Before starting this project which would be installed in the hospital, I first thought of designing a work about spatial interaction, hoping that the “input – processing – output” interaction relationship can be established among people, objects, space and information with art and experiencer’s behaviours as the carrier. Through such interaction, delivery of art concepts and construction of site spirit can be finished.

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Originally, I would like to explore interactive projection work and create an immersive and narrative healing atmosphere. and there are three key points I considered. 

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Spatial immersion

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The influence between the environment and humans is mutual. While perceiving, interpreting and using the environment, humans are also adapting themselves to and changing the environment, thus constructing a system featuring mutual integration between humans and the environment. The spatially interactive public art is different from the artworks for soft decorations that are implanted into space in the post-stage. The former is strongly immersive and makes up an inseparable part of spirit construction of the spatial site. 

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Content narrativity

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Different from static art, public art featuring interactive space represents reconstruction from spatial decoration to the spatial narrative, which requires audiences’ involvement to become roles of the space story. The intervention of the interactive time elements has strengthened the narrative characteristics of the space. As the story narrator, the designer should fully consider the discourse of audiences to participate in the story.

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Playful form

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Many interactive media require humans’ participation and interaction, so I think the interesting gameplay happening to the public art based on spatial interaction can alleviate patients’ unfamiliarity with the environment, and also eliminate or mitigate negative emotions, such as fear and frustration. The game itself can be a way of art therapy. Through game interaction, the aesthetic experience of the world of senses is realized to switch reconstruction from the therapeutic environment to the healing environment.

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For example, the Children’s Nursing Center of Carin Hospital in Melbourne, Australia worked with Eness, a famous Australian design studio to create an interesting and interactive wall for the public area of the inpatient ward. The designer covered semi-transmitting wood chips onto the LED module, and the surface is installed with organic glasses to ensure its cleanness. The interactive wall named LIMES is actually luminescent ceramic tiles installed in the corridor of the hospitalization department of the hospital. Same to walls with ordinary wood veneers at ordinary times, it can capture and track human movements through its video camera to generate short animations of more than 15 kinds, such as rain dropping onto the ground, ripe apples falling down from the tree, small animals growing, rockets emitting, grasses growing, aeroplanes flying and motor vehicles driving along with human movements. All these short animations can bring pleasant spatial experience for children, family members, and medical workers.

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The Sense Organ Entertainment of the U.S. Ann Arbor Center for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders provides a healing social interaction environment for children, which is made up of parameterized advanced structures and materials, and interactive textile structures, and it is also a flexible textile supported by complex curvy reinforced glass fibre framework, which was designed by Professor San Alquist and his teammates via computer-aided parameter design. Finally, an interactive art instalment available for multiple children to play games has been shaped. The video projection and background music change with children’s touch.

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However, due to my personal technical problems, and issues with the projection equipment and site, the interactive design cannot yet be realized in the Peter MacCallum hospital, so I create a video and sound projection as a replacement, which can materialize the process from information input to emotional output.

 

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