Beholder, a project by UVA commissioned by Birmingham Open Media Lab with the support of Arts Council England and Digital Catapult

Birmingham Open Media Lab, 1 Dudley Street, Birmingham B5 4EG — 4 October - 8 December 2018

Shown alongside Beholder, a virtual reality artwork, the audio work A Dream of a Safe Place, narrates a dream sequence from two alternate perspectives. Sonja collaborated with United Visual Artists (UVA) during the production and development of Beholder.

A Dream of a Safe Place (or… searching for a neurodivergent home) arose from a collaboration with United Visual Artists on Beholder, a stunning virtual reality experience exploring beauty from autistic perspectives. Beholder centres around the wonder of everyday phenomena as seen through the eyes of an autistic child, the son of Matt Clark, founder and director of UVA, who worked with his team to create the artwork. Sonja shared her experience and perceptions alongside Matt's observations of his son, to inform the development of Beholder.

A Dream of a Safe Place emerged from text and image based conversations with United Visual Artists and BOM, which led to the creation of an audio/voice work shown with the VR piece.

Experiencing things intensely all the time can be both wonderful and difficult. The audio work explores 'safe space' via a dream about a bird that left an enduring and deep sense of belonging and safety, and an intense desire to merge with, and experience the lived reality of the bird — however we can only guess at how another being experiences the world.

The story is told from the point of view of the dreamer, and is inter-cut with facts about a particular bird's lived experience. This makes it unclear who is speaking, the voice of the dreamer and bird merge.

Matt (UVA) was exploring the creative possibilities of VR to convey the visual and sensual phenomena that captivate his son, who is non-speaking. For me, this was a compelling reason to collaborate, as I could not speak at school or many places outside home until my 20s (due to situational mutism, aka selective mutism). Making visual and text based art work, was and still is, an important part of the way I communicate.

“For me speech, and communication in general can be a contradictory and ambivalent space."  

The artist, kruse (BOM's Gallery Supervisor in 2018) suggested -  "that we try and express autistic experience by sharing things that autistic people find beautiful. No one ever thinks to talk about autism from this perspective. The narrative is always focused on difficulties, but everyone understands beauty, even if our versions of what is beautiful are different. I think inviting neuro-typical people to consider that autistic people experience beauty is a radical concept and one that will hopefully lead the narrative away from the strange, even scary 'othering' of autistic experience to a place of commonality and shared pleasure. "