Sound byte transcriptions from Gallery 4a
Anne and Gwen
[The click-clacking of someone brailling on a Perkins brailler, voices in the background and then the high-pitched note of a bird]
Anne: That sounded like a bird.
[More click-clacking of brailler]
Anne: I should shut my eyes, eh Gwen?
Gwen: Yeah
Anne: And then we'll be more together.
Gwen: That's right.
Anne: Ok, they're shut now Gwen. My eyes are shut.
Gwen: Your eyes are shut, ok.
Anne: And I thought I heard a bird Gwen. You didn't hear it, did you?
Gwen: Arrrrrrrr … could'a been …
Anne: You know how you said a whistling before …
Gwen: Yeah.
Anne: I wondered if that could've been a bird.
Gwen: Well, it could've been too.
[Background sound of footsteps and people talking]
Gwen: It's all Chinese talk there.
Anne: It comes like in waves …
Gwen: … yeah … I 'll put …
Anne: … I'd describe it as 'waves' …
Gwen: I'll put … a wa … a stream of young women talk … [Click-clacking of the brailler's keys being struck]
Anne: What's that noise?
Gwen: Oh, now someone's wheeling a … (pause) … trolley, isn't it?
Anne: I reckon it's a skate-board.
Gwen: Oh, it's a skate-board.
Anne: Yeah, coz they come by here occasionally.
Gwen: I'll say: 'Someone is riding …' (pause) … a man, a boy, or what?
Anne: Who knows. It tends to be boys more than girls though, who go on skate-boards.
Gwen: Will we say a boy?
Anne: Yeah.
[Clickety-clack of the brailler]
Anne: I can defiinitely hear a bird Gwen … [high-pitched tweetering of a bird in the background]
Anne: Listen …
Gwen: Yeah, yeah … [clacking of brailler, along with tweetering bird in the distance] …are there many trees here?
Anne: There's just one, and it's directly across the road from you, in front of the ummm … Harry's Café de Wheels … [Clacking of brailler] … it's a eucalypt …[Clacking of brailler]… and it's about two storeys high …[clacking of brailler continues] … two storeys of a building high … [clacking of brailler, followed by carriage return sound].
Gwen: Oh, that's the end of the page.
Carleeta
[City hum and voices in the background]
Carleeta (via tactile Auslan interpreter): My thoughts are that blind people also too are used to relying on their hearing for information and maybe that … sorry … like a talking book or something as opposed to learning braille. So a lot of people who have good hearing might choose that method as opposed to reading braille. And I think that a lot of blind people are perhaps lazy when it comes to reading braille because it is such hard work. But because I can't rely on my hearing, I'm probably a little bit different. [Sound of departing tram]
China
[Background street sounds - people talking as they walk by]
Man from Hong Kong: Maybe you see something we did not see.
Bruce: Well I think what happens is that you become more … you become more aware of information that your other senses are giving you. You can do it too, but, y'know, most people get a lot of their information through vision and so you don't need to concentrate as much on the other senses. Ah, and so, y'know, when you don't have vision you do need to think more about the other senses and take note of what …
Man from Hong Kong: … indeed, indeed. Our sense of hearing and our sense of feeling may be blurred by our sense of … of … ah … seeing. You may be right. You might be seeing something that we do not see, or we neglect to see.
[Fade out then quickly fade in again]
Bruce: One of the things that we're trying to do with this project is to bring back that … that … that, you know, that reliance on the sense of touch, and that … that joy that you get in just touching things because they feel nice to touch.
Man from Hong Kong: Yeah, I might blindfold my eye and then I try to touch something at my home and then start to feel this something …
[Sound of tram bell ringing twice and beginning to roll by on the tram track. Loud male voice]
Bruce: Yeah, but I mean, touch the …
[Loud male voices, calling out to each other as tram passes by]
Man from Hong Kong: Because in this way we can actually have a little bit of communication between the sighted and not the sighted.
Bruce: Yeah, well I mean, you know, do touch the … do touch the window. I mean, you won't … you won't know what …
Man from Hong Kong: Even I touch this piece of paper …
Bruce: Yeah, touch it … you can take it home with you.
Man from Hong Kong: All right, thank you very much Bruce. I treat it as a souvenir.
Dot word
Anne: Can you just tell me again, in Japanese, what is the word for 'braille'?
Japanese woman: 'ten-ji'.
Anne: 'ten-ji' … and it's 't', 'e', 'n' … ?
