NAISA Sound Byte 13 - David Bobier & Jim Ruxton of VibraFusion Lab
Vibro-tactile artworks cross disciplines and sensory modalities
In this video David Bobier and Jim Ruxton discuss their vibro-tactile art installation Haptic Voices and the evolution of their work at VibraFusionLab in Hamilton, Ontario as well as their support for Deaf and Disabled artists. See below for a text transcription of the presentation included in the video.
Haptic Voices is a large scale ten channel vibro-tactile wall with the potential for ten independent streams of sound signals. Visitors are invited to stand against the wall to experience vibrations that are controlled using an iPad. This is shown at the beginning of the video.
Four sound art compositions, designed explicitly for the vibro-tactile experience, were commissioned for the wall. The composers include Toronto-based John Gzowski and Ravi Naimpally, Deaf Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain and Haptic Voices co-creator Jim Ruxton. Using vibration as the final output, Haptic Voices is equally accessible to the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Able-Bodied communities to experience the wall. The focus of artwork being inclusive of different sensory modalities is consistent through the work of the VibraFusionLab. The history of the VibraFusionLab is described in detail through the video.
At the time of publication, Haptic Voices has been on exhibit at the NAISA North Media Arts Centre in South River, Ontario through the summer of 2025. It closes there on September 15 and re-opens on September 19 at the White Water Gallery in North Bay, Ontario.
David Bobier - So I've been a practicing artist all of my life. And about 33 no 34 years ago my first wife and I adopted two Deaf children - Indigenous. One was two and the other was 10 months old from Saskatchewan. And so that sort of began our life my life in terms of being introduced to the Deaf community, Deaf culture, Deaf language.
There's all kinds of sort of political positioning around Deafness - whether to be mainstream or to follow a more cultural path. We followed the cultural path. We wanted to honour their hearing loss and explore their culture more. Also I have a hearing loss myself and I've had it, as far as I know, all my life.
I would say in about 2008 or 2009, Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) had a program or a department there that was developing what they called 'the emotive chair.' The intention was to design a Theater chair for the Deaf. There was quite a number of years of work around developing different prototypes. Actually I didn't know it at the time, but Jim had done some work with them in the early stages of that project. Anyway, I heard about it. I contacted them to - I guess - sort of invite myself to their lab. I had also experimented or experienced the chairs at another event that they held in Toronto at Clinton's Pub (I think that was what it was called). They had this whole evening program around the chairs.
Over a period of time they contracted me I guess essentially as a kind of artist in residence. I got to know a lot of the people that were doing the research and the development. Deb Fels was the director of the program. I started talking to them about applications of the technology outside of the academic community.
And I thought, again from my perspective as a parent of Deaf children and being involved in the Deaf community, that there are ways it could be - or should be - made available more broadly.
They applied for a SSHRC grant at the time to establish VibraFusion Lab in London, Ontario originally, which was kind of unheard of for academic funding to go outside of the University per se. But we got it and we set up the lab and it ran for three years. We also got Canada Council funding and I invited Gayle Young, Allison Cameron and Rick Sacks - all at once! So, that was quite a time.
It was really an introduction for me into this whole sort of community of sound artists, essentially. And over time, Jesse Stewart was there. We had many people that I was able to just sort of invite and they'd come for a week. I would pay them and cover all their costs and just sort of say, you know... Gordon Monahan was there several times. Marla Hlady from Toronto was there. And money ran out after 3 years.
And I think at that point I was getting more involved in the Deaf community. My kids were getting older. I also did a show at the time in the mid '90s called "Signing On, Adopting a Cultural Perspective" and that was all about my sort of early experience as a parent. It traveled around Ontario.
Jim Ruxton - Mine (my biography) is quite different. I actually started off as an Engineer, an Electrical Engineer. Did a Master's in Ottawa and worked for a few years actually in high frequency design, satellite communication, and that kind of stuff. So I wasn't in the Arts at all. Although at the time I was doing a lot of Dance. I was very interested in Modern Dance.
