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. 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. In the initial stages of the disease and throughout the entire process he would struggle to write his name. Something as simple as the loss of being able to write is a reminder of the physical mobility we all take for granted on a daily basis.
Orthosis attempts to encapsulate for the participant and audience what it is like to experience 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 images below illustrates the communicative dynamics and the prototype evolutions.
