My project focused on language and cognition in Deaf children. I have created a book, which mainly consists of a series of drawings with a few pieces of text scattered within to aid the narrative. My aim was to narrate some of the early experiences and spaces etched into a Deaf child’s memory.
By visually detailing my experience, I hoped to communicate the reality of switch-on for many children who are born deaf – what we feel and hear and the sensory overload that comes with witnessing sound from a cochlear implant for the first time. It is important for me to share this, because there is often a misconception in the hearing world that activation is a beautiful light-switch moment where a deaf person becomes hearing.
Through my drawings in the book, I visually mapped from memory the journey through the hospital and the audiology room, taking the reader through each space which leads up to the room, before illustrating my experience of switch-on. Using textured double spread pages, with scribbles and static noise, I tried to depict what auditory information first feels like to a brain that is not acclimatised to sound, and does not have the neural pathways for understanding speech.