So I was dancing at Le Groupe de la Place Royale in Ottawa and really getting into that. And then I started to, you know, think about, well, how can I combine my engineering world, my technical world, with my love of Dance. I started thinking about sensors and that kind of thing. And so I decided to pass on the company I was running at the time to somebody else and left Ottawa and moved to Toronto. Went to OCAD.
So I kind of went into the media arts and filled my brain with the Art world. Well, I guess half my brain. The other half was still in the Engineering world. Then I graduated from there and ever since I've been very interested in that idea of combining Technology with Art.
I worked in the film industry for a few years doing Special Effects in Film. and I also started a festival at the time called Subtle Technologies that was a festival that brought together Artists and Scientists. I did that for 17 years and it's just closing up now I think the festival. So that was really amazing.
I'm very interested in the whole idea of interdisciplinary work. And myself as an artist and engineer I do a lot of interdisiplinary work, working with Dancers and Sound Artists and Film people. So I'm always in collaborations of some kind.
And eventually I guess I moved to Hamilton and got working with David here. I was involved with Center 3, a gallery in Hamilton at the time. And we did a project there that involved both of us. I got to know David and love the kind of stuff he was working on. I thought maybe I could you know help out in terms of technical side of VibraFusionLab - developing new technology and stuff like that. So that's sort of my history in VibraFusionLab, how I ended up here.
DB - We opened up the space (VibraFusionLab) about a year and a half ago in Hamilton. That is now the second location - that right now is permanent. And so reason being (for moving from London) - I think two things I guess - I had been doing work with Center 3 and Jim lives in Hamilton so it seemed kind of a logical place for us to re-situate.
So just it's kind of a rough estimate, but since the beginning I've probably worked with at least 150 artists and 60 arts organizations in Canada, Dominican Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, France, UK and the US. Over the years worked in the Visual Arts, Live Theater, Dance, Performance, Burlesque, Sound Art, of course, Circus arts and, about 3 weeks ago, I was in New York City, working on a Fashion show with Parsons School of Design. So that was another foray into a whole new experience.
The principles of VibraFusionLab - it was founded on these principles and still I think is pretty much the sort of the framework for what we do. Disabled-lead interactive creative research center that promotes, encourages the advancement of new accessible art forms and languages of communication through multi-sensory modalities.
I talk about language as a communication because to me all of these art forms - like music - is a language. Sound has you know contains information. So it's a language. And vibration also contains information. So for me it's a language of communication. It's a way of sharing and connecting and investigates obviously the potential of vibration as a form of artistic expression and artistic enjoyment.
I'll just sort of elaborate a little bit on that. So we work a lot - almost primarily I guess now - with Deaf and disabled artists in supporting them to do work and we also do a lot of work in terms of making art accessible to people from the Deaf and Disabled community. So we do a lot of work in theater and and you'll see a little bit later what I mean by that.
We adhere to the social model of Deafness and Disability.
Audience member - What does that mean the social model?
DB - So there's essentially there's two models. So the medical model means essentially there's something wrong with you. It's a pathological sort of perspective whereas the social model is that's part of who they are. And it's not up to us to change that - I guess is a simple way of explaining it.
(Video of School for the Deaf in Santiago, Dominican Republic.)
DB - So, this I can't remember exactly when I went to the Dominican, but it was quite early on. I was invited to, School for the Deaf in Santiago, and the young student on the left is holding a vibro-tactile pillow. So, I took some of the early versions of the pillows and we just through a little mini app plugged that into one of their iPhones and they played yeah… so just playing or feeling and experiencing for the first time one of their favorite songs… (commentary while watching the video) so reluctant to give it up… He's saying they really love it… So now they're all going to be getting into it… (group of Deaf students huddle together around the pillow) I think it was just an excuse to hug, right?
And this would have been probably seven years ago. Seven or eight seven years ago, I think maybe six years ago, I can't remember.
(slide of Deirdre Logue installation)
But anyway, Deirdre Logue, I don't know who if you know, she's a quite a well-known Filmmaker. Done like amazing things with her life and actually is at V Tape and has been for quite a few years now. Anyway, Images Festival was recognizing her work that year. She had three exhibitions in 401 in different locations (multi-story building in Toronto with many art galleries) and one of them was at this gallery called Tangled Arts which is the really the only designed fully accessible art gallery in Canada.
