CF LOUNGE

Published on: 03-04-2006

CF_LOUNGE interactive installation
SOFIA CHIDREN’S HOSPITAL, ROTTERDAM

(With Maurer United Architects and Hans van Bentum)

Initiated by Dr. Harm Tiddens
Sponsored by Golden Earring and Henk Schiffmacher
Programming and design: Carlo Prelz
Production: Jeroen Evereart, Mothership.

Geert Mul 2006

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease. A defective gene causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life threatening lung infections.

Once a year, young CF patients are coming to the Sofia Children’s Hospital for extensive examination. To save the patients the frustrating and tiring process of spending a full day all over the hospital for the different tests, a special room was created where those examinations can take place: The CF LOUNGE.

Three screens were placed in the CF LOUNGE: the Interactor, the Informer and the Entertainer.
The interactor is a touch-screen with which the patient is able to make photo’s, drawings and writings. The patient can decide to share his creations, so other patients can look at them during their visit at the CF Lounge, or the patient can make them ‘private’. In any case, the creations are saved and year after year, the patients have access to their own personal database of images, texts and photo’s at the CF_LOUNGE in the hospital.

The patient can also sent his creations to the ‘entertainer’. By doing this, the images are sent to a plasma screen after passing trough a ‘computerized kaleidoscope.’ Creating spectacular imagery on the plasma screen.
The informer screen tells the patient about the time of the day, the next visit, and how many hours are still to go.

Once a year, young CF patients are coming to the Sofia Children’s Hospital for extensive examination. To save the patients the frustrating and tiring process of spending a full day all over the hospital for the different tests, a special room was created where those examinations can take place: The CF LOUNGE.

The patients are returning to this same room, year after year… The Sofia Children’s Hospital invited three artists to create a complete and total design for the CF Lounge. MAURER architects, Hans van Bentum and Geert Mul were asked to make an artwork/design suitable for this special room.

Geert Mul created a digital artwork using the concept of “orientation”. Aiming to help the young patients to orientate in time during this yearly visit to the hospital. Time as in ‘long term’ time: the lengthy process of the disease itself, and as in ‘short term time’, the time of one single day of extensive examination.