The HOSPITAbLe collection presents multiple works that help the visitor reflect on challenges that society faces in providing future healthcare.
These challenges suggests radical changes to the way health services are delivered and the way we engage with them. There is recognition that these changes are likely to demand more self-care. They present a shift of care from the hospital to our homes. However, the home and hospital represent very different cultural practices and environments. The expected shift from hospital to home will have great potential impact on our physical and emotional relationship with our home space. These cultural practices and experiences can be mediated through objects, which in turn can provide vehicles through which to gain understanding of the richness and complexity of people’s lives.
The HOSPITAbLe collection, designed by Paul Chamberlain, presents these objects. By doing so it invites visitors to take part in ‘thinking with things’. The exhibition provides a theatre for conversation and also becomes the medium and method for data collection for the Sheffield Hallam University. It creates a channel, through which societal assumptions related to aging and healthcare can be made visible, explored and challenged. We invite you to join us in doing so.
Knowledge from previous research has led to a collection of so-called critical artefacts. The HOSPITAbLe collection reflects upon and challenges an ambiguous future domestic landscape that presents hybrid functionality and confused visual language and soundscape. A transient world of alien objects that not only challenge trust, but prohibit control and access. New objects defined by emerging technologies that at times attempt to hide and camouflage. Providers of these future objects are ever more concerned with our health and safety, nudging us into behavioral change but fearful of litigation. An interconnected landscape within which, access to health data and information is ubiquitous, incomplete and confusing. Objects that help, support, betray and confront our own mortality. Amongst the presented objects, the visitor is presented with a converted telephone table that accommodates healthcare equipment, an uneasy chairs that motivate its user to not sit on it, and a wooden walking frame that explores the values and qualities of craft against the pragmatic industrial aesthetic.
The critical artifacts presented at the exhibition act as tools integral to a research methodology to help discover and define user needs and aspirations. This will help to inform the development of future products and environments. The exhibition is organized by Sheffield Hallam University 'Lab 4 Living' in cooperation with Waag.
This exhibition takes place at the Theatrum Anatomicum of the Waag on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam on 19, 20 and 21 May, from 10.00 till 17.00 hrs. Free admission.
