Ray, where have you been today?
(2025)
author(s): Pietro Fanti
published in: Research Catalogue
Is the reality perceived by someone with dementia less real than our own? Can photography give authority to this alternate reality?
This research, sparked by my newfound relationship with my dementia-affected grandfather Raymond, investigates the family album - often perceived as an unquestionable document - in order to uncover its ambiguities and to question photography in itself as the most trustful record of reality.
The inaccuracy of a medium that aims for objectiveness and is perceived as the bearer of truth, leads me to focus on three different ways of approaching the family archive (collection, editing and manipulation) and the relationship between mortality and memory. By using a mix of photography and photogrammetry, Ray's distorted memories - as he recounted them during his illness - became new images in order to materialise his present parallel truth. Alongside this dreamlike everyday, what has survived of Ray's past is contained in a briefcase: 254 photographs that have been transformed into postcards, travelling keepsakes, ready to be sent. If photography is in itself unreliable, why should the reality of a person who has lost his memory be any less real than our own?
Permanent traces
(2024)
author(s): Matevž Čebašek
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. BA Photography.
The research paper serves as a base for understanding the memories on a case of a person with dementia and their connections to the medium of photography. Photography is used as an attempt to retrieve my grandmother’s autobiographical memories which are often hard to retrieve. It is based on the assumption that every memory, no matter how vague, is still accessible by restoring to a proper process, similar to the latent image on the photographic film that becomes visible only after appropriate processing. Based on existing experimental memory research I constructed a method of finding a cue that can trigger specific memories in a conversation. Photographic images from the past were used as a base of the conversation. In most cases, they didn’t directly trigger involuntary memory, but they served as a starting point for a conversation, allowing my grandmother to start actively thinking about a period of her life. Due to dementia, the responses within one conversation were often repeated, yet after some time, the chain reaction of retrieving memories allowed her to remember some specific details. Her understanding of the fragility of memories was constantly present. On multiple occasions, she expressed that an artificial device, such as photography or writing, should be used to preserve them. The research doesn’t give a complete understanding of how memories and their retrieval work in general, but it gives a better understanding of how it can efficiently be done with my grandmother. The process I developed can be applied to other people if properly adjusted to them. I believe that essentially what counts is not what kind of cue we choose, but that we patiently take time to listen and guide conversations with some previous knowledge about their past.
Hilsen Brettet / The Greeting Board
(2021)
author(s): Henning Kristoffer Borgen, Maksim Tikhomirov, Linn Kristin Melberg
published in: Research Catalogue
"Hilsen Brettet" or "The greeting board" is a product designed to help those afflicted by dementia establish or maintain a relationship with those close to them. It does this by showing reminders of who their loved ones are and what they care about through a video with a short greeting from the person in question as well as a written description of them,
Hilsen Brettet / The Greeting Board
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Henning Kristoffer Borgen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
"Hilsen Tavla" or "The greeting board" is a product designed to help those afflicted by dementia establish or maintain a relationship with those close to them. It does this by showing reminders of who their loved ones are and what they care about through a video with a short greeting from the person in question as well as a written description of them,
3 concepts- group 4
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): AC, CHC, AN, KK
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This site displays the groups 3 concepts in research by design and tangible interaction.
"Hilsen Brettet" or "The greeting board" is a product designed to help those afflicted by dementia establish or maintain a relationship with those close to them. It does this by showing reminders of who their loved ones are and what they care about through a video with a short greeting from the person in question as well as a written description of them,open exposition comments (0)
"Hilsen Tavla" or "The greeting board" is a product designed to help those afflicted by dementia establish or maintain a relationship with those close to them. It does this by showing reminders of who their loved ones are and what they care about through a video with a short greeting from the person in question as well as a written description of them,open exposition comments (0)