Spine-Tingling Engagement with Pyrotechnic Arts

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Collin van Uchelen, “Spine-tingling Engagement with Pyrotechnic Arts,” 2025

(courtesy of The Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba and Collin van Uchelen)

Join artist Collin van Uchelen, PhD for a free, public talk about his innovative art practice. He will discuss his approach choreographing pyrotechnic displays and how he is making art more accessible through his “Fingerworks for Fireworks” description technique.

Pyrotechnic arts can have an impact that is experienced both in our bodies and in our emotions. We may feel thrilled by the exhilarating intensity at the finale of a firework display and we may also feel tingles or goose-bumps in moments that touch us deeply. Collin calls this visceral experience resonance. In this engaging seminar, we will explore what brings on this tingling energy in the presence of art.

Drawing on his own experience of sight-loss, Collin will describe how resonance provides a way to feel connected with art. He will also show how words, touch, and sounds can be used to translate the appearance of light across senses - making it accessible in non-visual forms. On a broader level, this presentation invites participants to consider how the low-vision/blind community can be meaningfully included in public displays of art—such as events featuring fireworks.

Collin van Uchelen, Ph.D., is a Community Psychologist, Conceptual Artist, and Pyrotechnician based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Collin's appreciation for fireworks is informed by his own experience of sight-loss from a degenerative blinding eye disease. His work in the pyrotechnic arts explores techniques for translating the light of fireworks into non-visual forms, such as descriptive words, sounds, and tactile representations. Currently, he is choreographing a pyro-musical display from his unique position as a designer who is functionally blind.