And so, her work is on the wall, as you can see. It's four monitors, each with a different, video. And she wanted to, find new ways of experiencing her video. So she invited me to work with her at that the tangled exhibition. There are four works in the space. And for this work what we did was on the floor - you can see that black area and that's a raised floor. It's about 2 inches and it's in modular. So it's four modules that synchronizes with each monitor. The sound is channeled into the floor so it doesn't come out of the monitors. And the floors are vibro-tactile. So they're also ramped for wheelchair users and so yeah people would you know stand on them, sit on them, lie on them.
Deirdre Logue (speaking on video): … and it's in collaboration with this lovely amazing man from London. His name is David Bobier. And he's been doing a lot of work with the vibro-tactile through this place called VibraFusionLab in London.
David Bobier (also in the video): VibraFusionLab is a creative space that explores multi-sensory creation and expression. In each piece, we looked at how do we make it as fully available to all sorts of body forms and conditions as possible.
(gallery visitor in video): What's exciting for me as a wheelchair user is I'm able to experience the works through vibration in parts of my body where I didn't even know I I had sensations...
(2nd gallery visitor in video): … to be able to feel the sound in the video is so intimate but also just sort of playful and lovely and I was holding the pillow watching the the video and I was like oh I wish I could watch movies like this all the time.
Deirdre Logue (in video): The community of artists that are generating energy around Tangled are some of the most important artists of our day. They include artists who are working with and through questions around Accessibility and Disability.
(slide of Chisato Minamimura in performance)
Jim Ruxton: This is a dancer, a Japanese dancer based in the UK now. Chisato Minamimura. And she did this really interesting Theater piece. It's about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Deaf people's experience. You know, they didn't really know what was going on. They didn't hear news reports. Oh, it was very tragic actually. And so she went to Japan, interviewed the survivors and made this Theater piece about it.
She uses this thing called... Hologauze. And that's the screen that you see there. It's a transparent screen that you can light in certain ways. So you see through the screen, but you also see the projection on the screen. Really, really interesting technology. But for it again, she's Deaf, so she couldn't hear the soundtrack. And we created a vibro-tactile. Oh, she worked with a sound person to create a virotactile track for the whole Theater piece. And people would wear these belts. I think we had up to 100 of them. there (on the slide) we said 50, but at one point we had a Hundred people in the Theater wearing these belts. I designed a specific system to wire these things up. So the whole theater could be could be wearing them simultaneously.
And as you watch the performance, you feel a vibro-tactile track through the belt including the plane that's flying over Hiroshima. You feel the propeller. You feel the shaking of the plane. You feel the bombs dropping. You feel so you're really enveloped. You're you're really brought into the whole Theater piece. We also designed for her in her costume she has a whole vibro-tactile system that's wireless. So she can move around the stage and she was receiving the vibro-tactile track at the same time as the audience was receiving it. So she felt much more connected to the piece. It also helped her with queuing I suppose. So she knew exactly where we were in the track by feeling it.
David Bobier - We've refined a lot of things since then. Yeah. Yeah. She had been I'd invited her a couple of times to the lab prior to the development of this and then I saw this this production in the early stages in Bristol. and then we brought the production to Canada. It was shown in Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto and at Live Lab in Hamilton. and then it went back and was performed in Manchester someplace else and then it ended up at the Edinburgh Festival. So it had a good run. She's into a couple of new productions now.
(slide of Jenelle Rouse dancing at the VibraFusionLab)
So, and I'll let Jim talk a little bit about this, but, the woman in the middle of the image here, Jenelle Rouse is a Deaf Dancer, Performance Artist, and we've worked with her quite a number of times. In terms of, you know, just the important thing for us, I think, is who we work with. We get feedback from we really learn from everyone and it really challenges us, or it challenges me and then I say, Jim here, you take this challenge, and I'll go over here do something else. Wait for somebody else to call or something. But anyway, if you want to talk a little bit about this.
