Andy Slater (he/him) is a blind Chicago-based media artist, writer, performer, and disability advocate/loudmouth. Andy holds a Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, 2022-2023 Leonardo CripTech Incubator Fellow, and a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work Resident Artist.
He is a teaching artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts Young SoundSeekers program, Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and Creative Users Projects Sensory Shift program. Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy for accessible art and technology, alt-text for sound and image, the phonology of the blind body, spatial audio for extended reality, and sound design for film, dance, and digital scent design.
Andy was featured on an episode of BBC World Service’s Outlook in 2023. In 2020, Andy was recognized for his work by The New York Times in their article “28 Ways to Learn About Disability Culture.” His research essay entitled "Crypto Acoustic Auditory Non-Hallucination" was published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, vol. 61, 2014. Andy’s audio description production for Alison O’Daniel’s film The Tuba Thieves was featured at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He was music director for the 2022-2023 Lit & Luz Festival in Mexico City. His sound description of Molly Joyce’s Side by Side was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in 2022.
Andy has been published in Array, Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation (Routledge, 2023), ESC: English Studies in Canada, Chicago Reader, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness (Godin, 2021), and JANE.
He has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Fonoteca Nacional (Mexico City), Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Transmediale (Berlin), Kinetic Light, TechnoSonics Festival (Charlottesville), Ian Potter Museum of Art (Melbourne), Meyer Sound Lab (San Francisco), Critical Distance Centre for Curators (Toronto), Gallery 400 (Chicago), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), The Art Institute of Chicago, and Chicago Inclusive Dance Festival.
Andy is a member of the 3Arts Disability Culture Leadership Initiative (DCLI), New Art City accessibility board, and the founder of the Society for Visually Impaired Sound Artists.
And, last but not least, he is a member of the acid-soul band The Velcro Lewis Group and performs solo as electronic melting pot Calculator Font.
Profile caption: Andy Slater, TV Dad Profile image by: Photo by Gracie Hagen
Subtle Flex: Unseen Sound on the cover of Leonardo, a fancy academic journal.
Unseen Sound still by Sammie Veeler.
Featured Artworks
Young Sound Seekers (Residency) Atlantic Center for the Arts and Stetson University, 2022.
Unseen Sound (extended reality installation) Experiments In Arts Access and Technology, Beall Center, University of California Irvine 2023 New Art City virtual gallery, 2024.
Roadblock
Roadblock
A photo of a computer screen that shows an open session in Max/MSP. Spread across the screen is a series of one line text. The text is repeated in 2 groups. Each text line is stacked atop each other. White text on a black background resembles a plastic strip from a label maker. The text of the top groups reads, “Max is not accessible” and is repeated over a dozen times. The lower group’s text read, “This shouldn’t be so hard.” This text is repeated over a dozen times. The text lines are staggered to look like a staircase
How many fingers Am I Holding Up?
Front cover of the comic book,How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up? Written by andy slater and illustrated by Steve Krakow