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Desire, Friction, and Crip Sonic Worldmaking
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The talk will take place in D1400 - the Interactive Motion Studio (IMS) on the first floor.
Directions: Enter through the main entrance of ECU (555 Great Northern Way), turn right and walk down themain hall to the farthest set of stairs leading to the lower flower.
ASL interpretation will be available for this event. If you would like this service please indicate when registering, or email casandra@newmusic.org
This event is free but space is limited. Registration is encouraged.
AO Roberts is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher whose crip sonic practice creates infrastructures resonating with the unruly poetics of disabled life. Exploring the generative frictions of error, access, collaboration, and legibility, Roberts has presented work at Plug In ICA, SOMArts, SOUND/IMAGE, Send + Receive Festival of Sound Art, and Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation. Roberts records experimental electronics under the moniker VOR (Ruminant, Makade Star, 2022), holds an MFA from California College of the Arts, and is a MacDowell Fellow (2022), a Sobey Award longlist artist (2021), and a PhD researcher in disability sound arts at York/Toronto Metropolitan University in Tkaronto.
Roberts will discuss insights from recent projects, including Plants Properties Equipment, a virtual world developed with Vancouver independent game designers Séance Collective, featuring an original soundtrack featuring d/Deaf and disabled artists Johanna Hedva, Molly Joyce, Chisato Minamimura, Medical Museum, and Andy Slater. As a February 2026 artist-in-residence at What Lab, Roberts is collaborating with Vancouver artists Sainerine and RITUAL PURIFICATION on a one-night-only performance activation of Zero Input Enclosure Movement v.2 at the first event of Vancouver New Music's On Curation series on February 14 at The Annex, curated by Anju Singh.
Presented by New Media and Sound Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in partnership with Vancouver New Music.
AO Roberts (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist who builds worlds resonating with the unruly sounds of the voice, power, disability, and systems of belief. Based in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg), their work unfolds across sculptural installation, experimental sound, and digital ecosystems. Their projects are spells often cast in collaboration—detuning labor to the subterranean pulses of what our bodies know but cannot prove. As critic Hannah Doucet observes, Roberts forges "unexpected and poetic connections between property, protection, body, care, and control," crafting spaces where sound and matter shed their roles as mere messengers to become thresholds of possibility and contradiction.
Their 2024 release Plants Properties Equipment (PPE), an interactive world developed with Vancouver’s Séance Collective, invites players into a sentient crip landscape, featuring an original soundtrack with contributions from Johanna Hedva, Molly Joyce, Andy Slater, Chisato Minamimura, and Medical Museum. Roberts performs experimental electronics under the alias VOR, whose Ruminant was released by Makade Star in 2022, and is a recent artist-in residence at Dreamsong Gallery (Minneapolis), Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation (Brooklyn), and Oolite Arts (Miami).
