In this paper we discuss how new combinations of technology, art and culture enable children with special needs new ways to express themselves. UN declaration (UDHR) states “All human beings have the right to participate in cultural life, enjoy art…”, later including children (CRC) and persons with disabilities (CRPD)... Read »
In this paper, we reflect on developing a course in design of health promoting technology for elderly, within the field of Tangible Interaction Design (TID)... Read »
In this paper, we argue for the value of participatory and interactive art, to increase the quality of health and health promoting technology, for children with special needs. UN states through several conventions that everyone has a right to take part in art and cultural experiences, also children and people with disabilities, because art is an important value in our society... Read »
Vitalizing Welfare Technology – a new paradigm in health technology .. Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, September 22-23 2016, at Skåningsrud School and Resource Centre in Norway. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, September 26 2016, at Sandvika Upper Secondary School in Norway. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, September 28 2016, at the Jessheim School and Resource Centre in Norway. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, September 30 2016, at the Frydenlund School and Resource Centre in Norway. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
The RHYME research project at the Research Council of Norway, participated and contributed in several ways at this year’s EHiN conference. The conference, with the title “Shaping the future of health”, was arranged in the Spectrum hall in Oslo, from 14th to 16th November 2016. The EHiN conference is the largest conference within e-health, welfare technology and health technology in Norway... Read »
Welfare technology often focus on diagnosis, biomedical data and medicine. But health promotion is also about vitality, communication and participation. In The Research Council of Norway financed project, RHYME, we have developed several generations of social, mobile and multi-medial health promoting technologies... Read »
Interactive Sensorial Textile Experiences, guest lecture, Digital Lab Textile KHiO Seminar. .. Read »
Interactive Sensorial Empowering Fields, guest lecture, Empowerment Research Group .. Read »
In this paper, we present an interactive multi-sensory environment designed for health promotion. It is the fourth generation in an ongoing research project. We focus on the designed qualities of the environment, and specifically on the multi-sensorial and musical interaction design... Read »
Everyone has a right to take part in cultural events and activities, such as music performances and music making. Enforcing that right, within Universal Design, is often limited to a focus on physical access to public areas, hearing aids etc., or groups of persons with special needs performing in traditional ways... Read »
In this paper, we present an interactive multi-sensory environment designed for health promotion. It is the fourth generation in an ongoing research project. We focus on the designed qualities of the environment, and specifically on the multi-sensorial and musical interaction design... Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, March 10 2016, at the Sofiemyr School in Oppegård. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
Exhibition of Polly World, interactive and multisensorial installation, March 8-9 2016, at the Haug School and Resource Centre in Bærum. Part of the Cultural Rucksack/Den kulturelle skolesekken, Arts Council Norway... Read »
In this article we present a novel approach for the understanding and the design of interactive health improving music technology, what we call Musicking Tangibles. The Musicking Tangibles approach represents an alternative approach to the traditional instrument, interface and switch-oriented music technology perspective... Read »
Our voice and body are important parts of our self-expression and self-experience for all of us. They are also essential for our way to communicate and build relations cross borders such as abilities, ages, locations and backgrounds... Read »
Polly World is the 4th generation of Co-creative Tangibles developed within the RHYME project. The name Polly comes from “poly”, the Greek prefix for many... Read »
Polly Land is a large wired Interactive Landscape in the Polly World. Polly Land has three arms and an embedded projector for a close and intimate relation to live video and dynamic graphics. One of Polly Lands arms has a Microphone for voice input, one has a Camera for live video and one arm has a RFID-reader for selecting and playing music in several ways using Scene Cards and Tag-Things... Read »
Polly Fire is a sleeping-bag-shaped mobile wireless Co-creative Tangible. Polly Fire has a RFID-reader (the white velvet triangle at one end) for selecting and playing music in several ways. By choosing a RFID tagged Scene-card (looking like a CD cover) the user can select the music and accompanying visuals he likes to listen to and play... Read »
Polly Planet is a large ball-shaped mobile wireless Co-creative Tangible. Polly Planet has a RFID-reader (the white triangle on the top in the picture) for selecting and playing music in several ways. By choosing a RFID tagged Scene-card (like a CD cover) the user can select the music and accompanying visuals he likes to listen to and play... Read »
Polly Ocean is a big banana-shaped mobile wireless Co-creative Tangible. Polly Ocean has a RFID-reader (a white velvet triangle at one end) for selecting and playing music in several ways. By choosing a RFID tagged Scene-card (looking like a CD cover) the user can select the music and accompanying visuals he likes to listen to and play... Read »