(video of Jenelle Rouse dancing)
JR: There's a sensor that's measuring her position in the space and she also has sensors on her hands that's moving… detecting how she's moving her hands… and that's controlling the movement of her hands is controlling sound that she doesn't hear but she feels in the vest. So she's reacting. Her dance is reacting to the movement of her hand. It's kind of a weird feedback system actually. She's actually sort of creating the dance or the movement based on the what the sensation is, based on what she feels and which is based on how she moves.
Audience member - So, it's interesting (when I was) hooked up over there (to the Haptic Voices installation in the gallery). Then it's like I wanted to move and I couldn't because I was backed up against it. But interesting. My body just said, "Yeah, I want to move."
JR - Okay. Well, the evolution of this comes out of a piece that we worked with her on. Actually, I don't think we have a piece a picture of it here, but we built a wall that had similar number of transducers. We put a vest on Janelle so that she could feel a soundtrack of sounds of Hamilton actually and London. We did two versions of it and she moved to that soundtrack of Hamilton and London. We captured her movement through motion capture.
Then we translated her movement into movement of the transducers. So when you're standing up against this, you watch a video of Janelle and you feel her moving behind you. Yeah. and see the video of her dancing. That was a whole other interesting version of this which led to a more refined version here.
But interesting you say that it makes you move.
DB - Actually now when you think about that's the third prototype of the wall idea.
(video plays of Janelle Rouse)
JR - And she became very adept at, you know, knowing getting to a point where she was very consciously controlling the vibration.
(slide of Circus Aerialist Erin Ball and her collaborators)
DB - So I'd mentioned I guess earlier about working with a Circus Aerialist. Erin Ball is a double-leg Ampute Circus Aerialist. Do you know of her?
Audience Member - seen her in Cripping the Arts.
DB - … and her partner Maxime Beauregarde. So we've done two workshops with them already and we'll be continuing to work with them.
(video of aerialists Erin Ball and Maxime Beauregarde)
JR - and Ze is wearing sensors on not sure if they're on hir head. I think they might be on hir head on this one. And what the sensors do is they interpret Ze's angle, whether upside down or upside or halfway or whatever. And then that's controlling sound. And the fellow on the percussion instrument is playing the percussion and that sound that that he's playing is being manipulated by Erin. So it's a it's really interesting kind of dynamic between the two of them that they're that they're working with and there's no vibro-tactility involved in in this piece. It's all sensor based work.
And one of the reasons for this this work for Erin is to create work using sensors, and things like that, that Disabled people can approach and understand. So for example a Blind person watching wouldn't know what's happening if they're Blind but through using the sensor stuff you can get a sense of of the movement that they're doing on the on the trapeze or on the hoop and thing. So we're doing a whole project based around around that idea. Different ways like another thing was working with wind with fans that were controlled by how fast Erin was spinning would control a fan that a person would feel. so that's like a a whole really interesting body work that we're we're working with with Erin on. Yeah. So we'll see where all that leads. Yeah.
Audience Member - Would the wind - would that be considered tactility?
JR - I guess so. Yeah. Not vibro-tactility, tactility for sure. so yeah,
The potential for things like that are quite interesting. We did some other work that was sound activated projections. So depending what the sound was like, projections would change again. So Deaf people could have got a feeling of the dynamics of the sound.
And Erin brought in, you know, consultants like from the Deaf Blind community to work with us on this. And Erin just put in a grant, I think a large grant to to follow up on this and do more work. Yeah. See where this ends up.
DB - Yeah. And I I mean in the area that we work with Deaf and Disabled is always conscious of audience. I always say who's missing in the audience — those are the ones that we need to be considering, ways of inviting and bringing them in so they can have some sort of you know yeah equity and experience. It's really all about that around accessibility and technology right now. And so it's a very rich field I think for us to be working and and it's pretty exciting.
(video of Connor Yuzwenko-Martin performing in Carbon Movement)
DB - so this was a project two years ago, or three two years ago I guess we started working on. Connor Yuzwenko-Martin is a Deaf performance artist from Edmonton. and he was working with a producer, Able-Bodied Hearing producer, Ansley Hilliard.
