Art galleries and museums have long emphasized the visual, but we're offering something different: special multisensory art experiences to help you understand your surroundings in new ways! Come virtually explore the AGO Collection by activating your senses as you experience a selection of artworks through visual audio description, touch, smell and/or sound.

How can artists and designers create more multisensory experiences? OCADU Graduate Students, in response to an Inclusive Design Multisensory Museum Course, share their co-creative process of translating artworks in the AGO Collection into multisensory objects. Students explore a wide variety of techniques to create an inclusive gallery experience in a series of Multisensory Museum Moments.

In this program, Parth Shah and Kyrie Robinson present an accessible, multisensory translation of Claes Oldenburg’s Ice Cream Soda with Cookie (1963). Oldenburg’s work is imbued with humour and this translation will try and capture the struggle between noticing something delicious, your mouth starting to water and the realization that you can not eat it because it is “art” (made out of inedible materials!) Take part in the humour of an ice cream sculpture portrayed through audio interviews and immersive sound experiences. 

LISTEN HERE for a curated playlist of songs inspired by Oldenburg’s Ice Cream Soda with Cookie. 

Kyrie Robinson

Kyrie Robinson is a researcher and artist, completing her master’s in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media at OCAD U. Her research centers on participatory comic memoirs and women's self-portraiture.

Parth Shah

Parth is a graphic and type designer from India, currently pursuing his master’s in Inclusive Design at OCAD University. Animal rights, neurodiversity and inclusivity are areas of special interest to him. Parth claims he can talk to cats. (Instagram: @typechronicles)