Hold Exhibition

Hold began as a research project funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award exploring touch and how it’s effects and our understanding of it can be enhanced by technology.

Working with participants in Liverpool who were living with dementia, and their families and carers, the project aimed to open up a dialogue around our understanding of touch.

We have over the past two years worked with individuals living with dementia and their partners/carers to co-design creative prototypes exploring the use and meaning of touch in care, focusing on pairs and the interdependence between them.  

The project was developed in partnership with Professor Nadia Berthouze (Professor of Affective interaction and Computing in the faculty of Brain Science UCL), FACT Liverpool and Community Integrated Care.

Working with pairs, individuals living with dementia and their partners and/or carers over a series of co-design workshops we created 3 creative prototypes that explored what touch meant for them. 

Memory Album 

Made in collaboration with Green Heys Care Home

An augmented interactive photo album designed for care home residents that can be updated remotely and instantly by relatives and carers.

A photo album with projected images tailored for each individual user that tracks where and how they touch the pages at the same time as logging their vital signs. The data collected reveals details about the importance of photos and how they are touched.

The Photobook allows family members to upload new photos for a resident in real time and for carers to individualise a residents experience.  

Finalist in the Technology category – Third Sector Care Awards 2018

I wanna hold your hand

Made in collaboration with Phil and Julie

Sensor Gloves designed to map the different types of touch that exist when they walk, the loving touch of companionship and also the touch of support, both changing. The gloves recorded data of their touch and their walks together, reading heart rate, galvanic skin response, pressure of different areas of the hand and the GPS route of their walk.

Rethinking the mobile phone

Made in collaboration with Roy

Reimagining the phone as a sensory device that connects participants remotely by emulating their body temperatures.