And they started developing this project called carbon movement and the idea was you know it was a it was a comment on the climate crisis essentially. And so, what you're seeing here is pretty much a full-size stage, built stage, in a kind of warehouse type theater space. And you can see along the edge there's a a kind of running board. So the the stage is actually constructed. So, it's about 6 inches, I guess, off of the the floor and it's covered with about 2 inches of black rice. So that whole area is black rice.
And when they initially came to Hamilton, we did a workshop trying to figure out how to create movement through the floor so that the rice would respond to sound. and that didn't work.
JR - No, not using transducers. I mean, it did work, but it was very subtle kind of movements and we would have had to really zoom in and use a camera or something to see it. So, we went really heavy duty and I found these motors, vibrating motors, and these motors are used for keeping concrete liquid. And when you're trying to mix concrete, if you leave it there, it'll just harden. But with these vibrating motors, they keep the concrete moving. And so there's six or eight of them under the floor, bolted to the floor and they're all individually controllable using a speed controller system that we designed and that's all controllable through the lighting board and everything. And so Connor interacts with the rice during this piece. We also built sorry six smaller tables that mimic that large stage again with rice and it had trans motor smaller motors under it and lighting and so people sitting watching the show can interact with this moving rice as they're watching the show. It was pretty pretty neat.
Not sure how good this documentation is. So there you see the smaller tables filled with rice, right? Yeah. That the audience is sitting around there. Yeah. It's hard to I'm not sure where. Oh. (vibrating sound in video) So yeah. So there you hear the hear the motors
You can see the rice. The rice is vibrating and moving on the stage.
[very low hum]
DB - Yeah, it was hard to photograph because it was very low light. Yeah, I just can't see. Yeah. It's so they of course after every performance you have to smooth it all out. So they had a crew of usually about four or five in there and you couldn't like leave any, you know, we had to take care of the rice so that nothing would contaminate the rice and 1300 pounds of rice. So hard to move, you know, they haven't traveled it, let's put it that way.
JR - Yeah right!
(slide of the artwork Haptic Voices, exhibited at Inter/Access, Toronto)
DB - which brings us to a project called Haptic Voices. And so we got a grant. This was during Covid and Canada Council was had some additional funding was putting out some extra grants to support different sort of innovation and ways of responding to Covid. Yeah, ways of bringing people together even while we were separated.
JR - And so the early version of this, the first version of it that came out during Covid allowed people to interact with it remotely, so that anybody in the world could log onto the website hapticvoices.com and through their computer microphone use their voice to -
(motor revving sound outside the gallery)
Wow
(laughter)
… use their use their voice to send it into the wall. So a person would be leaning up against the wall. There's a a video camera that's focused on the wall and somebody in the around the world can look on their computer and they'd see if there's somebody on the wall through their computer microphone. They could send the voice and they can move their voice around using their mouse. So as I'd be standing here (against the wall of transducers), somebody would be somewhere in Germany sending their voice through and using a mouse to control where on my body the sound is.
You know it's a complex system, because we need the servers, there's all kinds of internet protocols that go along with it and and so on. So for here we thought it'd be simpler just to play it through the pre-recorded samples that we have here. But that was sort of the initiative that started Haptic Voices. Was this grant that allowed people to communicate with each other remotely. And the other thing is it really takes a lot of publicity, in a way, like how does somebody know somewhere around the world that they should be going to their computer and they should be sending it and there's time differences and there's all kinds of you know problems to pre-arrange.
Audience Member - I think could be an interesting thing is to make two of these and have them in the same space and have people have a dialogue with each other
JR - or it could be in two different rooms within this the gallery space or something having a computer set up in one room and projecting on to. That's the way it was set up at Inter/Access, right, that computer was in another room and so on.
Audience Member - Did you give people cues about what they might say?
JR - There was another monitor there that was about some of our conversation around the piece, right? But in terms of the sounds people made or what? No. No. I originally I had I did some concerns about that, because what if people started cursing and swearing at it. That never happened...
Audience Member - no trolls?
JR - No. But you know that was that was a thing, like well, how would we monitor what people… But people were decent I guess. It didn't happen.
DB - Yeah. It didn't get closed down or anything, or, yeah, so that's where Haptic Voices stands.
