Hong Kong's Body Brush is fallen out of art

In 2003, Young Hay presented Body Brush with Dancer Mui Cheuk Yin in Microwave Media Art Festival in Hong Kong and since then the work traveled to Ars Electronica and other festivals. The work initiated a swarm of discussions about how art and technology are intergrated but since then the project is shifting the paradigm from art to an therapeutic instrument.
From Positive Technology Journal:
An article recently appeared in Time magazine reports about Smart Ambience Therapy (SAT), a series of interactive technology programs designed by Horace Ho-Shing Ip to help children overcome the effects of abuse.
From the article:

Abused children are often withdrawn children. Ip had never considered using virtual reality to help them, but in 2002, he held a public exhibition of a virtual-paintbrush program he was working on and was surprised to see that emotionally closed kids took to it, using their bodies to create ebullient paintings. The kids' parents were shocked, but perhaps they shouldn't have been.

Since the 1990s, virtual reality has aided medicine by allowing victims of phobia or post-traumatic stress disorder to confront simulations of their fears: an oversize tarantula, a balcony on the 77th floor. Paint Splash was a natural outgrowth of those therapies.

Another program in the SAT product line helps abused kids confront aggressors by letting them shove away approaching grizzlies. A third teaches aggressive kids to reach out and touch virtual ribbons that dart away from jerky movements but glide toward smoother ones.

SAT has won a gold medal at Geneva's Salon International des Inventions, but Ip's success is evidenced best when kids come to use the lab. Many of them begin by covering the screen in black. "By the end," Ip says, "they're throwing blue. Art therapists will tell you, 'That's calm.'"

This website provides more information about Smart Ambience Therapy, including a demonstration video:



The project Smart Ambientce Therapy aims to develop a new form of therapy treatment by integrating the existing art and drama therapy to the virtual environment through an innovative exploitation of the Body Brush technology.



1. To use the body as a brush in virtual reality space. Body Brush will be used as a tool for communication and a creative emotional outlet for young clients recovering from physical/ or emotional abuse.

2. The body, acting as a paintbrush, can be seen as a unique process of accessing one's internal world, as it can help a client get in touch with emotional material through kinesthetic movements.

3. The body brush medium will be integrated into the art therapy process to help address feelings around grief and depression, distrust, fear and anger and low self-esteem resulting from abuse. What can emerge from this creative outlet are new feelings of self worth, strength, hope and coping strategies to deal with changes.

4. Through using this technique, a sense of mastery in using computer can be achieved. The client can also 'get into' the image.

The Death of the Critic

In an age of book clubs, celebrity endorsements and a blogosphere staffed with thousands of amateur critics, what role is there for the professional critic as an arbiter of artistic value? Is cultural value just a matter of personal taste, with one opinion as good as any other? What function does professional criticism fulfil now, and should we lament the passing of the authority which previous generations of critics enjoyed?

Come and find out, as the ICA has assembled a line-up of expert speakers for this unique and unmissable event:

John Sutherland (author The Boy Who Loved Books)

Michael Coveney (whatsonstage.com)

Rachel Bowlby (author Carried Away)

Adrian Searle (The Guardian)

Chair: Ronan McDonald (author The Death of the Critic)

The ICA is located on The Mall, London SW1.
Open Monday 12pm-11pm, Tues-Sat 12pm-1am, Sunday 12pm-10.30pm
Galleries open daily 12pm-7.30pm during exhibitions

Extended Reading :


The Death of the Critic
Ronan McDonald
Due for release on 27/09/2007

The critic has long been a reviled figure, at best the mere handmaiden of the 'creative' arts, at worst a parasite upon them. For Brendan Behan, critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it is done. They have seen it done every day. But they are unable to do it themselves. In an age of book clubs, celebrity endorsements and internet bloggers, what role is there now for the professional critic as an arbiter of artistic value? Are literature and the arts only a question of personal taste? Is one opinion 'as good as another'?Ronan McDonald's "The Death of the Critic" seeks to defend the role of the public critic. McDonald argues against recent claims that all artistic value is simply relative and subjective. This forceful, accessible and eloquent book considers why high-profile, public critics, such as William Empson, F.R.Leavis or Lionel Trilling, become much rarer in the later twentieth century. A key reason for the 'death of the critic', he believes, is the turn away from value judgements and the very notion of artistic quality amongst academics and scholars. Alert to the cultural and academic climate of both the USA and the UK, this controversial and timely intervention will engage scholars, students, critics and anyone concerned with the role of literary and artistic culture in the public sphere.