♪ Opening theme music ♪
[Diane:] Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
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 ♪
[Diane:] Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with David Bobier,
a Canadian media artist, founder of VibraFusionLab
in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada.
You can find the resources mentioned by David Bobier during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website, in the blog section.
[Diane:] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin, and today I have a special guest,
and I am in a special place.
I am with David Bobier, and I am in this lab,
and he's going to explain us
where we are exactly. Welcome, David.
[David:] Thank you.
Nice to meet. Nice to have you here.
[Diane:] Yes. Thank you for welcoming me here. I really appreciate.
[David:] Absolutely.
[Diane:] So this is a fantastic place.
How did your interest for music
and also technology start?
[David:] Well, so I guess
I will go back to my childhood
and my family, generations actually of musicians.
I grew up in a rural community,
so I guess you would sort of say old country.
But my dad sang, had a beautiful voice,
and he yodled
and played multiple instruments.
My grandfather and my great uncle also
were violinists, and my other uncle is
violinist, so I was surrounded by music,
but I didn't didn't have the musical gene.
It just didn't happen.
I took some training lessons in piano and guitar, but it just didn't happen.
So that was the early influence, I think.
So I guess I could say maybe frustrated
musician, but practicing artist.
And I consider what I do through my own work and through
VibraFusionLab is some manifestation of that experience of sound.
I have a hearing loss as well.
Experienced it, I guess, really from birth, but never really
thought of it as any detriment.
But the I think, around...
My early work was really, it had a lot to do with sound, texture,
source, where the sound came from.
So I was doing a lot of...
I got a job actually teaching at Mount Allison University
back in the late '80s and early '90s.
And I started then bridging the idea
around technology and music and art.
And Mount Allison University is in a small community, but it's known -
Sackville, New Brunswick, but it's known, the history,
it was manufacturing, and that was enterprising faucet.
They were makers of furnaces and all kinds of appliances.
So with that influence,
I think in the community or in the history
of the community, I started working with
familiar objects that made sound,
but then playing around with that recorded sound.
And so I was working with different household objects that created sound
and turning them into installations.
And I was also interested in how I could engage the audience.
And so there was always some aspect of entering the work
and actually allowing
the viewer to become a participant in some
way or another, whether it was activating the work or changing sound
effects, that sort of thing.
And then during that period of time, we adopted two deaf children.
And they were aged 2 and 10 months.
And so the whole period of raising them,
sound became
an issue, something that was more prevalent than I think it was before.
How are they experiencing sound?
How are they reacting to sound in a space and watching and observing, and became,
through them, became actively involved in the deaf community.
And in the '90s, I actually created an exhibition
that was about that experience.
And it was called...
What was it called?
Oh, shoot, I forget.
Anyway, I'll get back to it.
But it was an exhibition of a number of installations
that looked at the history of deaf culture, it looked at language,
and it incorporated all this information into the installations,
and it traveled around Ontario.
I think it was probably, from what I sense now, one of the first
exhibitions that really explored that.
There was a catalogue for that as well.
So I think the combination of all of that
took me in the direction of, as an artist,
obviously incorporating sound.
But at the same time, this would be
2010, I think, around that period of time,
Ryerson University, which is now called Toronto Metropolitan University, as you know.
There's a department there that's now called Inclusive Media and Design Center.
And back then, they were working on a project to develop a
theater chair for the deaf.
So there was like...
I think they worked on that for probably four or five years.
And I heard of it, and they were doing a public performance
or public display of this work in a bar,
Clinton Bar, it's called, in Toronto.
So I heard about it, took the kids, And they tried out
and met some people there.
Anyway, I proposed to Deb Fels,
who was the leader of that project,
that the work that they were doing needed
to be explored in a more public setting.
And this is sort of what you'd mentioned this earlier about
academic research needs to have more legs than
within the confines of the university.
So I worked with him for a bit, and then I suggested that we start doing
some workshops outside of the university, and I coordinated those.
And then we collaborated on a SSHRC grant
to establish VibraFusionLab,
but outside of the university.
And so we were successful.
