A student exhibit highlighting patient experiences of living with HIV is being displayed at Imperial after winning the annual Artifact competition.

Doctor_patient; Disconnect, a joint project created by Royal College of Art PhD student Dr Dave Pao and Imperial undergraduate student Madeline Maxwell, is an audio installation seeking to explore the dissonance between medical understanding of HIV and how patients feel about their condition.

Viewers are invited to listen to real-life testimonies from people living with HIV through a stethoscope adapted to play sound, while reading a wall poster explaining medical facts about the virus.

The piece is the winner of the 2014 Artifact competition – a student-led project which aims to forge collaborations between artists at the Royal College of Art and scientists at Imperial.

Dr Dave Pao, who is a practising doctor as well as a PhD student at the Royal College of Art, said:“As a doctor, I know that how patients feel about their illness can be very different to the way that medical professionals view it. HIV is now an extremely treatable condition, but many patients still struggle to come to terms with their diagnosis and are left feeling angry, vulnerable, and often ashamed. We really wanted to capture this and demonstrate the human reality of living with HIV through this piece.”

Madeline Maxwell, a second year Biomedical Sciences student at Imperial said: “I’ve always been interested in the way that art can be used to communicate scientific ideas. Artifact was a great opportunity to force myself to step outside of a scientific mind-set and see things from a different perspective. Working on this project with Dave, and hearing about the experiences of patients with HIV, has been an important exercise in empathy and I’ve certainly learnt a lot.”

Doctor_patient; Disconnect is currently installed in the College Main Entrance, where it will be available to view until the end of the week.

For more information on Artifact, visit their webpage or Facebook page.