SUNDAY July 24th 6:00pm
Carmen Papalia presents
Weather for the Blind Vancouver
A special co-presentation with media artist Andy Slater
Experience the magic of weather in 4D sound.
These events are an opportunity for artist Carmen Papalia to share the power of the Weather Warlock with audiences. The Weather Warlock is a weather-responsive analogue synthesizer created by artist and inventor Quintron that transforms temperature, wind, light/UV index, moisture/rain, and barometric pressure into sound.
Papalia first encountered the instrument in 2015 through Quintron’s Weather for the Blind website and livestream. Since then, the Weather Warlock has become central to his life and pain management routine. Responsive not only to the weather, but also to the player—or Warlock—the instrument creates an ever-changing sonic environment.
Papalia considers the Weather Warlock a public utility for anyone who needs it, and a beacon for the broader disability community, drawing people into a disability cultural space where they can experience the benefits of accessibility as a living practice.
This special July edition welcomes blind Chicago-based media artist Andy Slater, who joins Papalia to present two multichannel sound works, At Arm’s Reach and Re: Your Prescription Has Been Delayed. Together, the works explore blindness through sonic alternative text, screen-reader sound, and spatial audio.
Access includes Deaf-led ASL interpretation, blind-centered audio description and sound description, objects that bring comfort and relief from pain, and snacks and refreshments.
About the artists
Carmen Papalia is a nonvisual social practice artist whose performances, public interventions, and curatorial projects explore aspects of disability culture, including interdependence, de-medicalization, and creative accessibility. His practice enlivens his 2015 Open Access manifesto—a set of guidelines that approaches accessibility as a temporary, collectively held space. Often emphasizing the possibilities of living on one’s own terms, his work offers a remedy for the complications of cultural ableism.
Papalia’s performances, videos, installations, and curatorial projects have been presented across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Korea, and Japan. He is the recipient of the 2020 Sobey Art Award.
Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, composer, sculptor, writer, performer, teaching artist—and a 37th-level blind person. His work is rooted in access authorship: making access a central creative force rather than an afterthought. Marked by humor, a sharp Crip attitude, and a refusal to surrender the narrative, his projects span extended reality, sound performance, and installation—often shaped by sci-fi world-building, retrofuturism, and blind futures.
Slater has exhibited and presented internationally at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, MIT Spatial Sound Labs, Tribeca Festival NYC, XR Access Symposium, Links Hall Chicago, and the Whitney Museum. He is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow.
ACCESSIBILITY NOTES: there will be deaf-lead ASL interpretation, sound description, visual description and objects for comfort and relief from pain. Lobe Studio has two steps up to the listening room, and two steps down to the washroom. Please contact Lobe Studio if there are any questions or requests related to accessibility
Thank you to the City of Vancouver and Other Sights for Artist Projects for their generous support