(Slide of Insectarium by Leon Louder)
DB - So in terms of thinking about providing access to art works or art pieces, this is an installation at the Music Gallery in Toronto. It's a piece called Insectarium by Montreal composer Leon Louder. I don't know if you know of him. anyway, he there's an Insect Museum Insectarium in in Montreal and they have a huge library of insect sounds. So he spent time there recording and created this album, actually a vinyl of insect sounds and he reached out to us to set up a situation where you're actually feeling the sounds of these, all these insects on your body. And so this was set up. So each chair has a pillow. And the pillows are like same transducers that's in the wall (for Haptic Voices). These are called transducers. And so the sound and vibration is in the pillow. And as opposed to the belt, that Jim was talking about earlier, the pillows are much more personable and you get a more sort of embodied kind of experience when you when you hug them.
But they were the pillows I've started sort of developing those thinking about wheelchair users or people with limited mobility. This is where the wall doesn't allow for that. So, the pillow does and so that's one way of of setting up.
(slide of Sonia Bustos, MAI Theater, Montréal)
This is another sort of setup in at the MAI Theater in Montréal. where they're all so it's in a blackbox Theater. You can see it on the right here. The chairs are around the edge. So there's one whole side that has the pillows. and in this case Sonia Bustos, who's the choreographer and performer, wanted to personalize the pillows. So she had someone embroider them and create these slips that would go over the pillows. So they can be adapted for any kind of situation. And in this case there were musicians, live musicians and that was all mic'd and channeled into the pillows.
So you were very much (as an audience member) you know invested in the production through not only the sound but the sensation of it.
(slide of Cultch Theatre in Vancouver)
And then this is a Theater, the Cultch Theatre in Vancouver. I'm not sure how many there are there, but there's quite a few of the belts that you can see.
(slide showing a piece by David Bobier)
That's a piece that's a little piece from one of my own works. Those are little transducers on the fingertips. So that actually it was a piece that I was taking sort of certain terminologies and definitions from Deaf culture translating them into Braille and then using little um music boxes, the ones you can program with the paper strips. I punched out the Braille. and then so you could play the Braille, it would circle around and then you'd feel it back on your fingertips. so that's what that's about
Thanks. So we've got lots going on still. We've got we actually have made some initial sales which is kind of exciting. Humber College bought one of these. Yeah. One a wall. It's a wall and some floors and some pillows. And they're kind of trying to in a sense retrofit a new building that's going up on campus for their media arts, so that students could actually come and compose on these. And it it really brings in this whole idea of access and it's you know a really sort of I think an important educational tool for them kind of an extraordinary opportunity really.
I have been nominated by the Canada Council for a Governor General's Innovation Award. Didn't get it, but I was nominated. So I'm, you know, very proud of that.
But I mean, honestly, you wouldn't see this happening if it wasn't for Jim's work and the way we work together. I think it's been really good. and thank you, Jim.
JR - Yeah, it's pretty special.
David Bobier is a disabled artist whose creative practice is exploring vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. This work led to his establishment in 2012 of VibraFusionLab, a creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre that has a reputation as a leader in accessibility for the Deaf and disability arts movement in Canada and internationally. As a practicing artist his exhibition career includes 18 solo and over 30 group exhibition projects across Canada and internationally. David Bobier has served in advisory roles in developing Deaf and disability arts Equity programs for both Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and a presenter at the Global Disability Summit in London, UK. He has recently been nominated by the Canada Council for a Governor Generals Innovation Award.
Jim Ruxton has a Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ottawa and is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design . He works as an artist and engineer in installation, performance, theatre, dance and film collaborating with many other artists throughout his career. Jim is a founder and former Director of Programs for Subtle Technologies, a Toronto based organization that has created links between artists and scientists . Jim is a member of the Hamilton based VibraFusionLab collective, an organization that works to foster media arts within the Deaf and disabled arts community.
New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) is a sound-based media arts organization near to Algonquin Park. NAISA presents sound sculptures, transmission art, electroacoustic music, videomusic, new art, and the art of sound, through performances, exhibitions, broadcasts, and three annual festivals: Sound Travels, Deep Wireless, and SOUNDplay. Operating since 2001, NAISA is partially funded by Ontario Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Department of Canadian Heritage.