Health problems that require surgical intervention can be traumatizing in more than one way, even when they are not life-threatening. In addition to physical pain, patients also have to deal with the psychological discomfort of knowing their bodies invaded by foreign objects and subjected to procedures over which they have no control. The work of Portuguese jewellery designer Olga Noronha (who is currently a PhD student at Goldsmiths Design) aims to put a positive spin on these experiences by allowing patients to get involved and to make themselves more beautiful on the inside in the process- literally. Continue reading “The medically prescribed jewellery of Olga Noronha”
Category: Research
Pi Studio presents at iSay
Moving into new research territories, Peter Rogers and Juliet Sprake presented a series of projects that focus on user generated content for tours and guides at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Since 2005 they have been working through several projects to develop understanding of user generated content in museums and sites of special interest in ways that give voice to the visitor. In their talk, “A tale of Two Workhouses”, Pete describes a current project, Vantage Points, a smartphone service that records and classifies features of heritage buildings at risk- such as Strand Union Workhouse in London. The project aims to build contextual information about at risk buildings and thereby contribute to saving/archiving them in the face of erasure. They are conducting a series of experiments to build a service that enables different kinds of users to generate content about a building at risk by:
- Finding the best vantage point of a building at risk, taking a photo and sharing access information;
- Finding, recording and publishing details of the close-up fabric and conjencturing about their identification and importance;
- Augmenting and linking with other online sources of data.
The outcome should hopefully provide enough location date on site to be able to provide an informative tour of the building or site.
Juliet Sprake
Goldsmiths Design Blog 