{"id":323162,"date":"2016-11-18T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T17:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=323162"},"modified":"2017-12-06T10:59:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T18:59:32","slug":"keith-salmon-oregon-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/keith-salmon-oregon-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Interpreting visual art with sound for a more inclusive experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Vanessa Ho, Microsoft News Center Staff. Follow her on Twitter (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Oregon

Artist Keith Salmon, left, and Microsoft researcher Neel Joshi stand in front of \u201cThe Oregon Project\u201d at the King Street Station in Seattle. Photos by Dan DeLong<\/p><\/div>\n

A well-known Scottish landscape painter, Keith Salmon (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> creates ethereal, moody abstracts of skylines and mountains inspired by the rugged highlands in his country. Trained in fine arts and sculpture, Salmon has broadened his techniques over the years as his eyesight has diminished, learning how to smash paint into texture and scratch pastels for scribbles to evoke less a depiction of place and more an exquisite experience of the wild.<\/p>\n

Last month, Salmon, who is legally blind, debuted an installation with innovative research from Microsoft that enriches his art even more, with proxemic audio to interpret two-dimensional images. Called \u201cThe Oregon Project (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>,\u201d it uses four Kinects, 15 overhead speakers and 54 soundtracks to produce an acoustic and spatial interpretation of three drawings Salmon did of the beautifully remote Hells Canyon area in Oregon. The installation premiered in Seattle at the 9e2 exhibit (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> of art and technology as a powerful new way for Salmon to create and for people with low vision to experience and enjoy visual art.<\/p>\n\t\t\t

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