Lauren Kalman is a visual artist who has explored perspectives of beauty and body image in our culture (www.laurenkalman.com) Ms. Kalman has an MFA and is an Ass’t. Prof. at Wayne State Univ. and she is known for her wearable sculpture, electronic adornments and body piercing that track afflictions. She has recently begun collaborating with Kipp Bradford, a design engineer, and they are producing wearable interactive electronic artwork in the form of broaches that will make visible the hidden world of biological virus spread by social contact. HUH? These broaches will mimic the spread of a contagious disease as the wearable broach that holds the hardware interacts with another wearer of a broach. The data gathered will create a model, in this case of how the HPV virus spreads. The Virus Visualization’s data will be down-loaded to a web-based interface that can be accessed and the modeling will grow and be visualized when each contributor adds data. Being able to simulate the spread of disease through social contact by utilizing an adornment is a unique idea that blends art, engineering and performance action to create a scientific model of a disease dynamic. It is expected that 50 broaches will be distributed at a public event later this year and that the interaction between these people will be choreographed to show how the Alpha carrier affects the group.
