Access in Mind

Access in Mind is an audiovisual installation for the art galleries helping visitors to respond to works of contemporary art, rather than to explain their cultural importance, style or historical context. The prototype has been developed in 2002 at Visions for museums/ Interactive Institute in collaboration with The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs. Access in Mind aims to stimulate and encourage young people to explore contemporary art using a multimodal approach – light/dramatized audio.

The design consists of a “ball-chair” equipped with speakers and 3D sound. The sound system also produces vibrations in the chair through a basic unit in the seat. Light is projected through a number of Plexiglas plates combined with diodes which randomly project different colours. The chair is covered with foamed polythene plastic, and is placed on a wooden podium.

Sitting in Access in Mind, the visitor hears three different voices with different approaches, reflecting on contemporary art. The voices represent three fictitious characters, which are engaged in a kind of ongoing discussion based on their respective views. The first voice alludes to that of a learned or authoritarian speaker; in this case the artist or art connoisseur – the expert’s voice. The second voice is of a fictitious young man reflecting on love, loneliness, insecurity, suicide and everyday life. The third and last voice belongs to a young woman, a kind of conscience that appears behind the visitor’s neck and encourages the visitor to feel free to grasp without restraint; not to be afraid and to believe in their experience and judgement.