AO Roberts

A black and white graphic drawing of a young person with black hair holding their hands over their ears on a teal coloured background. They are wearing a black and yellow flannel long sleeve and their face is scrunched up in refusal of imagined sounds. The red text reads Power in Listening: The Sounding Out Reader, Imprint: NYU press, Sales date: Aug 2026 and lists the editors Liana Silva, Jennifer Lynn Stoever, and Aaron Trammell.

Excited to announce that my essay 𝐄𝐜𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬, on the gendered and racialized histories of voice synthesis, appears in this landmark publication Power in Listening forthcoming from NYU press. With thanks to editors Liana Silva, Jennifer Lynn Stoever, and Aaron Trammell. 🔊✨

I’m in a Vancouver for Zero Input Enclosure Movement, an installation and performance with Sainerine and Ritual Purification, Sat Feb 14 at the Annex 7pm, an artist talk at Emily Carr Thursday Feb 12 4-5 pm +TODAY Feb 10 4-6 pm, Open Studio at What Lab, 1814 Pandora come say hi, all welcome.

Cover of BackFlash magazine with the name in big baby blue sans serif font and title of issue “Traces”. A big oozy snakes tail coils from top to bottom rendered in black and blue ink on a cream background. It suggests fluid motion and intertwining and has lots of little circle details that replicate a snakes scales. Names of the artists feature scroll across the top including AO Roberts + Zoe Cinel, Jamie Black-Morsette, Luis Jacob.

Over several months last winter, Zoe Cinel + I corresponded, trading thoughts about crip sanctuary, plants, rituals, and the caduceus. ⚕️⚕️ Excited for this writing to appear in the new issue of Backflash - in stores + online in June.

Cover:AO/Zoe collab print “u/t(snake)”, 2025. 🐍♿️✨ blackflash.ca

The Ugliest Thing San Francisco Ever Built: Lessons for AI Infrastructure | TechPolicy.Press Eryk Salvaggio asks, are we again poised to value technological infrastructure over our shared social infrastructure?

“Centering a utilitarian AI literacy in classrooms, rather than critical reasoning, is a way of preparing… for its inevitability… OpenAI [+] Common Sense Media [created] an AI… pgm for educators. Most of the lesson boiled down to: ‘It’s up to you to figure out how to use this in your classroom.’”

PLANTS PROPERTIES EQUIPMENT by AO Roberts Search for medical care on an unknown planet.

Excited to share that 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙉𝙏𝙎 𝙋𝙍𝙊𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙏𝙄𝙀𝙎 𝙀𝙌𝙐𝙄𝙋𝙈𝙀𝙉𝙏 + OST are now available for FREE DOWNLOAD, with all fees waived.

PPE is lush virtual world full of strange monuments + sonic offerings by disability artists Chisato Minamimura, Molly Joyce, Andy Slater, Medical Museum. ✨🌱🪐
ao-roberts.itch.io/ppe

Book cover of “Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation” by Sunaura Taylor with white silhouettes of a cow with wheels and human in a wheelchair against a blueish grey background.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 16

Well-known Virginia Tech professor dies at 81 Virginia Tech professor and poet, Nikki Giovanni, has died at the age of 81.

Virginia Tech professor and poet, Nikki Giovanni, has died at the age of 81.

Book cover of "Thee Psychick Bible: Thee Apocryphal Scriptures Genesis Breye P'Orridge and thee Third mind Thee Temple of Psychick Youth" with white text on a black background and the Temple of Psychick Youth insignia made of a vertical line intersected by three horizontal lines, the middle of which is shorter.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 15

General reminder that your tweets / posts / replies WILL be brought up during depositions if you're ever involved in litigation. Sometimes it's fun (as below), usually it's not.

Silkscreen print with white ink on black paper with the text “No weapon formed against you will prosper” stacked in a column with each word’s mirror image repeated once underneath it, at the centre of the words portions of the text melt into illegibility.

Launching 𝙎𝙡𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙝 𝙂𝙝𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙢 𝙋𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙩 today for my print projects that work with text spells and talismanic protection, limited drops at decidedly *not* art world prices. 1st Drop 11/12/24

𝙉𝙤 𝙒𝙚𝙖𝙥𝙤𝙣 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙙 𝘼𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙒𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧, deformed scripture on 7" record stock.

www.instagram.com/sluaghghairm...

