Diana Maria Gallicchio Domingues

Devising Mobile Apps: Participatory Design for Endemic Diseases Transmitted by the Mosquito Aedes (Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya)

Dengue, zika and chikungunya are endemic diseases transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that are affecting different countries in the world. Current efforts to control the mosquito are more effective when combined with the collaboration of population. Efforts to limit the number of cases have not been sufficiently effective and community engagement is essential to control the number of mosquitoes in the environment. This chapter describes the process of development of mobile apps designed to promote health and combat Aedes. The strategy was to engage the community and students from different levels in a city in of Brazil to devise, in a participatory design approach, apps to “fight” Aedes.

Envisioning Ecosystems - Biodiversity, Infirmity and Affectivity

Earth’s biosphere, climate biodiversity crises and environmental issues are raising a profound level of awareness concerning the collective responsibility toward Earth’s life and demanding the responsibility for promoting a healthy ecosystem. A new transdisciplinar group of Brazilian researchers at the University of Brasilia at Gama (FGA), working on the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, shares with the international community of Art and TechnoScience several themes related to the ecosystem biodiversity and the extremophile condition (Bec, 2007). We consider our responsibility and the urgent attention to life in our country’s huge territory, while facing the effects of an endemic infection of tropical climates and working for the preservation of the Biomes in Amazon Forest, the lung of the planet. Our collaborative projects are concerned with infirmity of the territory and the human invasion and destruction of the ecosystem self-organizing defence. Consequently, we work on health care and affective geographies, in the sense postulated by the geographer/philosopher Milton Santos (Santos, 2008 & Santos, 2009) renewed by geolocated and ubiquitous condition and sentient technologies. Interventions in social networks allow people to exist in the sense of being here and there, consisting of a largely sense of place, to be co-located, being connected everywhere, with an awareness of place amplified by the power to take care of the ecosystem. Our project leads with landscapes as a living organism in a given geography, being socially engineered, from the conceptual subjective use of space to the advanced mobile telematic computing and ubiquitous data processing and data information visualization by applying the perspective of acting everywhere – and specially in extreme and hostile space.

Biocybrid systems and the re-engineering of life

The reengineering of life expanded by perceptual experiences in the sense of presence in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is the theme of our investigation in collaborative practices confirming the artists´ creativity close to the inventivity of scientists and mutual capacity for the generation of biocybrid systems. We consider the enactive bodily interfaces for human existence being co-located in the continuum and symbiotic zone between body and flesh - cyberspace and data - and the hybrid properties of physical world. That continuum generates a biocybrid zone (Bio+cyber+hybrid) and the life is reinvented. Results reaffirm the creative reality of coupled body and mutual influences with environment information, enhancing James Gibsons ecological perception theory. The ecosystem life in its dynamical relations between human, animal, plants, landscapes, urban life and objects, bring questions and challenges for artworks and the reengineering of life discussed in our artworks in technoscience. Finally, we describe an implementation in which the immersion experience is enhanced by the datavisualization of biological audio signals and by using wearable miniaturized devices for biofeedback.

The Drama of Dengue Fever: Civic-oriented Journalists, Community and Artists Fighting Dengue

This paper describes a transdisciplinary approach that takes places in South of Brazil with the aim to contribute with an eco-bio-social problem: dengue fever. Inspired by enactive theories about relation between body x environment, the authors present here a nontraditional multifaceted bottom-up intervention, designed by civic-oriented journalists and artists to promote health and mobilize a small community in Maringá. The intention is to promote healthier behavior in a participatory perspective when citizens can produce and share their narratives. The content was used as creative material to produce multimedia news, sketch and prototype mobile apps with the support of community.

Creative technologies and innovation: health and well-being

Creative technologies and innovation: health and well-being Ted Krueger, Diana Maria Gallicchio Domingues and Louise Poissant School of Architecture, Rensslaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA; LART Founder and Director – Laboratory of Researcher in Art and TechnoScience CNPq Researcher (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) Senior Collaborator Professor at the Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering FGA and at the Graduate Program on Science and Technologies in Health – FCE – University of Brasilia – Research Collaborator at the Institute of Computing – University of Campinas Brazil; Faculté des arts, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

Walking and health: an enactive affective system

ABSTRACT This essay presents a transdisciplinary project whose objective is to create a sensorised insole built with latex (Hevea brasiliensis) to measure physiological variations of the human body, as well as to graphically represent affective reciprocal exchanges of the human behaviour with the environment. The purpose is to improve our enactive system through the use of various physiological sensors (e.g. pressure, galvanic skin response and temperature sensors), which can be processed and visualised by revealing the affective exchanges of the body while walking in the city, pinned on a map as data visualisation. Inspired by the enaction theories, the output of sensors and devices application that models the perception as a laboratory phenomenon, as proposed by Dr Ted Krueger, the investigation directed by Dr Domingues is conceived for the expanded sensorium and for the reengineering of life. The artwork is inserted in the domain of aesthetic investigation of art as experiences related to topics on art and technoscience for innovation in health. The created prototype was tested in the city at different locations and the results demonstrated its use as a kind of personal assistant for vital signals by configuring an enactive system added of affective qualities which possibilities to reveal the ‘pathos’, or the affective narratives experienced in the emergent reciprocity with the city. The insole biomaterial, created by Dr Suelia Rodrigues (BioEngeLab), has been successfully used to measure the foot pressure and to serve as a health assistant, especially for people with diabetes. The signal-processing approaches, explored in Biomedical engineering by Dr Cristiano Miosso, were empowered by data visualisation approaches developed by Dr Ricardo Torres (University of Campinas). Finally, we consider this prototype a creative technology for mhealth, which is a disruptive innovation, by providing other forms of existence.

Development of simulation interfaces for evaluation task with the use of physiological data and virtual reality applied to a vehicle simulator

This paper aims at describing an experimental platform used to evaluate the performance of individuals at training immersive physiological games. The platform proposed is embedded in an immersive environment in a CAVE of Virtual Reality and consists on a base frame with actuators with three degrees of freedom, sensor array interface and physiological sensors. Physiological data of breathing, galvanic skin resistance (GSR) and pressure on the hand of the user and a subjective questionnaire were collected during the experiments. The theoretical background used in a project focused on Software Engineering, Biomedical Engineering in the field of Ergonomics and Creative Technologies in order to presents this case study, related of an evaluation of a vehicular simulator located inside the CAVE. The analysis of the simulator uses physiological data of the drivers obtained in a period of rest and after the experience, with and without movements at the simulator. Also images from the screen are captured through time at the embedded experience and data collected through physiological data visualization (average frequency and RMS graphics). They are empowered by the subjective questionnaire as strong lived experience provided by the technological apparatus. The performed immersion experience inside the CAVE allows to replicate behaviors from physical spaces inside data space enhanced by physiological properties. In this context, the biocybrid condition is expanded beyond art and entertainment, as it is applied to automotive engineering and biomedical engineering. In fact, the kinesthetic sensations amplified by synesthesia replicates the sensation of displacement in the interior of an automobile, as well as the sensations of vibration and vertical movements typical of a vehicle, different speeds, collisions, etc. The contribution of this work is the possibility to tracing a stress analysis protocol for drivers while operating a vehicle getting affective behaviors coming from physiological data, mixed to embedded simulation in Mixed Reality.