Your Loved Ones
An independent lifestyle is one of the highest values of western societies. Thus, the fear of becoming dependent on another person due to physical or mental illness, is among the most widespread, yet often suppressed fears in our society. We hardly think about the end of our own life and the effects of our own biological and personal degenera- tion until we experience the passing of a family member or friend.
This project explores how people relate to the possible loss of their cognitive capabilities in the context of dementia and, more especially, the Alzheimer’s disease by proposing a self-diagnosis device that measures one of the many symptoms related to this group of diseases: the inability to recognise your loved ones.
A device measures a person’s emotional response to an immersive presentation of photos of its family members and close friends, which it collects from the person’s social media streams and a private archive of memories specifically set up for this purpose. The results of this measurement process are provided in the form of a print-out that compares the emotional response intensity over time and combines it with the person’s location and communication activity – also from the same social networks. This enables the device to give a low-level feedback on the person’s activity and the possible reasons for variations in their emotional response. Thus, over the course of many years, the device acts as an intimate accessory for measuring your individual ability to recognise your loved ones.
»Your Loved-Ones« tries to raise questions about the inter- pretation and communication of these results and how we relate to the perspective of our own cognitive degeneration and possible counter-measures.
Thanks to Matthias Steffen (Photos) and Steffen Fiedler!
Stephan Thiel, 2012