He’s set to be the first known transgender lawyer to argue before Supreme Court. For Chase Strangio, the mission ‘is not lost on me’ | CNN For Chase Strangio, the professional path that’s led to this moment – in which he’ll have 15 minutes to present an argument defending gender-affirming care for trans youth before the Supreme Court – c...

Few cultural 'firsts' have been as dubious an honour as what Chase Strangio faces today. Sending solidarity as he begins arguments against anti-trans laws in US v. Skrmetti, - watch live at 10 am EST www.supremecourt.gov

ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio says the anti-trans climate in the United States — one that is legitimized by many Democratic leaders — leads to "material harm for our community on top of the rhetorical and cultural harms." www.democracynow.org/2024/11/27/t...

“Prosper Niyonzima spent nearly five years in immigration detention, including two years in solitary confinement, after a mental health crisis left him unable to communicate … his detention review hearings continued with a designated representative making decisions on his behalf.“
#IDPD2024

#Disability #SoundArt #IndieGameDev

Image description from article: Album cover art featuring
a purple futuristic logo reading "Plants Properties Equipment"
, overlaid a screenshot from a virtual world. It is a bright day in a grassland with a grouping of strange stone monoliths, two planets hang in the blue starry sky

Book cover for “Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness” by CA Conrad with black serif text on a beige background.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 14

AO Roberts on PPE – Akimbo Plants Properties Equipment virtual world menu AO Roberts is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, writer, and curator based in Treaty 1 territory, Winnipeg. They recently released Plants Properties E...

I did a little interview with Akimbo this week about my recently released virtual world and OST featuring Deaf + Disabled artists Johanna Hedva, Andy Slater, Molly Joyce, Chisato Minamimura, Medical Museum (Hang Linton and Laura Lulika) and VOR. The interview is up now at akimbo.ca/akimblog/ao-...

Can I offer you some kitty snores in this trying time?

A once per generation exhibit on Hokusai at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City. This from the artist’s 100 ghost story series. Yes they have the Mount Fuji and Wave paintings.

A tuxedo cat with a fabulous moustache and green eyes sits on a closed laptop atop a dining room table, his right paw is extended with one claw arched and hooked on a rubber band.

No work allowed, only rubber band.

Book cover of “Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure” by Eli Clare. The art features green and white text on a grey background on the top and the bottom section is a close up photo smooth river rocks in subtle tones of grey, pink, brown and blue with one rock at the center covered by bright green lichen.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 13

Nighttime in an alpine meadows, a hospital bed with white sheets sits in a field full of poppies, two planets hang in the sky a mountain is in the distance.

Purple graphic two colour image with light lavender background overlaid with darker stylized angular text that reads “Plants Properties Equipment” granular shapes that hint at a landscape.

Today is Creator’s Friday on itch.io, where 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙉𝙏𝙎 𝙋𝙍𝙊𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙏𝙄𝙀𝙎 𝙀𝙌𝙐𝙄𝙋𝙈𝙀𝙉𝙏 is hosted. If you’d like to spend some time in this virtual world / experimental game with some stellar sonic crip offerings, today would be the day, as itch waives their cut. ✨🌱🪐
ao-roberts.itch.io/ppe
#disability #soundart

Great title. I’ll have to track it down.

Yesss. I need to reread it again soon.

Book cover of “Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings” by Marta Russell, with black and gold text and a faded watermark ampersand on a red background.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 12

Chair/Body/Home What would it take for me to no longer want to leave my body? What would it take for me to see my body as my home? I don’t know, really, except perhaps more exposure to different ideas about disabilit...

I am in awe of @soyernotsawyer.bsky.social's absolutely gorgeous writing.

#DisabilityJustice

UK trans kids showing how it’s done. 🏳️‍⚧️✊🏼

Book cover of “Zami A New Spelling of my Name: A Biomythography by Audre Lorde”, with an orange background and a black and white woodcut style illustration of a black woman in a bisected landscape,tropical leaves, water and rolling hills on the left and big city buildings on the right.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 11

Book cover of “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson. The cover is beige with black text and a hazy sepia toned drawing of a white volcano behind low black hills.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 10