We set up the first VibraFusionLab
in London, Ontario, in 2012,
and operated there for about three years.
And during that period of time, it just became a drop-in
center for musicians, for artists,
for underground bands.
It became this place where people could come together
and enjoy music and experience.
The technology that had been developed
at Ryerson essentially got transported into VibraFusionLab.
We had all these chairs and all kinds of vibrating stuff.
That's when I first actually met Jesse.
I invited Jesse to come.
Jesse Stewart. That was remarkable.
People like Gordon Monahan, who's an international sound artist,
Marla Hlady from Toronto.
I just wanted to connect with people, so I just contacted them and said,
would you want to come?
I was able to fund everything, so pay them to be there.
That last for three years.
[Diane:] Wow!
So when did you move here in Hamilton?
[David:] Yeah, so.
We actually moved to Hamilton in, what's it, 2025.
I think in 2023.
We had been doing some projects.
We'd partnered on some projects with Centre 3, which is an art
center here in Hamilton.
We'd already been working on a few
projects together, and they located a
factory building that would had been renovated.
And so the proposal was that they would move into that space and we would move
into that space, which is here in Hamilton.
We did that and got set up.
And within a year, the building was up for sale.
So that ended that whole...
And it was amazing.
It was like 5,000 square foot space, all open windows, everything.
Anyway, it was great. But then...
So we then moved here in 2024 into this space.
[Diane:] Okay.
And can you talk a bit about the type of projects you're leading when you
are getting together with artists?
[David:] Yeah.
Gosh, it varies quite a lot from one artist to another.
So we started offering residencies here.
Last fall, we had two sets of residencies.
But a lot of projects start from people coming to us.
I'm just trying to think.
We worked with a deaf performance artist in Edmonton.
He was working on a project, a performance piece
that was called Carbon Movements.
And it was exploring
or addressing the climate situation.
But for that project, we built a raised
stage and motorized the stage underneath.
And the stage was covered with about two inches of black rice.
And this was a full-size stage.
So the motors would be activated and the black rice would move
based on the vibration of the motors.
That was one project that came to us.
Another one is a double leg amputee
Circus aerialist, Erin Ball.
Who you -
Erin, I think everyone knows about Erin, and her partner, Maxime Beauregard.
We've done two workshops with them already.
And with them, we're exploring their
movement in the air and tracking it
and allowing that motion, that movement, to either create sound or activate sound.
But the direction we're going with that is
that we're able to monitor her heartbeat,
and so that we're using the heartbeat as a sound element for the piece.
And as she moves, the movement changes, but also the heartbeat
changes itself as she moves.
So we're not quite sure where that's going to end up, but that's
the direction that's going.
We just started - Travis Knights, who is a professional tap dancer,
was just here a few days ago, and we're going to be working
with him and another tap dancer.
And the intention there is to place
contact mics or piezos under the metal part
next to the sole of the shoe so that their tap
and their movement of their foot will activate or change the sound that we're
recording from the board that they're tapping on.
Yeah, that's one.
We worked with a burlesque group of
intellectually delayed performers in Calgary.
Was...
Never worked in burlesque before,
but just amazing creation and art
form happening in that area of the arts.
Yeah, and also I think the other part that we're...
So VibraFusionLab is built
around two foundations.
One is to support deaf and disabled artists
in the creation of their work through whatever technology we can
create for them or develop for them.
And the other is to create access to art
for audiences from the deaf and disability arts community.
Those have been two very standard frameworks for VibraFusionLab
and still are, I would say.
We do a lot of setting up vibro tactile systems
in theater spaces all across Canada,
from Vancouver all the way out to Halifax.
We've done that.
And we can set up - We have pillows, vibro-tactile pillows.
We have Woojer belts, which are a
commercial product that we use,
and we can set up upwards of 100 systems in a space for the audience.
[Diane:] I have a related question.
You already replied a bit, but I was wondering what it meant for you
to work in an environment where you improve, increase,
make a better access to the arts in the disability community
and in disability culture in general?
[David:] Mmm... Yeah. So.
What does it mean to me?
Gosh, it's thrilling, but it's hard to encapsulate what it...
