricks which is a queer digital art exploration
where I submitted a piece for consideration which was accepted,
called Aubergine in Repose.
Most of my photographs - a little side tangent again, this is how my brain works.
Most of my photographs are unedited and unstaged,
photographed in situ, without any artificial lighting.
I would rather wait for the lighting to be correct than to light it falsely.
And I would rather capture the raw moment than change it.
Because as a multi identity disabled person,
erasure is a really big component of our experience.
So I don't want to edit my work or alter it.
I want it to be as raw as possible.
Especially in a world now that everything is edited.
There's so much -
there's very little
raw in what we are absorbing
visually nowadays through art.
And so for me, it's really important to have have that.
I feel like a lot of when I am creating it in that way, it helps
to affirm myself that I don't need to change, that I don't need to be changed
and to honor my own history.
But then back to the piece, Aubergine in Repose, that is one of the very few -
There's only two photographs that I've published that have been
staged and artificially lit.
They're both still unedited, but it is an aubergine as well as some tomatoes,
some oranges and pomegranates.
The aubergine itself is placed on a velvety green tasseled cushion.
It is meant to emulate -
Visually it's meant to emulate the style of a Renaissance oil painting
in tone and quality and content and forms,
and to express a lot about not only
conversations about disability and that rest is not valued
firstly within our society, unfortunately, it should be, but also
generally, when there is a painting in that style, generally it is of a white
woman, nude, created for the male gaze.
And so I wanted to create something that uses the avoidant language that we often
associate with out groups such as queer communities or disabled communities,
and as well as with sex.
The emoji - the aubergine emoji
is phallic and is in an attempt to avoid
outright stating certain things, right.
So I wanted to utilize that imagery to create a new form, a new
focus, and to shift the -
I wanted to shift the gaze from -
the male gaze to something that was a little bit more open for
the female gaze, as well as the trans and nonbinary gaze,
because I feel like that's very important.
You kind of shift the perspective.
And I've had a couple other pieces that have been shown as well.
There was one I took of a sawfly larva eating a blade of grass,
and it's called Devour.
And that piece was also shown in New York as part of an exhibition
in 2023 during NFT NYC, which was great because that's one of my favorites.
Just from all of the detail I was actually able to capture
in the textures of that tiny little critter on a tiny blade of grass.
Very proud moment, but yeah, a lot of -
A lot of that.
I like the fact that you're having a lot of intersectionality in your work.
Yeah, I think it comes with the package.
I have to think about and process this for myself, so I might as well
communicate that through art.
And I always really, I find for me anyway, the -
It is more interesting in the intersection, in the collision,
where things are blending together, or having,
I don't want to say conflict, but like
bumping up against each other in a way that creates something new.
It's like a liminal space. I really love exploring that,
how things can relate to one another, how things
can be more than one thing at the same time.
I really love creating that and then utilizing those types of visuals to tell
a story about that experience.
You already mentioned it a little bit, but I want to come back to the notion
of accessibility in the arts.
What is it for you as an artist to be working on that topic
of accessibility in the arts,
in the intersection with other fields?
Yeah. So generally when I'm talking about disability justice or accessibility,
I like to lead with -
The antonym to disability is not ability
nor disable to able, rather it is to disable or to enable.
And taking that mindset with you as you try and solve for the access needs
of others, I think really changes how people approach it, because disability
is not inherent to the individual.
Right, we know this, but rather we are disabled by society,
systematically and socially.
And so there's a difference between hindering or helping
or sidelining or supporting.
So for me, accessibility in the arts means enabling creatives to participate
in whatever capacity I'm able to, and whether that be in person or virtually,
regardless of their access needs,
regardless of equity status or socioeconomic factors,
the community collectively meeting them where they are,
and taking active and ongoing steps to remove barriers,
both physical and social, as well as to use creative thinking,
which as creatives we have an abundance of,
to problem solve to meet the access needs of each community member
as those needs are presented.
Yeah, I've.
I really think that there are ways to do that that really don't take a lot.
And I feel like a lot of the hesitance from people that I've seen over the years
is related to a fear that they're going to do it wrong, that they're going to
cause more harm if they are willing, but they still won't work towards that.
There is that fear of being part of the problem.
But as I always say, like, bring disabled folks into the fold.
