✧ PROBING PAIN
✦ VISUAL/INSTALLATION/AR&VR
Tools:
- Figma
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Premiere Pro
Project Overview:
Probing Pain is a proposed work in partnership with Science Gallery Melbourne. The exhibition utilises 6 different interactive installations to serve as an example for how digital media can partake in the treatment of pain and assist in the understanding and perceptions of concept surrounding pain.
With reference to the layout of Science Gallery Melbourne, each diverse patient story is separated by curtains mimicking a hospital ward. Guests are also encouraged to dress up in their doctor attire, enhancing immersion of play in an educative manner.
Broken Arm
The broken arm scenario is presented through an upright touchscreen, teaching visitors about a familiar kind of acute pain.
Read more about each of the six scenarios below
2. Phantom Limb
Considering that it is hard for public to understand how pain emerges from a limb that is no longer attached, the VR game has been designed in two parts: the sensitive stage and the recovery stage.
In the sensitive stage, the visitor is unable to interact with anything on the table, the hand going through the cube and the more they try to interact, the higher the pain scale. This simulates the lack of a limb with pain still attached.
In the recovery stage, there are two limbs envisioned and through VR the patient is able to simulate having two hands in this case through a tactile simulation of picking up and dropping simple objects.
3. Trauma Patient
In this installation, there will be a touch screen lying flat so the patient as though they are lying on the hospital bed. The patient is a soldier who states that he has no serious injuries because he feels no pain. Visitors are given the option to examine him anyways and discover he has many severe injuries.
The patient had been involved in large accidents in the field but was extremely grateful to be alive. Therefore, his state of mind meant he couldn’t feel pain from his injuries because it was a side effect of his survival. This provides the audience with an example of the multidimensional facets of pain and how it is not directly linked to severity of injury.
4. Boot and Nail incident
Based off a famous and real scenario, in the Boot and Nail incident installation, there will be a touch screen where a patient will appear to be lying on the bed in pain. There will be speakers in the room to pair with the visuals of the screen. The audio will run on a timer and have audible screams of pain of the patient with a hidden clue of where the patient is feeling pain in the audio loop. Visitors must wait for the clue amongst the yelling and click on the screen to identify the area of pain.
5. Gender bias
This installation lets you select your gender and then have camera and screen diagnose you with medical assumptions. Depending on the selected gender, a different diagnosis will appear on the screen, to demonstrate the disparities that remain in the medical field. It will educate visitors on the gender bias in the medical field, in particular research and diagnosis.
6. Fibromyalgia
The final patient story will be a mannequin standing and a projection over the mannequin body. The projection will display thermal mapping over the mannequin to address the areas of pain of the patient. The thermal map will move and flow to convey the constant change in pain.
The final lesson depicts a patient with fibromyalgia which is widespread muscle pain and tenderness. There is no cure for this chronic pain. There is only medication you can take to temporarily relieve symptoms. It is a suitable final case because there is currently no solution or activity to accompany this installation as well. It illustrates that some conditions have yet to find a cure and encompasses the complexity of pain.