Japanese woman: 't', 'e', 'n', 'g', 'e'.
Anne: 'g', 'e' … oh, so 'ten-ge'?
Japanese woman: 'ten-ji'.
Anne: If it's 'g', 'e', wouldn't that be 'ge'.
Japanese woman: 'j', 'i', sorry.
Anne: 'j', 'i'. So 'ten' is 'dot' and 'ji' means … ?
Japanese woman: 'word'.
Anne: 'word'. So 'dot-word'. This is what 'ten-ji' means.
Kid's talk
Anne: Has Arnica felt the braille?
Arnica's mother: Arnica's felt the braille, yes.
Arnica: My mum used to work as a special ed teacher.
Anne: Ahhhh …
Arnica's mother: And one of my students used to use a brailler and …
Anne: Yes … so this is not the first time, Arnica, that you've seen braille?
Arnica: No.
Anne: You've seen it before.
Arnica's mother: But the first time that she's ever seen a person reading braille. So thank you Alex, for sharing that.
Alex: That's all right.
Arnica's mother: Because Arnica could never understand how Angie read the braille.
Musk
[City hum fades in - voices, faintly in the background]
Symion's mother: Dot 6 … what's dot 6.
Symion: I don't want to …
Symion's mother: When do we use a dot 6.
Symion: Capital.
Anne: Capital.
Symion's mother: Capital. Beautiful. And the next letter is: 1, 3, 4.
Symion: 'm'.
Anne: Yes.
Symion's mother: Lovely. Capital 'm'. Beautiful. And then we have: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Symion: 'u'.
Anne: Yeh.
Symion's mother: Fantastic. And the next one is: 2, 3, 4.
Symion: (louder - almost a shout) 's'.
Anne: (laughs)
Symion's mother: Excellent. And what is: 1, 3?
Symion: (Pauses … begins to say 'u', then shouts loudly) 'k'.
Symion's mother: Are you sure it's a 'k'?
Anne: That'd be 'musk' then, wouldn't it?
[Fade out]
Nelson
[Fade in to city hum and voices in the background]
Nelson: With braille I guess you have … I guess you have the choice of what the voice sounds like and …
[Two rings of the tram bell, signalling the tram is about to leave]
Anne: That's right.
Nelson: … and you can really … I guess … get more in tune [two more rings of the tram as it moves away] with what you want the character to be …
Anne: Yes
Nelson: … than what a dull computer synthetic voice wants it to be.
Anne: Yeah …
[Conversation fades out then quickly fades in again]
Anne: So what do you think of the observations?
Nelson: It's really good, actually.
Anne: Does it make you think of any …
Nelson: It sets umm … y'know … [Very close by, the clickety-clack of a Perkins brailler and the single ring of its bell, when it reaches the right margin stop] … a good scene in my mind of what the street and the … y'know … there's something across the road and the guy crosses the road when the tram's not coming … and y'know … comes up to the glass … it just … well because I've walked across that myself I can kind of … like … actually feel myself going across the street …
Anne: Mmm … ok … that's great. So you've walked … when you came this morning, did you cross the street and feel the railway tracks beneath your feet?
Nelson: Ah, yep.
Upstairs
Josie: Does that limit the time-frame of actually talking about the creative part of the project? Like … you kind of feel like you're kind of being a part time … well, most of the time being an advocate or … y'know … most of the time informing people about braille.
Pat: I think it works both ways because I think we are being advocates for braille in the first place. Now the only way we can do that is to … um … answer people's questions. So it's a two-way thing as far as I'm concerned.
Nicola: Well, I mean, if they don't learn from that experience in another way, they can't think about it in any other way than the way they first saw it either - they can't go any deeper sometimes unless they ask the questions.
Bruce: I got quite a lot out of talking to the gentleman from Hong Kong today. So he didn't … it wasn't just him … it wasn't just about my telling him about …
Josie: Ok.
Bruce: … braille. It was about us engaging and … I guess, touching each other with our experiences.
Josie: Yep.
Bruce: And so I think that's an important and creative part of the project. So I think it blends the … or blurs the boundaries between advocacy and dialogue and …
Josie: Of course …
Anne: And artistic …
Josie: … because that …
Anne: … impulse.
Josie: … interaction wouldn't have happened if it wasn't in a public space.
Bruce: It wouldn't have happened before braille.
Josie & Anne: Yes.
[Fade out]
