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Birgitta Cappelen is Associate Professor in Interaction Design at the Institute of Design at AHO. She has a broad education and experience in the field. Among other things, she is a Master in Industrial Design from AHO, and was one of the first to work with Interaction Design at AHO. In addition, she has a BA degree from the University of Oslo with a curriculum consisting of History of Ideas, Philosophy, Computer Science, Media and Communication Studies, with MA courses in Media Aesthetics, Semiotics and Interactive Media. She also has a BA-level in Business Administration from the Norwegian Business School (BI).
Birgitta has worked continuously with Interaction Design (user interface design) since 1985, on a number of technological platforms, in a variety of technologies and application areas. She worked for many years with the development of large strategic, financial and trading systems in manufacturing, banking, retail, publishing, power and stock trading on a variety of platforms (DOS, UNIX, Windows, Web, mobile, etc.). From the early 1990s, she has worked with multimedia (audio and video as media elements in the user interface), for instance museums and adventure centres.
Birgitta has started three companies within design, technology and business development (New View 1993, Interaction Design 1997 and Creuna 2001).
Since 1998 Birgitta has worked in the field of “Tangible Interaction” (physical and tactile media) primarily in a research context. She has been employed as a research fellow at School of Arts and Communication (K3) at Malmö University, and researcher at the Interactive Institute’s Narrativity and Communication Studio in Malmö and at Design Sciences at Lund University (IKDC).
An important theme of Birgitta’s work within tactile media is to explore the potential of hybridizations. Hybridizations between Design and Art, between art installations, toys and furniture, audiences, users, and creators, products and services, hardware and software, use and abuse, etc. She calls what she creates ”fields”, not ”things”, ”objects”, ”products” or ”Art”. Fields filled with potentiality.
The key to most of Birgitta’s work in tangible media is cross-media co-creation. Since 2000 she has worked with two composers in the group MusicalFieldsForever. The group has exhibited its interactive, tactile sound installations in a number of places, e.g. at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Rooseum in Malmö, Museum of Modern Art and the House of Culture in Stockholm, the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture (DogA) in Oslo, in Copenhagen, Berlin and Japan. Read more about MusicalFieldsForver.
At AHO Birgitta has taught Service Design, Interaction Design, Tangible Interaction Design, Musical Interaction, Sensorial Interaction, Universal Design and E-textiles.
Until 2017 Birgitta mainly worked in the research project RHYME (rhyme.no) , which was a continuation of the work she has done in tangible media. The RHYME project goal was to improve health and quality of life through the use of tangible, musical, social and collaborative media. Improved health for families with children with multifunctional and severe disabilities. RHYME was a joint project between AHO, the Norwegian Academy of Music /Music Therapy/ Centre for Music and Health, and the University of Oslo / Department of Informatics. The research project was funded by the Norwegian Research Council through the VERDIKT programme. Birgitta and her colleagues currently work on developing this technology and the health promoting approach on technology further, in new collaborations (Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Nursing, Public health) and towards new user groups (e.g. elderly, persons with dementia).
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Technology has potential for improving the lives of persons with severe disabilities. But it’s a challenge to create technology that improves lives from a person’s own perspective. Co-design methods have therefore been used in the design of Assistive Technology, to include users in the design process... Read »
Technology has potential for improving the lives of persons with severe disabilities. But it’s a challenge to create technology that improves lives from a person’s own perspective. Co-design methods have therefore been used in the design of Assistive Technology, to include users in the design process... Read »
Since about a decade ago, design thinking has become a prominent topic in the scientific and business world. In order to keep up with global competition, design thinking has proven to be a valuable concept for assisting companies to innovate their products, servicesand processes... Read »
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 »
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 »
Based on experiences from practical design work, we try to show, what we believe, are the similarities and differences, between composing music for interactive media compared to linear music. In our view, much is the same, built on traditions that have been around for centuries within music and composition. The fact that the composer writes programming code is an essential difference... 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 »