Creating aesthetically resonant environments for the handicapped, elderly and rehabilitation: Sweden

CARE HERE (Creating Aesthetically Resonant Environments for the Handicapped, Elderly and Rehabilitation) was realised as a full European IST (Information Society Technologies) project, involving adults and children with learning disability, PMLD (Profound and Multiple Learning Disability), Parkinson’s disease and the aged. The delimited focuses in this paper are the experiments involved in preparing, developing and authenticating ‘aesthetic resonance’ within the Swedish partners’ contribution. It reports on the authors’ input in development of the successful open architectural algorithm for motion detection that empowered digital painting from gesture that supplemented music creation and its use as a therapeutic supplement. Findings point at the potential use of interactive virtual environments for therapy across dysfunction and age where creativity and/or gameplay are targeted. This paper also briefly reports on the problems encountered that severely limited the research and ended up causing the project’s premature cessation.