EMMA GRIFFITHS
AKA EMMA CAN SEE MONSTERS
DEAF AWARENESS WORK
Emma uses different mediums to navigate her identity as someone who is deaf/hard of hearing whilst living in a predominantly hearing world.
"As someone who is hard of hearing (hoh) I find it difficult to explain what it’s like trying to communicate in a world where there is very little accessibility or understanding for deaf/hard of hearing people.
Throughout my childhood, I wasn’t treated for hearing loss. I grew up as though I was fully hearing and behaved as though I was. I had no exposure to learning about hearing loss, the deaf community, or deaf culture. I regularly find myself trying to explain to hearing people what my everyday experience with hearing loss is like.
Specific experiences with hearing loss is very difficult to put into words. How do I explain what I cannot hear? How do I explain that what I can hear isn't how they'll hear?
Like how I've always used art as a practice for learning and analyzing, I'm using art to create diagrams of hearing loss or to create visual immersive experiences that enable people to experience the world as I do."
TINNITUS AWARENESS WEEK
"This animated artwork is part of the Emma Can See Monsters universe, Monsters of Tinnitus.
As part of Tinnitus Awareness Week, I created 4 monsters that embody the different kinds of tinnitus I experience.
With being hard of hearing tinnitus is a big part of my experience, every single day.
Every morning I’m woken up by a static noise in my right ear. Throughout the day (usually when I’m trying to focus on something or in a quiet space) I get high-pitched ringing noises in both ears. Sometimes tinnitus sounds can be loud enough to override natural sounds making it more difficult to process sound. But these sounds are part of my relationship with hearing loss and how I experience everyday life."
HEARING DIAGRAMS
This illustration documents a moment at the Job Center when Emma had an appointment to talk with her work coach. The diagram shows the cognitive process of hearing as Emma can only understand a few words from hearing alone. Emma processes the words she heard and applies that to the context of the situation and environment. This is like a game of filling in the blanks, and like the diagram shows Emma often gets it wrong.
This illustration is another hearing diagram showing the cognitive process of understanding conversations in a busy and loud environment, also showing how difficult it can be with many audio and visual distractions. This illustration was showcased as part of the RedBull Doodle competition.
A continuation from the previous illustration, showing close up of the hand movement to sign "ANXIOUS" in British Sign Language.
This illustration documents a moment at the Job Center when Emma had an appointment to talk with her work coach. The diagram shows the cognitive process of hearing as Emma can only understand a few words from hearing alone. Emma processes the words she heard and applies that to the context of the situation and environment. This is like a game of filling in the blanks, and like the diagram shows Emma often gets it wrong.
As part of learning about her deaf identity, as well as explaining to those close to her who are hearing, Emma started creating "Hearing Diagrams" that illustrate the complexities of hearing as a deaf/hard of hearing person.
The illustrations include awkward memories of times she's struggled to understand what someone is saying, leading to embarrassing mishearing and a long mental process of figuring out what was said. Other illustrations show how the variety of sounds in a space can make the situation overwhelming, and how Emma fits in these social situations by a combination of lip reading and observing the context of the situation.
I CAN HEAR
As part of receiving support for her hearing loss, Emma has undergone many hearing tests and will continue to for the rest of her life. Some hearing tests show the results on an Audiogram, a graph that shows what sounds a person can hear at different frequencies and intensities.
An Audiogram shows where some sounds are within the frequency level, from lawn mowers to bird song, and it includes speech but as each letter of combination of letter. This alone shows that speech is some of the most complicated range of sounds as each letter or pronunciation of a combination of letters are at different frequencies. A deaf person can have hearing loss in some frequencies more than others, although this allows a deaf person to hear some sounds it isn't enough to understand a verbal interaction or conversation from hearing alone.
Emma has edited news articles digitally and physically to display the letters she can hear the most fully, fading the other letters based on the severity of hearing loss she has for those frequencies. It's an experiment to make her auditory experience into something visual.
Emma hopes these visual explorations of her hearing can be used to stress the importance of captioning content and providing other alternatives to following information shared by sound (such as sign language interpretation), as a lack of accessibility for deaf/hard of hearing people can lead to these communities missing out on vital information or be misinformed.