V2P Prehensor - general reflection on grip strength and test of multi layered customized claw covers
Posted on July 26, 2010
After reading a scientific article about grip strength, after reflecting about my current experience, I figured it was time for an update on grip strength.
Based on a very nice article of Markenscoff et al. (1990), it becomes clear that to securely grip an object in three-dimensional space one requires a rather large number of fingers if there is no friction at all.
Filed Under Artwork and Do It yourself Corner, Cable control, Design principles, Mechanical works, Prosthesis, Prosthetic hook, Prototype development, V2P Prehensor | Leave a Comment
Artistic visions for prosthetic design XIV - Albert Loos and ornamental minimalism
Posted on May 23, 2010
My prosthetic arms have one function - to relieve tension. That is the targeted goal for me and everybody else - both functionally (robust, comfortable, reliable, ADL, EODF) but also through their design (the arm’s visual has to negotiate a reality between me and the others) were we to distinguish these.
It just so appears that the more authentic and real the arm comes across as, the less tense people seem do react.
Just what on earth is authentic?
Albert Loos, “Ornament and Crime”. Humanity is still to groan under the slavery if ornament. Evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament. - Ethics and aesthetics are made interchangeable because one’s own very choice of materials raises fundamental issues of truth versus falsehood, of the genuine versus the surrogate.
I really liked to read this at first. I did wonder what was wrong with me since everybody loves and wants tattoos - but when I looked at some ornaments or tattoos for my arm, for my stump, for my body or for my prosthesis, I felt my breathing get narrow and my heart clench - and I realized that a lot of this was not for me. As much as this resonated with me at first, Loos wrote this as polemic counter point when an imperial Austria seemed to - design wise - drowning, suffocating in a degree of ornamentalism that would be hard to imagine today.
Filed Under Artwork and Do It yourself Corner, Design principles, Prosthesis, Red Hand Series / Technical Design Series | Leave a Comment
Stigmatization and demonization I - being terrorized by the public
Posted on October 5, 2008
“You’re different because one or more of your physical attributes doesn’t work properly, and that difference makes me uncomfortable but intrigues me at the same time” (prime perception of mainstream society, see The Cinema of Isolation, p. xii).
I would not go as far as attributing negative experience with other people to causes such as stigmatization and demonization each and every time. That itself would mean to somewhat demonize others. We are all different and not everyone has a great day always.
Yet there is little left to guess in a recent 2009 campaign of the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie. Here I feel that we are very clearly equated with fake watches and fake people. Yet, the question of authenticity is a serious issue not just in prosthetics but in society. What is it that we see as ‘real’?
On the other hand, no other person that looks at me as disabled person would ever admit to stigmatizing or demonizing me because of visible disability. Yet, it is undeniably one of the bigger factors that may affect a non-disabled person and at the same time mostly outside of reach as this is a matter located anywhere but even remotely close to an acceptable dinner table subject.
And particularly initially - but also for some people still after two decades of being an amputee - the stigmatization and demonization by the public has something deeply terrorizing and intimidating about it. It is worth dedicating some time to this subject before starting to talk back.
Ultimately we will have to look at design principles from their social meaning. For that, both sociology of disability and design principles are relevant areas of observation.
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