A new colourful exhibition opened in the Evoluon on Valentine’s day: the Digital Wellness Center. It is a spa where smartphone users are pampered to rid them from the stress phones and other types of technology cause.
The exhibition space offers visitors ten types of ‘treatment’. “We want to help people handle technology in a more condidered and healthy manner”, says Koert van Mensvoort, director of the Next Nature Museum and originator of the exhibition.
Over the years we all got smartphones and now and then find it impossible to put them away. To many messages on my phone stress me out. Some people cannot stop scrolling or swiping. Others do not look other people in the eye anymore because they are always looking at their screens”.
Yet turning phones off does is necessarily the solution, Van Mensvoort thinks. We are not telling people ‘put it away and unplug’, but ‘we do recommend a better and healthier relationship with digital technology”.
Massage
One example of a digital wellness treatment is a pink installation with a massage chair and a screen in the centre. Visitors can take a seat and strike up a conversation with a chatbot about their relationship with technology. “Do you control technology or does technology control you?” the chatbot asks.
Depending on the answer the device starts a massage that can vary from gently to almost painful. Visitors are supposed to start thinking, says Van Mensvoort. “You no longer know who’s master, you or AI”.
Another good example is a frame with coloured lights on the inside. As soon as a visitor stands inside this frame, a voice explains that TikTok users never dance outside this frame, because they are no longer in the picture if they do. Visitors are then asked to start dancing but to stay in the frame. This illustrates the limiting effect of the phone immediately. “Take note: life does not stop outside the borders of this frame, life begins there”, the voice says.
Calm
Van Mensvoort wishes to show that technology can also create a calm mind. The exhibition also contains statues looking like trees. Their shape has a repeating pattern, as in a cauliflower. Scientific research suggests that these patterns have a soothing effect on the brain. And lo! One visit to the exhibition and you come out all zen.
Source: Studio040
Translated by Greta
