Photostroller

The Photostroller is a movable device that shows a never-ending sequence of images drawn from the Internet, some related, others more random, like an electronic daydream. The flow can be influenced to stay close to a selected category of images, or allowed to drift away to more tenuously related subjects. We built the Photostroller for use by the aged residents of a care home and designed it with a mixed residential and medical aesthetic to reflect the setting. The idea was to support their reminiscences and to give them a way to travel beyond the care home setting without the pre-baked interpretations and general noise of television. It remained with the care home for several years, where it was adopted avidly by a group of older people who socialised in the “quiet room”, as well as by individuals who used it in their own rooms.

Click here for a conference paper about the project.

Date: 2010

A photograph of the Photostroller featuring a photograph of grandparents on screen
A photograph of the Photostroller in situ at the care home with a resident partially visible in the background
A photograph of a care home resident holding the Photostroller controller
A photograph of prototype components for the Photostroller controller
A photograph of the Photostroller featuring an image on the screen of Barack Obama attending a ceremony