Tuuli Turja 30.5.2023
The future of technologizing healthcare has many contradictions. Care workers are expected to prioritize efficiency when they have committed themselves to prioritizing patients and care ethics. Also patients are forced to choose between technologically ensured security or personal privacy, or safety over intimacy. In the world of opposing objectives, future-oriented visions and art can paint us a cleared picture or realities than science alone can.
I had the pleasure of visiting the University of Stavanger in Norway and professor Ingvil Hellstrand, one of the principal investigators from the project Caring Futures. I was introduced to the project that has approached the outlooks of health care technologization combining art and science in a unique and inspiring way. In the search of imaginaries where technology would support good quality care, the researchers have turned to patient and care worker groups as the more traditional ways to collect data, but also to artists.
In the Caring Futures exhibition, eight artists presented their work under the theme of quality of care, care ethics and technology-mediated care. I will select three of these artworks to give you a glimpse of what was shown and so that we can reflect the role of touch and affect in these imaginaries. The following are, of course, my subjective perspectives risen from the art pieces and the curator Hege Tapio’s introduction, as well as reflections to my own care robot studies.
First glimpse: Technology sees only that much
Åsa Båve, a former care worker, now looking healthcare interactions through a camera, describes touch as a form of language. With a history of working with actors and dancers, Båve shows in her artwork Caring with force, the limitations technology has in presenting facts. What does the camera reveal and what does it hide? Båve uses restraining a patient as a staggering example of how a situation framed in a single picture shows a surprising reality. Technology here is the camera but it can well be also the limited scope of artificial intelligence. To get a more detailed and illustrated description of her work, see Instagram @asa.bave and the website www.asabave.com
Second glimpse: Technology understands only that much
In her video piece, a Norwegian visual artist and writer Cathrine Evelid uses puppets and puppeteers to represent the void between the simulated and real, between the hearing and the listening – the pseudo interaction we have with our virtual assistants and imagined robot friends. Does the illusion a robot being there for you emotionally benefit you and relieve your loneliness, or rather put you in a vulnerable and alienating position? See clips from the film: www.cathrineevelid.no
Third glimpse: Recipe for touch from the Pneumatic kitchen
Kaisu Koski is a Finnish researcher/artist who has a long history of visualizing healthcare. As one example, she has brought cinematic richness to medical education materials in Tampere University. It this exhibition, Kaisu Koski collaborated with Roland van Dierendonck whose research focuses on haptic technology and bio-digital interaction. In their work Pneumatic Kitchen, Koski and van
Dierendonck seek ways to simulate empathetic gestures through haptics in a space and time when actual touch is inhibited or lost. One of the premises seems to be that the touch needs to be soft whether it comes from a human or from another kind of entity. You will get a cleared picture from the websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/danadamian/home-1
https://rolandvandierendonck.com/
Closing words
Bigger pictures of the presented glimpses are of course available on the Internet. Hope you will find some of the artists and projects worth of discovering more about. I found the themes in the exhibition, and in the whole Caring Futures project, exceptionally refreshing. In Finland, the hopes and the hypes toward new generation technologies are leading the general discussions. This leaves room for critical discussions about technologizing care.
Do you find balance in current hopes, hypes and criticisms toward technology-mediated interaction in care? What is the one thing that always seems to be overlooked?