VR Production for Virtual Electives in Primary Care: A feasibility study
Supported by: Arts – Health Collaboration Fund. Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business (FoAHB), University of Plymouth. The Plymouth Institute of Health and Care Research (PIHR)
This collaboration scopes the viability of using VR production for virtual elective programmes in primary care. It also considers the design of a film production toolkit to enable clinicians as content creators. The project develops some of the synergies between Daniel Korn’s VR Patient journey to GP practice and Transtechnology Research’s collaboration with the digital education unit at Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust (TAaCT project) and Nick Peres work with immersive technologies in healthcare and education. In particular, we were interested to scope the possible and appropriate use of 360 video, VR and AR technologies to support the acquisition of soft skills in virtual elective training (VR in healthcare and E-medicine). It was also recognised that materials produced would be useful for predeparture training, recruitment and raising digital literacy amongst the workforces.
In the later stages of the project we were invited to sit in on a pilot virtual elective program for UK and Rwandan medical students. It became evident through student feedback that the most engaging exchanges were social and cultural insights shared through music, recipes and traditions using candid photography and informal discussion. There was an immediate realisation that high technological solutions were not altogether necessary for enriching cross cultural exchanges, though they might be more appropriate for recruitment purposes or tours of the hospital environment.
The Simulation Lab TAaCT
Since 2015 Transtechnology Research has collaborated with Torbay Hospital Trust on a research project exploring lo-fi Virtual Reality in hospital simulation training. It now has researchers in residence at Torbay’s Digital Horizons Centre working on a number of projects, one of which is approaches to low cost simulation for ODA countries.
The Temporal Image Research Open Laboratory TTIRoL
Mission
Temporal Image Research Open Lab will be led by Transtechnology Research and provide an interface for the intersection of practice and theory. It will generate and respond to new topics and concerns as they emerge from the highlighted research theme of media archaeology and cognition.
Abstract
This laboratory will have as its focus the cognitive processes of ‘image’ perception and their impact on the cultural construction of meaning. Through theory, creative practice and the restaging of psychological experiments it will connect current preoccupations in cognitive science and media archaeology with ideas of temporality in relation to change in processes of technological mediations and human cognition.
It finds its creative and intellectual leitmotif in an understanding of the ‘image’ in the fullest sense of multi-sensory perception (Bergson) and the pioneering work of Rudolf Arnheim, Bela Bálázs and in particular Hugo Munsterberg’s ‘psychotechnological’ experimental work at Harvard. Munsterberg in particular is important for this laboratory in as much as his late work The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916) is considered to be one of the formative theories in understanding the cognitive aspects of cinema (Andrew, 1976).
TTIRoL will bring together experts in the creative arts, experimental psychology, cognitive science, cognitive robotics, neuroscience and the humanities to collectively address some important questions and opportunities posed by research into technology and perception in the audio-visual arts. The expectation is that by forging a fully integrated humanities and scientific core of expertise we will be able to develop innovative theoretical insights that will inform future research into the effective exploitation of new delivery platforms for creative works, entertainment, education, research, therapy and well-being.
CogNovo
CogNovo is an Innovative Doctoral Programme, funded by the EU Marie Curie initiative and Plymouth University, to foster research training in the emerging field of Cognitive Innovation. CogNovo offers transdisciplinary training that combines scientific studies of the neural correlates and mechanisms of creativity, with investigations into the role of creativity in human cognition, and their application in sustainable technological and social innovation.
Marie Curie Initial Training Network CogNovo: Creativity and Cognitive Innovation” (FP7- PEOPLE-2013-ITN-IDP 604764; 2013-2017) delivers 14 PhD bursaries. Parallel to this Plymouth University funds 12 additional UK doctoral bursaries for research at the intersection of cognition, creativity, the arts and humanities.
http://www.cognovo.eu
International Network for Trans-disciplinary Research (INTR)
This project sets up an international network of research organisations concerned with post-doctoral and early career, practice based research. Its purpose is to collate and cascade best practice at postdoctoral level in order to: (i) support early career researchers (ii) to enhance the provision and experience of PhD students working particularly with trans-disciplinary practice.
The network builds upon and extends the current international collaborations at Transtechnology Research in order to develop methods, pedagogies and resourcing strategies for trans-disciplinary practiced based research at the highest level. The structure comprises five network meetings financed in collaboration with participating institutions and the outcome will be a joint funding application to extend the network and a joint research proposal.
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Past Projects:
HERA: Technology, Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices and Commercial Application (TEF)
(Project ran from April 2010- April 2013)
Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth in collaboration with the VU University, Amsterdam, the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision undertook a major three year project approved under the HERA JRP call ‘Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’.
