Experimenta Social #22
As the integration of technology increases within our everyday life, artists & designers are finding new ways to harness its impact on our health and wellbeing. How can we adapt technology to best suit our needs? Can technology be integrated into who we are? By experimenting with how we personally respond to technology aesthetically and emotionally, we now have an era of new devices and programs that are aimed at augmenting the way we define ourselves.
Experimenta Social is presented in partnership with ACMI X and supported by Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO.
About the Speakers
Thea Baumann
Thea Baumann
Thea Baumann is a creative technologist and CEO of Metaverse Makeovers®. Her expertise lies in Human-Computer Interaction, emerging technologies, augmented reality manufacturing, and digital art. She is the inventor and designer of Metaverse Makeovers’ products and experiences. Thea has racked up considerable time in China, having explored the frontiers of China’s Shanzhai electronic design and Post-90s digital culture. Thea is Founder and Director of Metaverse’s entities trading and operating in Australia, Hong Kong and China: Metaverse Group Pty Ltd; Metaverse Ltd; Metaverse Makeovers Pty ltd; 超宇美⼈人.
Leah Heiss
Leah Heiss
Leah Heiss is a designer and RMIT academic working at the nexus of design, health, and technology. Her practice traverses device, service and experience and her process is deeply collaborative, working with experts from nanotechnology and health services through to manufacturing. Her health technologies include Diabetes Jewellery; biosignal sensing emergency jewellery; and swallowable devices to detect disease.
Facett, the world’s first modular hearing aid that Leah designed for Blamey Saunders hears won the 2018 Good Design Award and the CSIRO Design Innovation Award. Leah has won five Good Design Awards in total and her work is part of Museums Victoria heritage collection. She has exhibited at the Melbourne Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art and other galleries locally and globally.
Leah teaches RMIT’s Masters of Design Futures and the Interior Design honours program. Her teaching practice traverses embedded practice in cancer care and transdisciplinary design focused on health sector innovation.