We have ideas.
We've been managing this for ourselves for a very long time.
We know the limits, we know the possibilities,
and especially with all sorts of new technologies, like combining people together
who are often siloed apart, who don't often interact,
like engineers and artists or, you know, like in my realm,
developers and artists and disabled folk all coming together in a beautiful
trifecta and solving a problem together.
There is like.
I find there is a cultural and linguistic barrier for that to happen.
But once it started and you've got somebody who kind of
fits within all of those realms, like me, it's helpful because
you can help translate for everybody until that becomes a more of a shared language.
Like my experience with all of the developers that I know,
a lot of them didn't.
Unless you specifically go for disability accessibility in technology,
you're not taught about any of it. Right?
It's the same with everything.
You're just not taught about it, even though it affects everything.
So I feel like combining people is my favorite thing, bringing them together
so we can make magic.
But yeah, I feel like.
Like, for me, a lot of what's driven me to do this too.
Cause like, there's obviously the physical inaccessibility of being
able to participate in spaces, but also like applications for
grant programs or residencies for me.
Over ten years, I've never received
a single letter of acceptance,
but not because of my work, which in the letters they express,
it's not a form letter they express like, this is really great.
We just do not have capacity or ability to meet your needs.
And we're very sorry.
And that's -
Even in spaces that were self described as being accessible residencies, they just
did not have the capacity for that for me in my particular case.
And so that feeling of being left out has really driven me to make space
so that others aren't feeling that way.
Because, like, knowing through my disability justice work,
I'm certainly not alone.
I'm not the only one with this experience.
One in five at best are disabled and are in some way kept from their dreams.
And there's this horrible feedback loop of not seeing disabled out in public.
And because it's not accessible, then they're not working on making it accessible.
And therefore disabled people can't attend and then therefore they don't see them.
So, yeah, the variability in access needs is too much for most to handle
if they haven't even experienced someone in their life with disability.
And treating those with access needs as a collaborator instead of an inconvenience
or something to, you know, like a target to reach or something like that,
it could really shift the dynamic, I think.
But unfortunately, there's still a really unhealthy conflation
between disability and moral failing and, like, social contagion and as a perceived
deserved punishment for difference.
That has a lot to do with, like, you know, systemically, we don't
process grief, we don't process trauma, particularly intergenerational trauma.
There's a lack of visibility in media and in life and -
But I do see it shifting, but unfortunately, at the expense of many,
many beautiful lives that have value outside of production.
And, yeah.
I have the feeling that there is also the fact that people don't know.
Yeah, exactly.
There is no exposure, as you just said.
So, when - every time I'm talking about
accessibility with someone in the artistic community who is not -
who didn't encounter someone with a disability before and who didn't have
even the occasion to, in the past, to think
about accessibility in their own spaces or just didn't think of the details, such as,
okay, great, I have a ramp, and so people can access.
No, it's more complicated than that. Yeah, exactly.
It's not because you have a ramp that you're accessible.
It's not a checkbox situation.
But it comes with conversations.
And once you start conversing, today specifically,
because we start having these conversations in public spaces
and in communications with politicians,
with universities, with schools, and saying,
we have people out there who need to be seen, and if you don't make this little step
of pushing the open minded spirit of making things better,
it's not only about disabled folks, right?
It's also about universal design.
If you make it accessible for someone in a stroller,
you make it accessible to everybody.
So someone thinking about that and saying, oh, yeah,
I didn't think about that specific aspect of the society.
Yeah, yeah, there's.
There's.
There's a lot.
I feel like.
Yeah, I feel like one of the main barriers is, like, people just simply
haven't seen disabled people because the disabled people were kept
away from people for a very long time.
Like, there's no intergenerational stories about disabled people other than
they were taken away, usually.
So there's a lot of that to unpack and to heal as a society.
But then also with, like, in a more modern context, too.
Like, most accessible things designed
for disabled people because nobody wants to fund it, ends up being
promoted as, like, a tool or a toy or a game
and isn't really implemented as an accessibility thing where
everybody has accessibility needs. Everyone, regardless of whether or not you're disabled.
I feel like.
Like, for example, closed captions could have been available
on YouTube for a long, long time.
But it took them ten years to implement them even though they had them.
