Where Art Meets Health and Wellbeing Through Emerging Technologies

Can technology help us not only hear another person's healthcare story, but experience and understand it in a completely different way?

Professor Camille Baker, Professor of Interactive and Immersive Arts and Senior Tutor for the Digital Direction programme at the Royal College of Art, will be hosting an exploration into how immersive technology is transforming art and healthcare.

Camille is an interdisciplinary digital artist, curator and researcher whose career has spanned immersive experiences, interactive art, Extended Reality (XR), participatory performance, e-textiles, wearable technologies and digital art.

She has taught digital and interactive arts and design since 2002, first in Canada and subsequently in the UK, and has held a number of senior academic and research roles.

She is also the author of New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance (2018) and, with Dr Kate Sicchio, Intersecting Art and Technology in Practice: Techne/Technique/Technology (2026).

When technology becomes part of the experience 

Central to Camille’s practice is an exploration of how emerging technologies, such as immersive hardware and software, can move beyond the screen to create experiences that are physical, sensory and embodied.

Her current work focuses particularly on women’s healthcare stories, combining Virtual Reality, Extended Reality, immersive visual and audio environments and bespoke wearable haptic garments. These garments physically vibrate against the skin, synchronising touch with what the participant sees and hears within the virtual environment.

Rather than simply watching or listening to someone else’s story, audiences are invited to encounter aspects of that experience through their own senses and bodies.

Camille’s work asks what happens when technologies such as XR, VR, haptics and wearable e-textiles become tools for storytelling, empathy and understanding particularly for experiences of illness, treatment and recovery that can be invisible or difficult to communicate through words alone.

Aimed at those in tech and innovation, the free talk will introduce two of Camille’s major immersive works: 

• Mammary Mountain - an immersive exploration of the lived experience of breast cancer treatment, drawing upon the real stories of patients and survivors from across the UK and Ireland. 
• INTER/her: An Intimate Journey Inside the Female Body - an immersive journey exploring women’s reproductive health conditions through personal testimony, embodied visual storytelling and sensory experience.

Both works demonstrate how art and technology can come together to communicate deeply personal healthcare experiences in new and powerful ways.

Exploring XR and healthcare in Guernsey

Camille’s visit to Guernsey forms part of an exploratory research project supported through a Royal College of Art Research Grant, working in collaboration with Health and Social Care’s Arts and Health programme. During her visit, Camille will connect with healthcare professionals and community organisations to explore the potential for immersive XR artworks within healthcare settings, and consider how these technologies might support wellbeing, empathy, communication and a deeper understanding of lived experience.

This talk provides an opportunity to discover Camille’s creative and research practice, explore the technologies behind her immersive artworks and hear some early reflections from her time in Guernsey.

Click here to sign-up for the event.