Intimate Implant
Coexisting with technology

Year of project: 2023
Client: UMC Utrecht
Core team: Anne-Floor de Kanter, Manon van Daal (PhD students in Bioethics, at Bioethics and Health Humanities group, Julius Center, UMC Utrecht)
Partners: UMC Utrecht - Stratasys
Funded by: INKplant (funded by EU’s Horizon 2020), Utrecht University
Exhibitions: Betweter Festival 2023 - Dutch Design Week 2023, UMC Research Day, Foundation We Are, Technical University of Madrid, Innovation for Health 2024, Dutch Health Week, The Pando Network, Studium Generale TU Delft
Media: NRC - VPRO - BNR Radio - AD - Zorgvisie - NPO Innovatie - RTV Utrecht - Brainport Eindhoven - Dutch Health Week - World Design Embassies

About Intimate Implant

Imagine living closely with an implant in your body for a year. An implant that helps you heal and grow new body parts. A close relationship develops in which you care for each other, until, as previously agreed, the implant sacrifices itself. Not long after, you receive an emotional farewell message from the implant, reflecting on your connection - and on the bond between humans and technology.

This speculative experience deals with the emotional relationship between humans and technology, a topic that yet has received little attention in science. From the perspective of three regenerative implants – a new type of implant that fuses with human tissue and eventually breaks down – this project explores scenarios in which humans and technology intimately coexist.

What is it like for technology to serve, and be so subservient to humans, how do we live harmoniously with technology, and what if technology doesn't deliver on its promises?

Patient experiences

Experiencing the Intimate Implant, several people with technology implanted in their bodies said to be touched. For the first time, they felt a strong connection and an emotional bond with their inner device. Some even cried, expressing that they finally felt understood and were given words to describe living with such technology within them. They shared that this experience would have been very helpful, both in preparation before getting an implant and during their post-implementation aftercare.

One visitor (46) shared: “I could relate to Intimate Implant because a week later, I would have a technological device implanted in my body. This artwork makes the technical aspect personal and tangible, which is crucial as the experience with an implant itself is highly personal. Connecting with the device and the emotional relationship that develops resonated with me. My own implant vibrates occasionally, and through Intimate Implant, I might have come to see it as a form of communication, providing me with reassurance.”

Background

The relationship between humans and technology is becoming increasingly intimate. We are on the eve of a medical breakthrough in regenerative medicine that makes it possible for implants to merge with the body’s own tissue. Increasingly, technology becomes biology. Device and body become one. The ultimate aim of these regenerative implants is to restore living tissue, leading to a complete cure. But at the same time, implant technologies are not only used to treat patients with certain diseases or injuries. Some experts argue that technologically improving our healthy human body will become ever more normal.

These developments raise fundamental ethical, cultural and social questions about what it is like to live with a technology intimately embedded in our bodies. UMC Utrecht, funded by INKplant, asked me to develop an artwork to engage patients and the general public to reflect on these questions.

Prototypes