Right.
Similarly, with touch screens, touch screens, which we use every single day,
were designed for disabled people to be able to communicate and to access
the world, you know, text to speech, you know, screen readers. Audiobooks.
All of these things. Exactly.
There's so many, so many things that had the focus not been on profitability,
but on access and therefore engagement,
I think a lot of things would be very different.
Yes.
And also it's very expensive.
Most of these things that are developed for a specific purpose
and not being integrated in society, which would make it more affordable.
Yeah, precisely, yeah.
And disabled folks generally live way under the poverty line, so, like,
being able to access those tools that were designed for them is just out of.
Out of reach often, which.
Yeah, but-
We still have some road to do.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
That's where I spend a lot of my time trying to solve for some of the virtual
versions of this because there are, like, physical spaces that are inaccessible
because, say, they don't have a ramp or what have you, but virtually there's also
similar barriers that exist which, unless you are someone who has experienced that
and been unable to access something because of that,
then communicated that to someone who knows somebody,
you can't really solve for them.
So I really try to do that, I -
After that decade of being so closed off
and then having that world open for me with virtual spaces,
I can see it closing off again.
There are less things that are taking place online,
more things are taking place in person, but I refuse to be passive about it.
Instead, I want to make something that is more lasting,
that will continue to flourish
collaboratively with folks in my community so that we still have
a virtual space to work with.
Speaking of collaboration, I have a last question, which is about
inspiration or people in or community?
In the artistic community, sharing visible spaces, who might have inspired you or
whom you like to collaborate with?
Who would that person be?
So I'm very torn.
I have two people in mind and then a community.
So the two people I will briefly talk about.
The first is Mari Migraine.
She is a digital painter, a migraine and mental illness advocate from Italy.
She crafts contrast between vibrancy and darkness through self portraiture.
She explores visual hallucinations and impressions of her physical pain through
really exquisite pieces, often also playing into digital culture references.
But her symptoms significantly impact her work.
So it takes a lot of time for her to create,
but she does continue to persevere and tell her story and make connections,
and she has developed a slow glitch style to provide an accessible option
to photosensitive fans of digital animations within the glitch art subgenre.
I'm very proud of her for that.
The second person is LMDesigns8.
She is a multidisciplinary artist from the US
who explores her experience with chronic illness and disability through poetry
and music as the host of a weekly space, as well as through immersive,
playable virtual experiences in the form of
interactive virtual worlds that she has built.
And she creates these to host live events to explore connections between art, music and poetry
with the global community, she always, always is fostering
beautiful collaborations between people, which has been amazing.
And then the third one, which is the community that I organize for.
I gotta give them a shout out. It is called Teia community.
TEa is a Dao LLC nonprofit organization.
It is laterally structured, community owned and maintained
from open source code, and it reaches every corner of the world.
We are constantly building and adding new tools, new accessibility options.
One of the really wonderful ones that we were able to set up is photosensitivity
and not safer work filters.
So when you are creating your art to be posted on on that site,
it allows for the option to indicate if it is going to be a flashing
or undulating or highly patterned piece that may affect folks with migraine
or epilepsy or vertigo, as well as the not safer work filters
for any sexual or potentially violent imagery that may
affect folks who have conditions such as complex PTSD and or who have experienced
traumatic events like war or other difficult subject matter that
care needs to be taken and how that is presented.
So when people access that site without logging in,
those pieces will be blurred and still so that it is a safe first experience.
And then within the user settings, each user can choose whether or not
to see one or both of those components based on their own needs.
And it has been working very well, and it's been really great to see
all of the artists in the community as we started to present this as an option,
a lot of the artists were surprised that this was a problem like,
that their work could cause others harm, and we're very grateful that that had been
solved for them because they were unaware of it, but the problem
had been solved for them.
And so they're very, very active in tagging their work appropriately
with those qualifiers to make sure that they are safe.
But, yeah, that community is all volunteer run, so we have a good time of it.
That sounds great.
Okay. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us today,
and I wish you a very good time in your garden,
and I look forward to other great pictures of nature.
Awesome. Thank you so much for this opportunity today and
this beautiful conversation, because I really enjoyed myself, and meeting you.
So thank you. Thank you.
♪ Closing theme music ♪