OUR PRESENTERS
Doris C. Rusch
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This presentation explores the transformational potential of playing and designing digital games for mental health. It discusses the specific affordances of games and game design as vehicles for personal change and illustrates these affordances by way of two case studies: For the Records and Soteria – Dreams as Currency.
Doris C. Rusch is a game designer, researcher, play aficionado and holds a position as assistant professor for game design at DePaul University in Chicago where she founded the “Play for Change” lab. Before that she did post doctoral work at GAMBIT Game Lab, MIT, and Vienna University of Technology (Austria).
Rusch's work is focused on the theory and practice of game design, particularly in regard to games that model the "human experience”, create empathy and can be used for mental health activism. She was the lead designer and vision holder of award winning and featured projects such as "Zombie Yoga" for Kinect, "Elude", a metaphorical game on depression, "Akrasia", a game that models addiction, and together with filmmaker Anuradha Rana conceived of and produced the interactive documentary project “For the Records” that deals with young adults and mental disorders such as OCD, ADD, eating disorder and bipolar disorder. Having completed studies in Literature, Philosophy, Comparative Media Studies and English at Vienna University, she received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Interactive Systems in 2004.
The video, The Magician, works to illustrate a short story whose storyline and characters are meant to act as metaphors for the recovery process from mental illness.
Morgan Blair
The Magician
I am a third year undergraduate student at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I split my time between many departments including video, sound, writing, and performance, but am primarily interested in the field of Art Therapy. Most of my body of work revolves around personal explorations of mental illness and recovery.
Hart Ginsburg and Sze-Chin Lee
Aijo
As fellow collaborators, in the field of mental health and wellness, we created Aijo, an experimental documentary, in response to the various inhumanities in our contemporary society, including self-inflicted ones which often is unrecognized by our mainstream medias. Aijo intends to highlight the human spirit of resilience, despite the overwhelming circumstances that many face in dealing with trauma, abuse and loneliness. The title Aijo meaning “love” originates from Chinese Characters, in Japanese phonics since some of the footage was drawn from Tokyo.
Hart Ginsburg; Clinical Manager, Asian Human Services. Has worked on several experimental documentaries most recently the Sky with Dustin Yu. Hart used to live and work in Tokyo and eat Inari sushi daily until he almost overdosed.
Sze-Chin Lee; Art Therapist, Methodist Hospital of Chicago. Sze-Chin’s art practice focuses on themes of culture and nostalgia, and he utilizes borrowed memories to reimagine seemingly familiar and banal spaces. His artwork often combines the multimedia use of video, photography, and performance, in order to recreate experiences that question concepts of memory and time.
Murray Hamilton
Scan Art Therapy - Scanography
This short film briefly explains the new digital art making of using a flatbed scanner (scanography) and its application with adult mental health patients in an open art therapy group at a London hospital.
My background is in graphic art for advertising and publishing. I have a BA with Honours in Humanities, specialising in Art History. Completed a Foundation course in Art Therapy and also a Masters in Art Psychotherapy at Roehampton University, London, England.
I have art therapy experience in a secure Adult mental Health unit, Adolescent unit and in a primary school.
Since qualifying as art therapist (2014) I have worked part time in Adult mental health at West London Mental Health hospital.
Jackie Bousek
Digital Media Identities
Participants will work together in small groups to create a short video about their identity.
Jackie instructs an undergraduate course, Video and the Human Experience, at the School of the Art Institute about art therapy, film history and critique, and digital video studio techniques. Her art therapy and artistic careers are rooted in an autobiographical approach, wherein she encourages self-reflexivity through personal narratives and cultural investigations through art making.
Yemonja Smalls
Black, Check. Female, Check.
The Box Re-Defined.
By marking these boxes, walls shut out the internal reflection of these multifaceted jewels, presenting uniform narratives that are wholly inaccurate. These collaborative digital works portray these teenagers’ preferred views, not ones crammed into a defined shades, or gender that suggests predetermined paths marred by trauma.
Dr. Yemonja Smalls is a master’s student in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Art Therapy program. Her current internship is with Working with Womanhood (WOW) a Youth Guidance™ program at Bronzeville Scholastic Institute in Chicago, where she is implementing art therapy with African American teenage girls. She has extensive experiences working with children and adults with developmental disabilities and behavioral challenges. Yemonja is also an emerging Chicagoland artist who has exhibited at the Museum of Science and Industry, The South Side Community Arts Center, the School of the Art Institute as well as several other establishments.
Dustin Ryan Yu
Reconstructing Narratives Through Appropriated Video
Through a discussion and two short video screenings, an art therapy graduate student discusses his ongoing thesis research. Dustin’s thesis proposes the potential therapeutic value in developing an online-sourced video collage intervention to help Asian immigrants resolve acculturation difficulties.
Dustin Yu was born in Toronto in 1992 and relocated to Hong Kong with his family in 1998. Dustin returned to Toronto for university and received his B.Sc. (Hons) from University of Toronto in 2014, with specialization in Psychology, and a major in Visual Studies.
Dustin currently lives in Chicago, IL, and is pursuing an M.A. in Art Therapy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His primary mediums of choice include ceramics, drawing, and digital media.
Ryan Goh
Embracing Grief
A montage that stitches together different narratives of grief, and explores how we ultimately embrace it.
Ryan is a Singaporean student, currently pursuing his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
An interdisciplinary artist, he works with video, sculpture, photography, printmedia, painting and drawing.
Daniel Lanctot
Redacted/Reenacted: Art-Based Inquiry on the Experience of Childhood Sexual Abuse
This presentation explores how digital media can honor a past traumatic experience that has shattered one’s sense of meaning, while considering the constructive and destructive qualities of re-visiting these painful memories through creative process. Particular emphasis is given to the function of memory or the lack thereof in relation to trauma.
Daniel Lanctot is an art therapist and filmmaker. He currently works as an art therapist at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital in the General Adult Unit. Daniel has previous experience in settings including a community mental health center, residential treatment facilities for children and teens, and a nursing home for adults with dual diagnoses. Daniel’s filmmaking projects have focused on incorporating participatory processes to tell stories about human rights issues. For his graduate thesis project at the School of the Art Institute, Daniel used various forms of digital media to explore issues of sexual violence.
Raquel Hung
Meet Your Maker
“Meet Your Maker” is a short video that utilizes content from biblical text to address the idea of fear-based control systems in human genesis from a non-canonical perspective. It invites viewers to question the methods of presentation that have traditionally been utilized in portraying the being referred to as “God”.
Raquel Hung is a Visual and Critical Studies major currently attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is interested in addressing issues involving systems of control and exploring the conditions that perpetuate their continued existence. Raquel articulates these ideas through various mediums including writing, video, and installation work.