Messy Realities - the Secret Life of Technology

Stories, objects and pictures as methods of engagement in research in assistive living technologies. Gemma Hughes, Joe Wherton and Beth McDougall discuss methods to engage people in research; visual and tactile methods, stories and story-boards, and co-production. The team counsel that some engagement activities don’t always go according to plan, and advise on being prepared to allow engagement to unfold in sometimes unanticipated ways.

Discussions about the protective powers of amulets, alarms and jewellery are interrupted by the arrival of a cuddly robot. Researchers, Museum facilitators and community members discuss the concerns of using technology to support ageing populations. Dr George Leeson of Oxford’s Institute of Population Ageing introduces the group to Paro, a therapeutic robot, created by Professor Takanori Shibata.

Researchers and community members go behind the scenes at the Pitt Rivers Museum to learn more about the care and ethics involved in conservation. Museum conservators, Jem and Andrew, provide insights into their work which illuminate new ways of understanding the complex nature of the Museum collections as living objects. Discussion about how objects are made to last, or to decay and what it means to preserve objects in the context of the museum sparks conversations about movement and stillness at the end of life.

The context of the Pitt Rivers Museum stimulates discussion about human-technology relations. Gemma Hughes asks Dr Laura van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, about the unique nature of the Museum. Dr Sara Shaw describes the differences between Utopian discourses of technology and the ways in which people relate to technology in everyday life, and Dr Joe Wherton talks about his research into the use of GPS tracking devices by people with dementia.

Exploring how everyday objects support health and wellbeing: medicines containers and mobility aids. Researchers, community members and Museum facilitators explore technologies and artefacts from the Museum collections in conversation about how people personalise, adapt and make things work for them. Discussions encompass: faith and trust in medicines; visible disabilities and hidden needs; identity, aesthetics and ideas of objects telling stories about their originating environments.

Professor Trisha Greenhalgh and colleagues discuss what assistive living technologies are and how they engaged the public in exploring assistive living technologies at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Professor Trisha Greenhalgh and Dr Gemma Hughes discuss what assistive living technologies are and how they can be researched. They have a conversation which ranges from a Zimbabwean Bush Pump (referring to de Laet and Mol, 2002) to Trish’s elephant bike. They discuss symbolic and cultural meanings of assistive living technology, naturalistic and ethnographic methods for studying technologies-in-use and post-actor network theory. Gemma introduces Jozie Kettle and Beth McDougall from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford who explain how they involve the Museum Collections as catalysts for conversations with the public.