‘Findings on Palpation’
2018

Installation and complete training room for medical examination, on loan from university hospital UMC Amsterdam

at P////AKT, Amsterdam


Visitors entered the installation via an extermination room in which medical students would usually train rectal examination with actors, observed by teaching staff through a one-way mirror. This replicated space featured furniture and educational material on loan from the identical training facility at Amsterdam’s university hospital.

The exhibition also featured a moving image work resulting from the shared research of Johann Arens and Dr. Alejandro Granados. Point of departure was the simple observation that both, medical training practice and experientially driven art are conditioned by a shared frustration; the limitation of touch. All findings of the collaboration were amalgamated in a two-channel film unpacking the relevance of tactility and contact-based simulation tools and their implications for the plasticity of sculpture as well as human anatomy.

The film features two haptic simulation systems; one constructed to allow medics in training to gain experience in patient examination and palpation, the other connecting an historical sculpture to a virtual environment with changed surface resistivity parameters. The increasing relevance of touch-based interfaces for our social environment calls for a critical engagement. The exhibition gauges the significance of computed simulation for cultural artefacts and the intimacy of the audience. What can a heightened awareness of tactility and palpation offer to the principles of contemporary medicine and personalised experience of sculpture?



_{The exhibition and the accompanying event programme was part of Public Art Amsterdam, realised in collaboration with Amsterdam UMC and generously supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Funds and Ammodo. The film project was also supported by SPACE Art+Technology Residency Program, Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science, Imperial College London, EPSRC London Deanery and Health Education North West London.}