It depends, too, on - every individual that we work with
comes with certain conditions,
certain needs, but also certain ideas.
To just be an observer in all of that,
and as an observer, to watch
that process of creation, what happens from the point of saying,
well, we have this for you, these various things in the space that you can
work with, and how they transform that to make it their own.
I think that's... Yeah, I think that's it.
You know, to...
For them to find that sort of direction
and to be able to observe that and to be able to support it.
I often... When I talk about Vibrofusion Lab or myself,
I often talk about we're facilitators.
We're just here to guide and offer
and then support and however we can.
And I'm deeply committed to supporting
the artist for everything.
I always try to make sure we...
We obviously pay well for artist fees, but accommodation, per diem, travel.
I really don't want the artist to have the cost to be here,
That it costs them something to be here.
However we can manage that, it's true.
We don't have operating funding.
We don't function on operating funding.
We work from project to project, but also people come with projects.
It's a little bit tenuous at times, but
we're fortunate to be able to still be doing what we're doing and to have a space
And to say that, yeah, we have...
It's just a place to play, essentially.
[Diane:] I have a last question for you before, maybe we can explore
some of the elements we have in the room.
I was wondering if during your career,
you met people who really counted for you or
really transformed the way you were seeing.
Despite family, I know that you have two sons
who are deaf, but in the disability
culture community, did you meet people who really marked you in your career?
And you can name more than one if you want.
Who are they and why?
I worked with an artist,
a deaf dancer, choreographer from the UK
and I won't say it was... not totally amicable,
but I would say influential
in terms of
the kind of project that we worked on and the access
it gave me to other venues, other people.
And so her name is Chisato Minamimura,
and she was working on a project called Scored in Silence.
She's Japanese, and as I said, deaf,
but she's in the UK. She lives in London, UK.
And the project was
to investigate the experience
of deaf people during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Very profoundly difficult project.
But she spent time in Japan and actually located some deaf survivors.
So she interviewed them.
There was also some earlier footage from interviews that she was able to obtain.
But one of the things that she discovered was that,
and at that period of time, it wasn't unusual for
deaf people or people with disabilities to be kept in a room,
essentially, or institutionalized.
So the truth of the matter was that deaf people
didn't even know there was a war going on.
They were so isolated from the world around them.
And when the bombings happened, the first - the instant that happened,
it was this amazing experience for them.
They didn't know what it was, but
deeply affected, obviously, some were injured, some were...
One fellow talks about how he's
thrown across a space.
But anyway, so she did a whole piece around that.
And it toured, we had it here in Toronto and Hamilton.
I don't know if you had a chance to see it.
[Diane:] Yes.
[David:] You did? Okay.
So you know exactly what I'm talking about.
But anyway. Also, it toured in the UK, too.
And then it ended up at the Edinburgh Festival.
So that experience of the touring
was really interesting to me because I'm always...
Theater has always intrigued me.
What happens in the background really intrigues me.
And so that was interesting.
But I would say Jesse Stewart in a very different way.
Just his personality,
his calmness, his peacefulness,
his amazing, amazing ability.
And... Gosh, so many.
Jenelle Rouse, I think, for sure.
A very influential close friend.
I think a lot of people that still have
influenced me are close friends.
And it's hard to sort of
come up with one or two people.
I think that everybody I worked with
influences me and drives me forward,
keeps my passion going for what I'm doing, and the surprise of what's coming next,
because we never know.
And the thrill of...
I always say I create the projects and create the problems,
and Jim is here to fix them.
So Jim, I should mention, Jim Ruxton is a media artist
and an electronics engineer, lives here in Hamilton.
And he came on board VibraFusionLab about six or seven years ago
and has been really the problem solver, I think.
I didn't grow up with that tech background.
So I think the partnership has really
moved forward, moved VibraFusionLab
forward in leaps and bounds in terms of how we can respond to people
with what their objectives or goals
or ideas are when they come to us.
I would say Jim as well, a key person in terms of where we are.
[Diane:] Thank you.
I'm just looking around, and there are so many ways
of exploring what vibration in sound is in this room where we are, in this lab.
