Hello!
About
I’m a PhD student in the Design & Social Justice Studio at Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program working with Dr. Nassim Parvin. My academic research uses design-based inquiry that draws from feminist, posthumanist, and disability theories and explores making practices that integrate digital and living systems. My work examines bodies, both human and non-human, as instruments of data creation to explore alternative ways of sensing, knowing and relating to others.
My research interests builds on my previous experiences in landscape architecture and urban design, particularly in emotional and community spaces like gardens and memorials, as well as craft and art-based practices, including some work in screen printing.
Digital Media
Sensing Bodies: Reflecting on Human-Plant Relationships through Biodata Displays of Bodily Encounters
Sensing Bodies is an artistic installation consisting of a series of three interactive exhibits that foreground relationships between a human and plant. The relationships are formed through unique reciprocal interactions, in which the biodata of both the human and plant bodies are collected through sensors, processed through circuits and algorithms, and represented through LED displays. The exhibits highlight our embodied encounters as co-constructed and interdependent with more-than-human agencies, pointing to an interspecies intimacy. However, the form of each exhibit, which displays plants inside an illuminated plexiglass box – bounded, framed, and removed from context – is intentionally evocative of a screen. As such, the installation not only invites reflection on our connection to non-human bodies, but also probes a disconnection to the living, local landscapes around us and their sociopolitical entanglements.
Heart Sense: An Interactive Visualization of Embodied Social Connection
Heart Sense is an art installation that uses representation, tracking, and visualizations of physiological data to investigate and reflect upon the body in ways that depart from quantitative self and spur curiosity about scientific measurements. Specifically, this installation engages the social dimension of embodiment through the mediation of the physical environment. Participants are invited to sit around a table and are given headphones to listen to music. A floral visualization representing the collective heart rates of the participants will be projected onto the table, the size and the colors of each petal shifting with changes in each participant’s body. The visualization showcases how our bodies come into relation with each other and are in and of the environment, as they respond to our surrounding conditions even when we are not aware of it.
Navigating Illness, Finding Place: Enhancing the Experience of Place for People Living with Chronic Illness
When chronic illness, such as Lyme disease, is viewed through a disability lens, equitable access to public spaces becomes an important area for consideration. Yet chronic illness is often viewed solely through an individualistic, medical model lens. We contribute to this field of study in four consecutive steps using Lyme disease as a case study: (1) we highlight urban design and planning literature to make the case for its relevance to chronic illness; (2) we explore the place-related impacts of living with chronic illness through an analysis of interviews with fourteen individuals living with Lyme disease; (3) we derive a set of design guidelines from our literature review and interviews that serve to support populations living with chronic illness; and (4) we present an interactive mapping prototype that applies our design guidelines to support individuals living with chronic illness in experiencing and navigating public and outdoor spaces.
Landscape & Urban Design
Urban Alleyway Activation
Community Building through A Native Medicinal Garden
Stormwater Managemetnt and Ecological Restoration in the PDRT Campus Master Plan
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
Experiments
Publications
Johnson, Lorraine; Janicki, Sylvia (2022): Access to Care in Lyme Disease: Clinician Barriers to Providing Care. Chartbook. figshare. Book. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21321195
Gupta, Shubhangi, Janicki, Sylvia, Casula, Pooja and Nassim Parvin. (2022). Rethinking Safe Mobility: the Case of Safetipin in India. ACM Information & Communication Technologies and Development Conference (ICTD ‘22). Forthcoming.
Janicki, Sylvia, Ziegler, Matt, and Jennifer Mankoff. (2021). Navigating Illness, Finding Place: Enhancing the Experience of Place for People with Chronic Illness. ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ’21). Available at: https://doi.org/10/1145/3460112.3471955
Chen, Yen-Fu and Sylvia Janicki. (2020). A Cognitive-Based Board Game With Augmented Reality for Older Adults: Development and Usability Study. JMIR Serious Games. 8(4):e22007. doi: 10.2196/22007. PMID: 33315015; PMCID: PMC7769693. Available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315015/
Janicki, Sylvia. (2018). [Dis]placed by Illness: Lyme disease as a Case for Re-imagining Everyday Places to Recognize Invisible Chronic illnesses. MLA and MUP Thesis. University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Available at https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/42423
SYLVIA H JANICKI 