Anna Billany

My current research asks what happens when access is treated not as something added to a creative technology after it has been designed, but as a starting point for invention.

What interests me is not technological novelty for its own sake. Much of immersive technology still assumes an idealised user: someone who can stand for long periods, process large amounts of sensory information, navigate space in a particular way, or interact through predetermined gestures. I am interested in what new aesthetic languages might emerge if we begin with bodies and minds that do not fit those assumptions.

This has changed how I understand innovation. Access can be a creative methodology. Constraints can generate new visual systems. Sensory difference can influence interaction design. A need for flexibility can lead to environments that are modular, responsive and less hierarchical. Rather than asking disabled people to adapt themselves to technology, I want to investigate how technology might adapt to us.

I am delighted to nominate Anna Billany for the CreaTech category, in recognition of their innovative use of digital technology to expand accessible, inclusive creative practice.

Anna builds immersive digital worlds and avatars using emerging scenography and world-building tools, applying a technofeminist lens to explore identity, masking and the doppelgänger across digital and embodied space. This technical ambition is central to their Arts Council funded project, ‘Building Adaptive Worlds: Queer and Disabled Approaches to Digital Scenography,’ which develops new accessible technology-driven approaches for queer and disabled artists working in immersive digital environments.

Nicola Triscott

FACT Liverpool

 

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