I was wondering if you could present some of the elements that are here,
and we are going to move to the different places where they are.
[David:] Sure. Yeah.
♪ Music is played from a computer in the background ♪
[Diane:] Okay, so what are we looking at right now?
[David:] Okay, so what we're going to be looking at is a couple of...
I just mentioned the vibro-tactile belt, but there's a couple of
devices that we use quite commonly,
in particular in theater situations.
This is what's called the Woojer, we call it a belt.
It's also called a strap.
It's obviously made by a company called Woojer.
And these kinds of companies, there's Subpac, Woojer,
there's other smaller ones.
But these products are designed primarily for gaming.
But we found that the Woojer belt,
because it's easy to travel,
easy to ship around, because we do, as I say, installations
anywhere that we get called, and it's a...
It plugs directly into a live audio system
or you can have live recording
going directly into it.
So the idea is that there's a transducer inside which vibrates to the sound that's...
You don't hear the sound from the belt, but the vibration is there.
You can adjust it.
Yeah, so in the lab we have somewhere between 110 and 120
of these that can be installed in a theater.
We have a cabling system that we've designed, actually,
Jim Ruxton designed, that can transmit
the audio signal to that many belts.
We also have a...
Also have a vibrotactile pillow here.
Inside is, again, a transducer.
So a transducer is...
I should have had one here.
But it's designed much the same way as the speaker is,
but it's designed to emphasize vibration of sound.
So inside of the pillow is a transducer,
and it's wired to just a small mini app here,
which is connected to my computer.
And I'm just going to play something from, I think,
an Ethiopian band called Tinariwen.
♪ Singers singing a traditional song with an electric guitar playing ♪
So with the pillows, there is sound and vibration.
I think you can hear the sound coming out of it now.
But these are designed...
They're soft, so they're easy to hold.
They're very comfortable to hold.
I really put a lot of emphasis on developing the pillow idea during COVID.
And we also, at that time, we're working on a handheld system.
The idea being that we want to reduce costs of this kind of technology
so that people could actually purchase them for their own personal use.
And something like this
or any of these systems
can be hooked up to your entertainment system at home.
So you could be watching a movie and holding one of these pillows or
listening to your favorite album and holding one of the pillows.
But pushing the idea of the pillow forward,
we now have a wireless vibrotactile pillow.
So we're able to eliminate
the cables, which,
particularly if we're working with live theater and people are moving around,
cabling becomes quite a
difficult thing for people to maneuver.
And so these you just...
The Bluetooth is a fairly recent
development in Bluetooth technology.
And so these you can just connect to your iPhone or your computer,
and you're free to move around.
These are also really nice to hold.
I've had people put them at their back.
I've had people put them under their feet.
So it's really flexible in terms of how you want to interact with them.
I'll show you here.
Behind me we have a vibrotactile floor.
We've been working...
I first designed a vibro-tactile floor
for Tangled Art Gallery in Toronto, probably five, six years ago now,
for an artist that was showing there, Deirdre Logue.
And I built four sections of floor this size,
and they were solid.
This is in four components, but those were solid sections.
She's a video artist, so the monitors
were mounted on the wall low.
Then the sound, rather than coming out of a speaker or something,
was channeled into the floor.
So the sound videos was coming out of the floor, which was really...
What happened was it really changed the experience of sound within the space.
It really kind of filled the room with a different sound quality.
[Diane:] People could walk on the floor?
[David:] Yeah, they were all ramped.
The idea is that whenever we work with any of our technology,
we try to think about access.
From as many perspectives as possible.
So I ramped them all
so wheelchair users could experience them
on the floor, could experience the sound on the floor,
But people would come in and sit on them or lie down,
just however they wanted or could best experience
that quality of vibration.
So now we're starting to work with separating sound into the floor.
In the case of this one, we can have four different sounds going
into the floor, or we can control it
so that sound will move in a circular pattern
or however, whatever direction you want the sound to move.
And this is a component that then could be reproduced into multiples within a room.
So a whole room could actually become a vibro-tactile floor space.
I guess we can look at the wall.