Through a series of distributed projects and sub-projects ‘Technology, Exchange and Flow’ explored the relationship between creativity and innovation within the contemporary European media sector. The project asked how traffic between cultural forms in Europe, such as industrial film and new media arts on the one hand, and commercial exploitation of audio-visual media on the other hand, is radically transformed at key moments. As such it was intended to prepare the way for thinking about new media environments when the distinctions between kinds of producers and the consumer and the producer are no longer valid or viable distinctions.
TEF project website – currently under reconstruction.
Art & Science – synergy of technology and art in the city spaces
Gdansk: 10-21 October 2011
In October 2011 Transtechnology Research took part in a European Funded Art & Science Erasmus Intensive Programme based in Gdansk, Poland. The aim of the Intensive Programme was to explore how the phenomenon of growing interdisciplinary approaches, and tendency toward mutual interrelation of art, architecture and science, could become visible within city spaces. The realization of the IP was used to nurture creativity as seen through developed installation/public art/architectural landscape, manifest itself in the city space, that showed/used/referred to the transdisciplinary nature of Art & Science. The IP consisted of an intense two week workshop with partners from the School of Planning and Media Design, Karlskona, Sweden; Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Germany; University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilha, Portugal; Gdansk University of Technology; Gdansk Academy of Arts and Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art.
General objectives
The focus of the Intensive Programme was to explore how the phenomenon of growing interdisciplinary approaches, and tendency toward mutual interrelation of art, architecture and science, could become visible in the city itself. The target workshop groups were students of architecture and urban design, engineering, electronics, students of art and media design, anthropology, culture and communication, trans-technology research, research centers, scientists and local cultural institutions. The aims , apart from enriching theoretical fundamentals, were to acquire skills in using the advancements of different disciplines within architecture and urban art by inviting students of varied specializations and professors of diverse competences and backgrounds.
The theoretical essays, descriptions of approaches developed during the workshop as well as design projects will be disseminated in frames of the 2nd conference Art and Science in 2012 (Art Line project) as well as published in a book Art & Science – synergy of technology and art in the city spaces.
Outputs
Purposelessness: questioning the linking of the campus to the city (PDF)
Micro-Edging Art in Outer Space: One Millimeter Square Space Art
SPRITE-SAT Payload H-IIA JAXA(GOSAT) launched January 2009 http://www.astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/SpaceArt/e/
SPRITE-SAT is a micro satellite in the size of 50 cm cube and weighing less than 50-kg, developed by Tohoku University. The satellite conducts scientific observation of atmospheric luminous emissions called “sprites”. It has been launched in January 2009 as a piggyback payload of an H-IIA rocket for the JAXA’s Greenhouse Gas Observation Satellite (GOSAT). The orbit is a sun-synchronous polar orbit with 660 km altitude form the earth’s surface. The top of the antenna of the micro satellite exhibits 51 art pieces in orbit which were miniaturized and fabricated on a silicon wafer using photolithography and dry-etching technology.
Punt and Blassnigg have contributed with two entangled diagrams engraved on the antennae boom of the Sprite-Sat for an experiment in which a super-quantum entanglement takes place in the realm of absolute immanence. More…
Visit the art installation at: http://www.astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/SpaceArt/e/ (left hand corner)
An Experiment in Pata-Entanglement: ‘One millimetre of quality time experience’ (Blassnigg)
‘One millimetre of quality time experience’ displays a transparent surface for the refraction of light, as a membrane to absorb and listen without creating any additional noise or information, as an “empty space” in the sense of the Japanese concept ‘ma’, as a Bergsonian ‘space in between’, or in the art historian Aby Warburg’s terms, as a space for reflection (what he called Andachtsraum or Denkraum der Besonnenheit). A conceptual participant observer of the sprite phenomena, agent and mediator to transmit and share experience immaterially in an amplified quantum-time-space-correlate between the two entangled planes of immanence.
This project is part of a larger research investigation into an application of certain aspects of Henri Bergson’s philosophy, such as aesthetic intuition, duration and recollection, to the cognitive processes involved in the perception and interaction within audio-visual environments. It concerns an immaterial intervention in relation to the reception and reflection of super-sensory data as an experiment of pata-entanglement in combination with M. Punt?s ‘Teleportation Mill’.
An Experiment in Pata-Entanglement: ‘The Teleportation Mill’ (Punt)
Exactly four years ago, in August 2004, Martha Blassnigg and Michael Punt isolated a small piece of land between two towers on Mars thanks to ‘The First Interplanetarian Exhibition Space on Mars’ (http://www.mars-patent.org/)
The purpose of this isolation was to create an experimental laboratory that was devoid of all human, animal and alien telepathic traffic (http://www.mars-patent.org/projects/absolute_openness/absolute_openness_form.htm). In this laboratory a number of experiments have already been conducted concerning non-chronological and non-linear timeframes, contingent realities, multidimensionality, paradox, immanence, etc. For this new project we wish to pick up an outstanding topic: entangled co-ordinates.