In this paper we explore how we compose sound for an interactive tangible and mobile interface, where the goal is to improve health and well-being for families with children with disabilities. We describe the composition process of how we decompose a linear beat-based and vocal sound material and recompose it with real-time audio synthesis and composition rules into interactive Scenes... Read »
During the past decade, tangible sensor technologies have matured and become less expensive and easier to use, leading to an explosion of innovative musical designs within video games, smartphone applications, and interactive art installations... Read »
Interviews (in Norwegian) with mothers with children with disabilities and their experiences from interacting with the RHYME project’s interactive and tangible music furniture. Interview with one of the mothers Inga Bostad, former Vice-Rector of the University of Oslo. .. Read »
Radio interview (in Norwegian) with a family with a child with disabilities interacting in the RHYME project’s interactive music furniture. Broadcasted in NRK P2 radio show Kulturnytt. .. Read »
Our voice and body are important parts of our self-expression and self-experience. They are also essential for our way to communicate and build relations cross borders like abilities, ages, locations, backgrounds and cultures... Read »
The seven principles of Universal Design, such as ”4. Perceptible Information” and ”5. Tolerance for errors”, are formulated from the design’s or system’s perspective. The principles focus on the qualities of the system or design, not on the value of use, the long time experience and use by many different people... Read »
Our voice and body are important parts of our self-expression and self-experience for all of us. They are also essential for our way to communicate and build relations cross borders such as abilities, ages, locations and backgrounds. Voice, body and tangibility gradually become more important for ICT, due to increased development of tangible interaction and mobile communication... Read »
Our voice and body are important parts of our self-experience, and our communication and relational possibilities. They gradually become more important for Interaction Design due to increased development of tangible interaction and mobile communication. In this paper we present and discuss our work with voice and tangible interaction in our ongoing research project RHYME... Read »
Our voice and body are important parts of our self-expression and self-experience for all of us. They are also essential for our way to communicate and build relations cross borders such as abilities, ages, locations and backgrounds. Voice, body and tangibility gradually become more important for ICT, due to increased development of tangible interaction and mobile communication... Read »
Music is a universal language we communicate through and with, cross cultural, functional and social diversities. The health potential of music has been thoroughly and scientifically documented during the last 15 years. With the term “musicking” the musicologist Christopher Small expands music from being just a noun to a verb, from an aesthetic object to an action... Read »
The ideals of Universal and Inclusive Design often lead to a “one-size-fits-all” solution, and a design full of compromises, not really attractive for anybody. Who has the right to define who should be included in the inclusive design? Who defines who is excluded? People are diverse. Diversity is the beauty of democracy, which is the root of Universal and Inclusive Design... Read »
Reflect is an interactive tangible sound installation that will premiere at Music Makers (http://musicmake.rs/category/artists/) on September 14th 2012, at Prince Charles in Berlin. Music Makers was curated by Create Digital Music, PLATform and SemiDomesticated. The creators of the installation, MusicalFieldsForever is a group of Artists and also a Project... Read »
We present a novel approach towards understanding and design of interactive music technology for people with special needs. The health effects of music are well documented, but little research and interactive music technology has been developed, for Music Therapy and health improvement in everyday situations... Read »
In this paper we present and discuss the empowering potential of restaging interactive art installations. We build on an approach, where we divide the staging process into four levels of staging (potential, strategic, tactical, dynamic), and in Umberto Eco’s sense open, to four categories of choices (genre, temporal, spatial, actorial) to perform on each staging level... Read »
Staging is the creative act of showing something to an audience. When staging, the artist chooses and creates the context, situation and structure of the presented object, play or installation. The chosen context and situation provide background for the audience interpretations... Read »
Montage in cinema means to mount images and sounds from different sources, that are interpreted together and whose oppositions drive the story further. In this paper we develop the montage concept further for co-creation in interactive, tactile, spatial cross-media. As case we use the design of the interactive, tangible, cross-media installation ORFI... Read »
In this paper we present our ongoing research on designing smart textile solutions for musical tangibles, what we call co-creative tangibles. Our textile, musical tangibles shall be used to improve health and wellbeing for children with severe disabilities and their families, in their homes... Read »
The traditional role of the musical instrument is to be the working tool of the professional musician. On the instrument the musician performs music for the audience to listen to. In this paper we present an interactive installation, where we expand the role of the instrument to motivate musicking and co-creation between diverse users... Read »
In this paper we present some of the challenges we approached in order to design and develop interactive experience environments in textile. Our interactive environments are created to facilitate communication on equal terms through music, between children with severe disabilities and their families... Read »