Orthosis is a personal manifestation of my past experiences living with my father’s multiple sclerosis. My dad was an entrepreneur and product designer of orthotic medical products. He and my grandfather helped to establish custom foam and sterile products for the medical industry. Around age forty he was diagnosed with MS and over the course of the next twenty years, I would witness his degeneration towards death at age 59. MS is a horrible and disabling disease that touches everyone involved. My dad in the initial stages of the disease and throughout the entire process would struggle to write his name. Something as simple as this was taken from him and is a reminder of the physical mobility we all take for granted on a daily basis. Orthosis attempts to encapsulate for the participant/audience what it’s like to experience and/or witness disability in real-time. Empathetic awareness is drawn out from the viewer while the frustration and clever problem-solving skills find its way to the participant wearing the orthotic analog device. The diagram below illustrates the communicative dynamics while the pictures show the evolutions of the prototype.
