Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Audio description (AD) has traditionally been understood as an accessibility practice for visually impaired people. Recent multisensory approaches, however, suggest that audio augmentation of visual artworks can enrich the aesthetic experience for both seeing and visually impaired audiences. In that context, this paper explores an artist-informed approach to audio augmentation, shifting focus from stylistic, contextual, or technical image-to-sound correspondences to the visual artist’s conceptual intention. The qualitative exploratory case study presented here involves the audio augmentation of two photographs from Christina Dimitriadis’ Private Spaces series by fifty-four undergraduate students of the Ionian University Audio and Visual Arts Department, who composed 3–5-minute audio works guided by a written statement provided by the artist. The authors followed an educational approach throughout the winter semester 2025-2026, which allowed students to familiarize themselves with AD and express themselves through audio-creative media regardless of their musical background. Following an internal evaluation, selected works were reviewed by the artist herself. The students’ compositions and accompanying documentation were analyzed using thematic analysis, focusing on both conceptual motivations and sonic elements. Results indicate three dominant conceptual themes -Memory, Space, and Emotion- alongside diverse compositional strategies including the use of melodic, ambient, and realistic sounds. The findings suggest that artist-informed audio augmentation fosters dialogic interpretation, enabling students to negotiate between personal response and authorial framework, while cultivating their understanding of multisensory practices aiming at inclusivity in art.