Michael Punt has re-engineered Eli During’s double cone of Bergson’s schematic to become a serviceable ‘Teleportation Mill’ to condense the matter into a dimensionless plain of purity and openness in preparation for an entanglement experiment in deep space. In order that the experiment may be repeated (and cross-validated) a diagram of ‘The Teleportation Mill’ is to be engraved on the antennae boom of the Sprite-Sat (to be launched in January 2009) together with M. Blassnigg’s project ‘One millimetre of quality time experience’ (in a gestalt image) of the experiment in which a super-quantum entanglement takes place in the realm of absolute immanence.
The experiment may be repeated without the permission of the authors. However, we would appreciate notice of your results; for contact and further details see www.trans-techresearch.net
For more informations on the 1mm project, please click here.
The Amazing Field Project
December 2008-April 2009
At Molenick, on the Port Eliot Estate there is a field that at first sight appears to be a neglected patch of random agricultural land. On closer inspection this field is the site of the remains of an ancient circle and apparently random lumps of earth begin to reveal an underlying intelligence to the topography. On wider inspection the whole landscape as far as the eye can see is connected to this mound through sight-lines and other archaeological features. On top of this field is another field: an apparently random microwave field of communication networks. This too, on wider inspection, is connected to the wider area.
Bianca Eliot, the current owner of these two fields, has invited multidisciplinary teams to submit artworks to join these two fields. During the next six months a number of artists are invited to work with a nominated collaborator from another discipline to produce small-scale artworks which can be circulated to a wide audience through mobile phone technologies.
Each team of two collaborators, one artist and another from a different discipline will be invited to stay for three days (two nights) at her house to scope the project and undertake the preliminary research. Guest accommodation will be provided and there will be a small caravan in the field to be used as a studio during the brief residency.
Participants: Dr Martha Blassnigg, Hannah Drayson, Len Massey, Isobel Taylor, John Vines and Dr Brigitta Zics.
AHRC ICT methods network workshop at the Immersive Vision Theatre, University of Plymouth, 13 Dec. 2007
Workshop coordinators: Dr. Martha Blassnigg, Prof. Michael PuntThe event was convened jointly by Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth and the AHRC ICT Methods Network.
Aims of the workshop:
This workshop concerns content design for immersive vision theatres. These are typically planetariums refurbished and modified to accept ±180 degree digital projection. Facilities such as these are increasing in the UK in the HE and the museum sector, and with the advent of portable inflatable domes, there is a growing interest in primary and secondary sectors. This event aims to identify:* the key topics, approaches and discourses that need to be co-ordinated to develop reliable practices and methods of evaluation in designing immersive audio-visual experiences in an educational and research context;* existing strategies for the effective use of immersive A/V environments for the transfer of knowledge;* new areas of research that will contribute toward a deeper understanding of the experience for the participant. The workshop will draw together leading scholars from the Humanities, Arts and Sciences, immersive theatre designers, technical support teams, content providers, software engineers, evaluators and educationalists to pool research and discipline specific approaches. One of the outcomes of the day will be a preliminary bibliography relevant to the specifics of the audiovisual immersion and a viable network for future research collaboration.
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In Development
Beyond the visible spectrum in Zero Gravity
Following our Mars Patent project Design for Absolute Openness (www.mars-patent.org) we are testing the possibility that the telepathic dimension may be influenced significantly by gravity. We will conduct a series of experiments during a parabolic flight to test this hypothesis and expect to publish the outcomes as an artwork and a reportStakeholders: ZGAC: September 2006, NASA, Los Angeles (Zero Gravity Artists Consortium), University of Plymouth.
Bio-feedback in the future theatre
A new large-scale visual and physical performance piece based on research into consciousness, action and precognition is to be created in collaboration between The Theatre Royal Plymouth and the University of Plymouth. The theatre and university will work in collaboration with the international choreographer, Yacov Sharir, using a specially designed data collection system in the theatre, which will enable biometric feedback between the audience and performers. Through ongoing evaluation, participatory observation and beta-testing of creative strategies it is intended to develop ways to transfer knowledge between distinct disciplines in art and science through performance and public interaction.
On trans-method for space science and art (Performance and Consciousness, Ideas and Intuitions)
The project is intended to conduct research into a comparative analysis of differing approaches to cosmology and their dissemination in two apparently mutually contradictory world views; this includes the study of a performance ritual in connection with spiritual beliefs and the traces of ritualistic performance in scientific methods associated with rationalism.
This insight led to rethinking the technological intervention in a more vibrant and accessible way. The use of photography and video as a reflexive or discursive tool to exchange first person perspectives and experiences in the workplace or sharing some aspect of their culture, seemed far more appropriate. Choosing a low-tech solution is more accessible, inclusive, and crucial if we hope that students and clinicians are to become creators of their own content, choosing the subjects that speak to them. In addition, it was recognised that a video ethnographic toolkit would be a good way to build competencies in digital and visual literacy towards the use of more sophisticated content creation using VR immersive technologies.