Interactive inflatables about the loss of control in medical settings
Breathe Critical is a fictional rehabilitation machine. It does not cure any physical symptoms, but it may cure deep-rooted beliefs that we have about the control between medical devices and one’s body.
The machine stands as a two-meter-tall chamber with two air pillows inside. The visitor can inflate and deflate the air pillows through the breathing sensor, which sometimes complies with and other times manipulates the visitor’s breath.
This performative work aims to provoke visitors to reflect upon control which patients grapple with and lose in medical settings and to technological devices. The design stems from medical humanities, which focuses on subjective and invisible experiences in medical practices. The work is inspired by a feministic critique on modern medicine how patients lost and is still losing control of their bodies to the medical gaze. The work reflects on the traces of the past that echoes into the present healthcare when the medical gaze takes form of biosensors. It is developed as a part of a design research at IT University of Copenhagen in collaboration with MUNCH museum in Oslo.
