The Golden Window

The Golden Window: Forging new links between Art & Healthcare through Immersive Filmmaking Techniques to Explore the Intersection between Science & Emotion within a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The Golden Window, filmed within 72 hours of opportunity, follows the medically induced cooling of Baby J after traumatic birth. The film provides an honest and powerfully immersive insight into the NICU, Cambridge. Co-created with staff, patients and carers the film asks how they 'feel' within this 'bubble'. The Golden Window explores the human condition and enhances the viewers intellectual and emotional response to complex environments. Partners The Rosie, Cambridge University’s Hospital Trust. This immersive documentary project employed co-creation, participatory techniques and perspective shifting visuals & sonic framework to capture the human condition and enhance the viewers intellectual and emotional response to the life-saving procedures (therapeutic hypothermia) at one of the country’s leading Neonatal Intensive Care Units, The Rosie, Cambridge. The Golden Window investigates how the filmmaker can engage audiences with the complex scientific and emotional tension of NICU through the creation of an original audio-visual framework to communicate the impact of scientific developments & understanding of the human condition in relations to critically ill newborns and their families in NICU (known as the bubble). Outputs included: a film documentary (theatrical & on-line); multi-screen exhibition; and an interactive user driven documentary. The project offered an alternative mode of filmmaking healthcare documentaries (e.g. ‘Rig filming’), has been distributed to and by stakeholders globally, and was short listed for The New York Times Op-Ed (SIDFF 2016), BUVFC (2016) and Winner of the AHRC Research in Film Award (2019)

Drone Filming: Creativity versus Regulations in Autonomous Art Systems. A Case Study

This article explores the impact of drone regulations on the narrative potential of drone filming. The central focus of this exploration is a Case Study analysis of the production of a multi-screen audio-visual digital installation, The Crossing (Patel, 2016). The Crossing [1], filmed in central London, utilized the use of a heavy weight Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) also known as a drone with a 5-kilo weight load capacity with the Alexa Mini WCU-4. Combined with the CForce Mini lens control system, the UAS gave unparalleled camera and lens control at extended ranges, providing complete pan, tilt and lens control and allowing dynamic moves in the air. The result was the ability to navigate through spaces to give intimate and playful shots that give the viewer ‘alternate’ versions of reality that only a ‘machine’ can provide. Artists, performers and filmmakers are finding new kinds of beauty through automated programming where the drones are not just capturing the story but the machines themselves become the story. However, the operational scope of drones is limited by legal and health and safety regulations, particularly within built up urban environments. These regulations govern the vertical and horizontal distance from objects and people, line of sight, time constraints, weather conditions as well as security implications. Further restrictions include requiring a trained and fully licensed crew with permission from the relevant aviation bodies. This article seeks to answer whether these restrictions limit the creativity of the artist or challenge the creator to consider alternate ways of using these Autonomous Art Systems to inform the aesthetic scope of the captured image. This article will draw on a combination of original filming and broadcast examples to examine how legal and security restrictions on UAS inform the narrative and aesthetic realization of the final art form and subsequent emotional and physical response of the spectator

Competing Goals of Representation

This workshop, gave an extensive grounding of the considerations we need to make when using the ‘visual’ in either our research or dissemination processes. The workshop considered the drawbacks and possibilities of visual research dissemination through social media pathways using the lens of representation in a distracted-spectatorship culture (Nichols, 2017). The goal to strengthen participants’ awareness of themselves (and their work) as public-facing social actors, and their ethical responsibility towards those with whom they work and research. Dr Shreepali Patel of the StoryLab at Anglia Ruskin University spoke of her fascinating work of ‘hyper reality’ through the way in which her work seeks to uncover and explore diverse stories. She spoke about the work of StoryLab, and how they work with narratives across multiple modes, including film, sound, alternative reality, digital technology and more; they seek to combine storytelling with creative practice, to tell stories that they hope can have an impact. Triggered by the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution, the consideration of representation is particularly pertinent. In particular, Shreepali spoke about a recent piece of work, 'The Crossing', the story of a young woman’s journey of being sex trafficked. She talked about the way in which the StoryLab had represented this story; using a physical installation made up of nine containers, designed by different artists. The purpose was to enable the ‘viewer’ to feel some part of what this experience would feel like. Shreepali reflected on the power of multimodal experiences and their ability to see the combination between individual and collective experiences

Memory and the Value of Life

This presentation and screening is part of a wider body of a multi-modal archive capturing the stories of frontline healthcare workers who harnessed the power of their creative voices to make sense of their world during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in the UK and the USA. Created as a time-capsule, this presentation temporarily 'unlocked' the film component, releasing the voices in front of a live audience, to test whether it was 'too soon' to reflect back on the first wave and the value of life in front of an international audience (American, Italian, Australian, Italian, German, Caribbean), in Italy where the first global lockdown occurred

