Autism is heterogeneous. Dr Stephen Shore, a well-known autism advocate, famously stated“If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”. Autism’s heterogeneous nature makes it difficult for non-autistic people to understand.
The purpose of this project is to explore how this heterogeneity can be expressed in an interactive art piece. Its key objective is to motivate people to think about and discuss the topic of autism, the autistic experience, and how autism can appear differently in different people.
A replica typesetters box contains a series of technical and non-technical components, reflective of some of the outward behaviours of autistic people along with expressions, concepts, symbols and memes present in modern autistic culture. A range of dolls are used to represent different real-world autistic people. Placing a doll in the piece triggers the various electronic components to respond differently to highlight some of the possible differences in how autism can present and be experienced.
