Sound Captioning through the Southeast Asian Lens Workshop

With the rise of accessibility in audiovisual media, we are seeing an increasing number of ways to caption sound, some of which have become standards or conventions that help captioners tackle common challenges in interpreting sound through words. Nonetheless, each captioning context may be unique, and languages may influence the way we think of and describe things.

This workshop will bring participants together to collectively consider how the languages of Southeast Asia (SEA) influence sound captioning. How do cultural contexts, words and the language’s set of rules shape sound captioning? Are there any differences in sound captioning when aurally diverse (Deaf, Hard-of-hearing, neurodivergent, ‘normal’ hearing, etc) Do Southeast Asians bring their embodied experiences into consideration? Can SEA (and other non-English) perspectives form a new aesthetic in sound captioning?

The workshop will build on collective knowledge of sound captioning in non-English contexts.

In this workshop, participants will

• Learn sound description and its contexts through SEA language(s) the participants use/know.
• Observe the possibilities and challenges in describing sound through SEA language(s).
• Recognise the dynamic relationships between text, sound, and other sensory experiences, such as visual, tactile, texture, and temperature, among others.
• Learn how to caption in different media contexts and needs.

Access Info

• This workshop is open to English-speaking participants who also speak any language in Southeast Asia. However, the workshop also welcomes those interested in sound captioning in non-English contexts.

• The workshop will be delivered in spoken English with live captioning/CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) in English.

• Participants will communicate their non-English sound descriptions via an online document provided throughout the workshop.

Artist Bio

Jay Afrisando is a composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. A neurodivergent, he works on aural diversity, disability, accessibility, and decolonising arts through multisensory and antidisciplinary practice, manifested in music-theatre, film, installation, witty storytelling, and other genre-bending experiences. Some of his (collaborative) works use creative captioning as an artistic resource, including “[opera captions]” (2023-25), “In Which to Trust?” (2022-23), “Cards Against Neurotypicality” (2025), and “Time Bent, Folded, Exhausted” (2025), among others. He is a 2024-25 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellow and Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In Transit: About the workshop and its wider research
This workshop is part of Celina Loh’s (In Transit Space CIC) ongoing research on how Southeast Asian cultural practices - particularly those centred on food, hosting, and collective care - can expand existing Eurocentric access frameworks that tend to focus more on policy, compliance, and individual accommodations.

This workshop is supported by the British Art Network (BAN). BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Celina Loh is a curator whose practice foregrounds care and relational approaches to access in the arts. She is interested in how inclusion can be shaped through relationships, atmospheres and shared responsibility, thus creating conditions in which people feel not only accommodated but genuinely welcome. Access for her involves cultivating relationships.

As Founding Director of In Transit Space CIC, she leads a platform for artists, creatives and organisations to learn about access, experiment with different approaches, and explore how they may integrate them meaningfully into their practice. In Transit’s projects often bring together disabled and non-disabled artists to exchange knowledge, share experiences and learn from one another.