Jonathan Duckworth is an interactive designer/artist based in Melbourne. He is part of the design company ZedBuffer, which occupies an interesting niche between interactive design and art.The objects and installations that he designs are embodied, aesthetic, interactive and functional. Some examples of his work include: ‘The ‘Embracelet’, a prototype hand bracelet designed to develop and increase hand grip strength for patients recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury (ABI); and ‘Elements’, pictured above.
This latter work is one of his most interesting because he worked with Peter Wilson in Health Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne. Elements is an interactive tabletop that they both produced in trial with patients suffering from ABI. It provides aesthetic visual, aural and tactile feedback to users, almost dynamically ‘rewarding’ them for skill, progress and level of movement in their upper limbs.
Jonathan’s work now seems to be moving toward the burgeoning field of art and health (See this interview here for his thoughts about working in this area). Interestingly, his background in the late 1990s was in virtual reality design, especially exploring the social interactions of people in VR spaces. He makes the comment in the above interview that: ‘‘I am interested in taking the virtual back into the physical.”. Something that carries over from his previous work in VR design, is to create interactive interfaces such as the tabletop and hand bracelet that leave the participant feeling physically unencumbered by the technology.