I'm sad to report that "Fran Serenade", Second Life avatar name of the senior citizen I wrote about in 2013, recently passed away at the age of 91. Her daughter Barbara ("Barbie Alchemi" in SL) tells me by e-mail that she's planning a remembrance service in Second Life for the many members of the community who loved her mother. "I would like to plan a day of music for her memorial in about a month," she tells me. More details are coming soon, so if you're a musician interested in performing for this service, get in touch with Barbie or register your interest in Comments below.
Fran lived a long rich life, and in her late 80s, suffering from symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, discovered that playing Second Life worked as a kind of physical therapy:
“As I watched [my avatar],” as she tells me through e-mail, “I could actually feel the movements within my body as if I were actually doing tai chi in my physical life (which is not possible for me).” She made this avatar-based tai chi a daily routine while meditating, and then sensed it was having an impact on herself:
“For a year I have sat and slept in a motorized lounge chair that brings me to a standing position when I push a button.” After weeks of watching her avatar practice tai chi, however, “I could feel that my body had become stronger.” Until a day came where she was able to stand without motorized assistance. “Now,” she says, “I can go from a sitting to standing position without even using my arms to push against the arm rests. This has been absolutely thrilling for me.”
This isn’t the only apparent physical effect spurred by her Second Life usage, for she reports it’s also helped her with physical equilibrium: “For years when going down a curb to get into a car I would put my hand on the car for balance. One day I said to myself, ‘I know I can step down from this curb and keep my balance because I have seen my avatar do it.’” She succeeded at doing just that. And, she adds, “I have maintained that ability for two years now.”
These are very dramatic claims, but they first came to me through my friend Tom Boellstorff, Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and fellow with the Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing.
Read the rest here. Boellstorff and a colleague, by the way, received a National Science Foundation grant to study the effect that Fran reported, and explore how it might be applied to others suffering from Parkinson's and other ailments:
Thomas Boellstorff of the University of California, Irvine and Donna Davis of the University of Oregon, Eugene, will collaborate to explore: (a) how people with disabilities use digital media with regard to embodiment and social interaction; (b) how this changes self-understanding as disabled and affects physical-world experiences of disability; (c) what aspects of embodied online social interaction are linked to specific disabilities; (d) the role of digital making and the effect of differing platforms and devices.
So in her last few years, Fran helped pioneer the use of virtual worlds for physical therapy -- a tremendous potential achievement that could benefit millions in decades to come.
She was a lovely and inspiring human. Thanks for sharing this. All the best to her family and many friends.
Posted by: rikomatic | Wednesday, March 13, 2019 at 01:05 PM