VIS(ABLE)
VIS(ABLE) uses video to explore the journey of sight loss, from being fully sighted through degrees of visual impairment up to and including complete blindness. Each participant crucially gets to have their own words heard, to express their thoughts about everyday realities as well as describe their often ingenious solutions to negotiating both public and private worlds. Each describes their own personal emotional journey towards acceptance of their condition, and their adaptations to a sight-dominant world are explored through reflections on assistive technology and the haptic design within their environment which emphasises each participant's own sense of agency as active members of society.
VIS(ABLE)
VIS(ABLE) uses video to explore the journey of sight loss, from being fully sighted through degrees of visual impairment up to and including complete blindness. Each participant crucially gets to have their own words heard, to express their thoughts about everyday realities as well as describe their often ingenious solutions to negotiating both public and private worlds. Each describes their own personal emotional journey towards acceptance of their condition, and their adaptations to a sight-dominant world are explored through reflections on assistive technology and the haptic design within their environment which emphasises each participant's own sense of agency as active members of society. The daily experiences of the collaborators in navigating their world are represented by a series of photographic still lifes of the haptic design tools discussed in the interviews.
Access-Ability
This project titled Access-Ability was intended to interrogate the representation of those with either physical or learning disabilities in the media, and specifically focusing on those with disabilities within relationships. The mass media routinely neglect to portray those with disabilities, and when they do it is often a fully able-bodied and good-looking actor playing the role, such as Daniel Day-Lewis portraying Christy Brown in My Left Foot. This project focuses on the misrepresentation of people with disabilities as being asexual beings, symbolised most effectively by the fact that able-bodied public toilets are quite clearly gendered, whereas disabled toilets are stripped of their sex and merged into one location devoid of gender. This notion crosses over into the sexual lives of those with disabilities being unfairly denied the same worthiness of a full loving sexual relationship. These couples, where one or both partners have a physical or learning disability, are portrayed in a warm and loving manner to dispel these misconceptions.
Let Not The Deep Swallow Me Up (Psalm 69:15)
Using a series of formal portraits, this project explores the very particular voluntary nature of RNLI funding and the participation of the crews. The dichotomous nature of the work performed by the volunteers is examined by juxtaposing their full-time paid jobs in their private lives with their Lifeboat duties performed for the public benefit.
A Community Disappearing
The small north Dublin fishing village of Howth was once entirely dependent upon its fishing industry, and it's accompanying commerce and restaurants. However, this project sets out to investigate how EU fishing quotas and immigration laws have devastated a local enterprise that united a community once dependent upon the sea.
Chroma By Night
This project is a study of isolated objects located within the landscape at night. Colour is used to create a theatrical effect and add drama to the compositions, as though they were the set in a narrative with a story waiting to unfold in front of the camera. The subjects in the compositions range from a Martello Tower or a standing stone to a rowing boat and an outdoor swimming bath changing room; however, all share their isolation in the landscape and are plucked out of their environment by coloured light while their surroundings are plunged into the darkness of the night. The objects singled out in the project are isolated and solitary yet through the addition of colour and light they become alive and vibrant. The series of images is intended to dispel the myth of night as a time of menace and insecurity revealing a hidden world of animation and spirit.
Chance Encounters
You don't plan a chance encounter, it just happens, and in this series of meetings with strangers on the streets of Dublin, the subjects reveal something to the viewer that is sometimes private and always engaging.
Circus School
This project examined the DIT Circus and Juggling Society as well as the Dublin Circus Project to reveal these groups as crucial social connections primarily allowing friendships to blossom especially for students moving to an unfamiliar city far from home without their friends and family close by; with the added benefit of developing a set of skills that can be used to perform at home and abroad since circus is a language without borders.