We are thrilled to announce a new project of the Medical Futures Lab: the Medical Media Arts Lab!
The Medical Media Arts Lab is an innovative online platform and media creation space where Rice undergraduates help medical professionals amplify their health messages through creative design. See what the student design teams are up to on our blog.
Students with arts, media, writing, and programming skills will get to apply and refine their abilities in real-world contexts as they work with physicians, nurses, public health practitioners, and patients in the Texas Medical Center who need help visualizing information for health communication. The Medical Media Arts Lab will generate direct benefits for all participants: students get to develop their portfolio through an applied, relevant context; health professionals get some reverse mentoring by digital natives and media that helps them improve their communication with patients; patients get to actively shape their relationships with providers through a collaborative process that empowers them to attain better health.
As if that’s not amazing enough, we’re going to expand this platform to engage medical students and residents in the media creation process as well. One of our core beliefs is that everyone involved in health care could learn a huge amount and improve their practice by participating in the act of public, creative communication. It’s a form of digital literacy. As Howard Rheingold puts it in Net Smart,
“When you start engaging in knowledge or media production, you tend to develop a much more sophisticated understanding of how knowledge and media is produced more generally.”
Possible project types include:
short videos, graphic design, infographics, software applications, virtual models, photography, documentary film, animations, sketchnotes, web design, creative writing, just plain good writing, painting, sculpture, and other forms of visual media arts.
Pretty great, right? Do you want in?
If you are a health professional or e-patient with a project idea – a visualization or communication problem you want to solve – leave us a comment (tab at upper left). If you are a creative professional in or near Houston and you’d like to be a guest critic, let us know! We want to have face time be part of this process, but there will be plenty of opportunities for non-local folks to participate, too.
The Medical Media Arts Lab is an innovative online platform and media creation space where Rice undergraduates will help medical professionals amplify their health messages through creative design. The Medical Media Arts Lab will enable Rice students with arts and media skills to apply and refine their abilities in real-world contexts by linking students with physicians and public health practitioners in the Texas Medical Center who need help visualizing information for patient education or other forms of health communication. The Medical Media Arts Lab will generate direct benefits for all participants: students get to develop their portfolio through an applied, relevant context; health professionals get media that helps them improve their communication with patients as well as reverse mentoring from digital natives; and patients experience greater understanding that empowers them to attain better health.
Image courtesy of Allison Hunter
We’re growing our team of multidisciplinary transmedia theorists and makers, and we’re inspired by the hackathon ethos of rapid prototyping as well as the “thinkathon” ethos of engaged theoretical praxis (thanks to the brilliant Wendy Chun for bringing that great term to my attention).
Image courtesy of Matthew Wettergreen
A sampling of our group includes the renowned multimedia artist Allison Hunter, bioengineer and co-founder of the Caroline Collective Matthew Wettergreen, Communications expert Tracy Volz, Archimage principal and Playnormous designer of award-winning games for health Richard Buday, media agnostic principal of ttweak consultancy and Houston. It’s Worth It. visionary Dave Thompson, and more.
Half of the reason we’re so excited about this new project at the Medical Futures Lab is that we have a serious celebrity lineup on deck to help make the vision a reality.
And every time we talk about this project, we find more top talent ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work! Watch this space for more information on becoming a community partner or a sponsor, and look for
And every time we talk about this project, we find more top talent ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work! Watch this space for more information on becoming a community partner or a sponsor, and look for some pilot projects to appear this summer. And, as always, if you want to get involved, let us know!
For more information or to get involved, leave a reply below.