RHYME contributed with both a talk/presentation and exhibited Polly World at The Research Council of Norway’s stand in the exhibition hall. RHYME member Anders-Petter Andersson and Fredrik Olofsson demonstrated Polly Ocean, Polly Planet and Polly Fire and the Polly Compose App at the stand.

RHYME member Birgitta Cappelen presented her talk with the title “Vitalizing Welfare Technology – a new paradigm in health technology” during Session B2: Design for Healthcare on the 15th November.
In the abstract she wrote: “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. These technologies offer new embodied, sensorial, musical and distributed experiences and ways to evoke vitality, co-creation, and strengthen one’s own resources and relations.”

Download the RHYME brochure here

Photo: J. Fagerlönn

RHYME member Anders-Petter Andersson won best paper presentation when he presented Birgitta Cappelen and his paper on AudioMostly2016 the 6th October 2016.  The motivation the committee gave was: “A very pedagogical, well-designed and passionate presentation with humorous and daring elements”

The paper is called ‘Health Improving Multi-Sensorial and Musical Environments’ and, “focus on the designed qualities of the Polly World environment, and specifically on the multi-sensorial and musical interaction design”. In the paper they present how they have designed the interactive music and multi-sensorial qualities of the environment, to make them health promoting, by combining knowledge from the field of interactive Music composition, Interaction Design and Tangible Interaction with knowledge from therapeutic disciplines such as Music and Health, Music Therapy and Sensory Integration. One of the main findings is the positive results moving from Multi-Sensory feedback, focusing on auditive, tactile, visual modalities, to Multi-Sensorial, motivating mastering over time, creating expectations, building on rhythmic, narrative, musical, relational and cultural.

The project is to develop a new textile for sensorial and musical interaction. Textile which has a soft and sensorial stimulation qualities,  in combination with transparency to transmit light and roughness to handle the rough use. In addition the textile has to have the ability to embed electronics into the textile.

We have worked from different angles, providing aesthetically and sensorial qualities by exploring combinations of yarn like cotton, wool, viscose, polyamid, polyester to high tech yarns like mono filament, pemotec and thermoformable yarns.

We have worked with different structures/patterns to embedd the technology like light, sensors, actuators and wires.

We have worked with different forms of knitting techniques from jacquard knitting to complex and simpler forms of tubular structures.

We have explored different forms of knitting machines from tubular machines to complex flat beds.

We have worked in different scales from many small samples to larger moch-ups and prototypes to be.

The title of Birgitta and Anders-Petters paper is “Embodied and Distributed Parallel DJing” and focuses on the innovative potential of including people with special needs when designing and creating cultural artifacts and activities. In the paper they argue that “…because of the users’ extreme demands and rich contribution, we ended up creating both a new genre of musical instruments and a new art form. We call this new art form Embodied and Distributed Parallel DJing, and the new genre of instruments for  Empowering Multi-Sensorial Things.” Access the Proceedings and paper here.

Here is a video that demonstrate the new practice of Embodied Parallel DJing, where Anders and Birgitta are using their whole body when cutting, scratching (DJing) together in parallel with Polly Ocean and Polly Planet on familiar music tunes that they choose with the RFID-tagged objects.

RHYME and Polly World was last year invited to become part of the programme for Arts and Culture in Norwegian Schools, called “The Cultural Rucksack” (Den kulturelle skolesekken). This is a unique cultural programme financed by the Arts Council of Norway. The objectives are to help “school pupils to become acquainted with all kinds of professional art and cultural expressions” and to “… enjoy artistic and cultural productions provided by professionals.” (www.kulturradet.no)

In the programme Polly World represents something quite new as an interactive and multi-sensorially stimulating installation, both genre-vice as installation art and regarding participation. Polly World is an offering for children with multiple and severe disabilities to engage in artistic co-creation on equal terms.

In March this year (2016) Polly World has been “On Tour” visiting schools that wanted Polly World as part of their cultural program. It has been an unique journey and experience for all the children, but also a unique way to share the results of the research project, and gain new knowledge.

The 8th of February RHYME member Birgitta Cappelen lectured at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KhiO). The title of her lecture was “Interactive Sensorial Textile Experiences”. In the lecture, Birgitta focused on her more personal background and motivation for her participation with RHYME, and the work with developing the textile expression and sensorial qualities of the RHYME tangibles.
After the lecture, Birgitta and Anders-Petter facilitated a beginner’s workshop in e-textile where all participants got a simple kit with battery, led, conductive yarn and switch to make their first e-textile “exploration” .

RHYME members Anders-Petter Andersson and Birgitta Cappelen were invited to contribute with lecture and Polly World Workshop at the SPEDUTEC meeting in Goethenburg from November 2nd to 4th.

“SPEDUTEC is a project supported by the Nordplus Horizontal Programme under the Nordic Council of Ministers. The aim is to increase understanding on theory and pedagogical and technological practice on learning through assistive technologies (ATs) in multisensory environments. Furthermore, our goal is to build a new Nordic-Baltic network on the topic. The main working methods is sharing knowledge and experiences, and mutual learning.”

Birgitta and Anders-Petters lecture was called  “5 Generations of RHYME tangibles” and described the RHYME project through 4 generation of observations and development and the current 5 Generation platform used in the Vitalising Welfare Technology course at AHO in October 2015.

Where   Sagenehuset / Sagenehjemmet (Maridalsveien 177, Oslo)
When   Presentation at 1 PM,  Exhibition 4 -6 PM

Here is my Vitalising Welfare presentation (english)
Here is the exhibition folder (norwegian)  Vitaliserende velferdsteknologi folder

Intensive work in the Class Room

Material and shape explorations

The “Vitalising Welfare Technology” course is a module within Tangible Interaction for master students in Interaction Design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The course is a starting collaboration on welfare technology, between Diakonhjemmet University College and  Institute of Design at AHO.

During the course, the students will create welfare technology based on the 5th generation of the RHYME technology platform, which is an upgraded version of what we used in Polly World for the wireless modules (Polly Planet, Polly Ocean and Polly Fire).  The goal is to create welfare technology for vitalisation and health improvement of the persons living at care homes. This is welfare technology designed from a person’s point-of-view (humanistic health approach), not, as often done today, as a mediation of existing health services, where the goal is  control, measurement and management of bio-medical data.

The end presentation will be at Sagenehjemmet 30th October at 13.00. The exhibition of the designed welfare technology will be in Sagenehuset and starts after the presentation at 16.00. Welcome!