Placemaking and (Digital) Storytelling

Placemaking is not only connected to a physical space; it can also be virtual. In this session we looked at how stories, digital or otherwise, are connecting people and enhancing their wellbeing. The examples presented showed how storytelling could create a sense of belonging and how the digital world adds value to that experience. Placemaking is about people, about living together, about a sense of belonging and carving spaces together, about co-creation and sharing stories. And it is crucial for society, especially now as it enters a new dimension in times of a global pandemic that affects us all. What will placemaking look like after COVID-19? What did we learn and what can we take with us to the future? How will we socialise, move from one place to another, (inter)act with and in public spaces after the pandemic? These questions guided a series of four online sessions which were held between the 7th and 30th of April (2020), connecting placemaking with the future of cities, tourism, the arts, urban design and digital storytelling. Experts and other interested persons were brought together across borders to discuss possible ways forward by learning from good practices. The response was overwhelming, both from the speakers that were contacted to take part, and from the diverse participants eager to share and exchange ideas. The concepts behind placemaking are not new and date back to the 60s when writers and urbanists like Jane Jacobs , William Whyte and Kevin A. Lynch offered new ideas on urban design catering for residents

The Arriving Storybook: Bi-directional Storytelling Through Creative Practice and Interactive Media Design

Arriving is an interdisciplinary research project that incorporated audiovisual and interactive technology to capture and disseminate multigenerational narratives surrounding movement, migration, and arriving at a new place. Employing co-creation and storytelling techniques, conversations and interactions between younger and older generations centered around personal objects related to arriving were documented in audio recordings and portrait photographs and shared in public gallery exhibitions along with an interactive, online e-book. This article reflects on the creative process in designing the Arriving project and, subsequently, the construction of a digital storybook, which has been distributed internationally to foster two-way conversations within international communitie

Art and science: Promoting understanding and empathy through film

This article introduces a cross-disciplinary collaboration that has brought together the disciplines of film (art) and midwifery (art and science) in the making of a creative documentary to evaluate new learning opportunities and reflective practice for student midwives. The case study film, The Golden Window, was filmed in a neonatal intensive care unit over 72 hours and screened to a group of second-year midwifery students in the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, before their placements in neonatal intensive care. The students recorded their thoughts and impressions of the film. Their responses are summarised and reflected upon within this paper, with the underlying intent to examine whether this innovative interaction between art and science can provide an appropriate pedagogic framework for effective learning through creative and artistic means

Combining Science with Art to Educate and Motivate Patients Prior to Colorectal Cancer Screening

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US despite wide use of colonoscopy to prevent CRC and CRC-related mortality. Colonoscopy is used to identify and remove lesions that will lead to cancer, however, most deaths occur because lesions are not detected or completely removed during the procedure. Patients play a crucial role in the detection component of colonoscopy: the better the colon is prepared, the higher the chance of detection of all polyps and cancers. In general, patients are instructed to clean the colon by way of a paper or web-based form that lists the objective (scientific) steps involved; unfortunately this too often does not result in a well-prepared colon. Behavior is known to be heavily influenced by emotion. As the first phase of a smart education research project we created an artistic and instructional documentary in which patients engage with the educational content through emotional responses; i.e., we motivate patients to follow instructions by combining scientific with emotional aspects of CRC prevention including preparation of the colon prior to colonoscopy. In the second research phase we will test whether use of the documentary results in improved colon preparation

Immersive Storytelling. The Crossing Case Study

Invited Speaker. Tactics and Praxis. Trinity College, University of Cambridge. This series of seminar workshops aims to inspire creative approaches to academic work for its participants, including informing tactics for reading, writing, creative practice and practice-based research. Open to all, the aim is to conceptualise and foster spaces within the constraints of institutional demands for creativity, play, slowness and pleasure. Each of the seminars will bring together, in dialogue, a short presentation from an invited speaker on their own research and practice in areas relating to modern languages and culture, with a specified reading raising theoretical questions of tactics and praxis in academic work.Presentation of Immersive Storytelling case studyEach of the seminars will bring together, in dialogue, a short presentation from an invited speaker on their own research and practice in areas relating to modern languages and culture, with a pre-circulated reading raising theoretical questions of tactics and praxis in academic work. An interdisciplinary seminar and workshop series on academic ‘outputs’ and creativity in the era of the ‘achievement society’ The seminar will consider creative approaches to academic ‘outputs’ both theoretically and pragmatically, casting a critical eye over the embedding of academic work in what Byung-Chul Han has termed, ‘the achievement society’, in which we have gone from the disciplinary negativity of ‘should’ to the equally imperative positivity of ‘can’: ‘Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation” (Han,The Burnout Society, 2015: 9). Inspired by recent work in the USA in the ‘public emotion project’ (see Cvetkovich, Depression: A Public Feeling, 2012), the seminar will explore intersections between personal and collective experience and intellectual praxis. It will examine daily and institutional ‘habits’, and how they might be reinvigorated through a creative understanding of ‘craft’, examining the related and cross-disciplinary questions of stitching, (inter)weaving and montage. The series, which will be open to all, aims to inspire creative approaches to academic work for its participants, including informing tactics for reading, writing, creative practice and practice-based research

Whose Art Is It, Anyway?: Investigating the Impact of the Active Viewer on the Authorship of the Art Form

This paper examines the creative approach to the process of constructing a short documentary for an interactive (active viewer) platform compared to that of a single-screen (passive viewer) platform. The single-screen film employs an author-driven narrative and is constructed using a “traditional” form of organization, software, and coding for cinematic screening. The interactive platform employs a non-linear approach, compressive coding, and alternative software which allows for viewer activity to create a series of “journeys” within the project. This article reflects on whether the variance in method and approach affects the creative process of the artist and how this represents a shift in the power balance or authorship from artist to viewer, and sits within a wider discussion of the interplay between filmmaker, subject, and audience within a landscape of emerging and converging diverse platforms