[Diane:] Yeah.
[David:] Okay. We've moved over to another installation
that we call Haptic Voices,
which is, we also refer to it as the vibro-tactile wall.
The idea came out of, again,
out of the period of COVID when...
First of all, there was Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council,
we were able to receive funding to
support artists during COVID.
We wanted to develop something that
connected, the idea of connection.
So Haptic Voices is a wall, a vibrotactile wall,
that's made up of 10 transducers.
So each of these is a transducer.
The design also allows
for the transducers to move independently,
sideways, and these can move up and down
so to adjust to height,
to body type, as as much as possible.
And also, they're mounted on rubber bands so that as you lean against it,
it tends to sort of form to the body.
So If I were to lean against it,
the idea is to adjust it to your shoulder area,
lower back, the thigh and the caps.
Then just lean back.
You can put your full body back into it, and it's very strong.
And then we have an iPad
that's programmed so that you can control
the sound and vibration.
We've now commissioned, I think, about five artists or musicians to
create work for the wall.
The other feature is that,
again, back to the idea of connecting,
was to set up a website where people could
go on to their website or go on to their laptop,
open up the website and voice into their laptop, for instance,
and they're anywhere in the world, and their voice would be
transmitted to the wall, and you'd feel their voice.
And we'd set up a camera
so that through the website,
the person creating the sound could see the
reaction of the person leaning against the wall.
It also has an intensity adjustment.
Right now, we have three compositions on this control.
We've got a piece by John Gzowski, a Toronto-based composer.
We have a piece that Jim Ruxton created himself,
and he actually created while he was leaning against the wall,
which is the ultimate experience, I guess,
in terms of your instantaneous feedback.
And then Ailís Ní Ríain is a deaf composer
from - Irish composer living in the UK.
And I'll just demonstrate.
♪ Saxophone music playing for a few seconds, then David speaks over the music ♪
[David:] That's moving independently through 10 channels on the wall.
So if you lean against it,
you're getting 10 points of sensation,
vibrotactile sensation.
You can't anticipate where it's coming
unless you know the piece really well,
which transducer is coming into.
♪ David stops the music ♪
So that gives you an idea of...
We could have 10 musicians or 10 instrumentalists
playing live and channel them independently
into each of the transducers.
So I think it has a lot of possibilities yet.
I think I mentioned earlier, one of the things we're looking at
in terms of this concept is to condense it
so that it was something that could be transported and easily placed
in the back of a wheelchair or a chair for that matter.
We recognize that even though we've considered accessibility with this,
it's still inaccessible for some people.
We're very conscious of that and always trying to and adapt and figure out
how we can make it more available.
[Diane:] Well, thank you so much for welcoming me in that amazing space.
So are you working on specific projects right now?
[David:] Yeah. Well, I guess I think first up is a trip to New York City.
We're working with the Parsons School of Design
there, and their year-end fashion show is happening.
so I'm going.
We've already shipped all the stuff over there.
We're setting up a system of 25 vibro tactile belts for the audience
to get an added
sensory experience of the fashion show.
That's going to be a strange time to go to New York, but it's going to be
a really interesting thing.
Gosh.
Well, I mentioned Erin Ball.
We're continuing to work with Erin Ball.
We're working, again, an ongoing project with
Vanessa Dion Fletcher, who's a Lenape artist in Toronto.
She's working on an exhibition that would be happening at
what was the Art Gallery of Windsor.
It's now called Art Windsor-Essex.
There's lots more happening.
I think just referring back to what I had said earlier around some of the projects
that tend to be ongoing.
It's rare that we have - everything gets wrapped up in one session.
So typically, what happens in one leads to another.
And so, yeah, many of our projects last over multiple years.
[Diane:] Well, thank you again.
And I'm sure we will see each other in one project or another.
[David:] Yeah, definitely have a feeling we will,
now that I have a better sense of what your
illustriousness is all about.
It seems to be fascinating.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think there's really a lot of connections with
what you're doing and would love to.
[Diane:] Well, thank you.
[David:] Okay. Thank you very much.
My pleasure.
♪ Closing theme music ♪