Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, composer, sculptor, writer, performer, teaching artist—and a 37th-level blind person. His work is rooted in access authorship: making access a central creative force rather than an afterthought. Marked by humor, a sharp Crip attitude, and a refusal to surrender the narrative, his projects span extended reality, sound performance, and installation—often shaped by sci-fi world-building, retrofuturism, and blind futures. Slater’s practice interrogates who institutions are built for—and who is asked to translate themselves to enter. His work tracks how culture, technology, and even “access” get designed from the outside—and who ends up doing the work to close that distance. He has exhibited and presented internationally at Melbourne Fringe Festival, MIT Spatial Sound Labs, Tribeca Festival NYC, XR Access Symposium, Links Hall Chicago, and the Whitney Museum.
Andy has authored access for works by Joseph Grigley at MassMoCA, Alison O’Daniel at Sundance Film Festival, Molly Joyce at Carnegie Hall, and Kinetic Light at MCA Chicago.
Slater’s writing has appeared in Leonardo, McSweeney’s Quarterly, English Studies in Canada, and Jane Magazine. Andy holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master’s in Sound Arts and Industry from Northwestern University. He is a 2025–26 MAP Fund awardee, 2024 3Arts Next Level awardee, 2022–23 Leonardo Crip Tech Fellow, and 2022 United States Artists Fellow.
As a blind person Andy knows that his work will be read as political whether he likes it or not—and that’s really funny to him.
Profile caption: Andy Slater, TV Dad
Profile image by: Photo by Gracie Hagen
Subtle Flex: Unseen Sound on the cover of Leonardo, a fancy academic journal.
Unseen Sound still by Sammie Veeler.
Featured Artworks
Young Sound Seekers (Residency) Atlantic Center for the Arts and Stetson University, 2022.
Unseen Sound (extended reality installation) Experiments In Arts Access and Technology, Beall Center, University of California Irvine 2023 New Art City virtual gallery, 2024.
Roadblock
Roadblock
A photo of a computer screen that shows an open session in Max/MSP. Spread across the screen is a series of one line text. The text is repeated in 2 groups. Each text line is stacked atop each other. White text on a black background resembles a plastic strip from a label maker. The text of the top groups reads, “Max is not accessible” and is repeated over a dozen times. The lower group’s text read, “This shouldn’t be so hard.” This text is repeated over a dozen times. The text lines are staggered to look like a staircase
How many fingers Am I Holding Up?
Front cover of the comic book,How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up? Written by andy slater and illustrated by Steve Krakow