A New Standard of Care for Patient Rooms: Personal Revelation SkyCeiling™
Fairfield, IOWA (PRWEB) October 16, 2014 -- The Sky Factory has launched the Personal Revelation SkyCeiling — a 2’ X 6’ portal to nature — designed to be mounted over patient beds. Unlike the standard 2’ X 2’ SkyTiles™ used in modular fashion to create a Luminous SkyCeiling™, the new Personal Revelation SkyCeiling features a single open sky aperture designed to relieve the observer’s sense of confinement. Featuring a patented elevator — a deeper, angled reveal — that directs perspective, the patient’s field of view is captured by a dramatic feeling of expansion.
In keeping with The Sky Factory’s fine art standards, this healthcare product is designed as an illusion of nature™ that deepens biophilic engagement — our innate, genetic-based need to affiliate with nature — creating a restorative installation that triggers an automatic “relaxation response” in the physiology.
“Practically no hospital today designs a patient room without generous windows preferably overlooking a beautiful natural landscape,” says Bill Witherspoon, founder of The Sky Factory. “Ample research has shown that visual access to nature is therapeutic and healing, so what can be done in patient rooms that do not have this access?
“The Personal Revelation SkyCeiling was designed to address this situation, common in a lot of hospitals and clinics, by creating a convincing illusion of nature, one that engages the areas of our brain involved in spatial cognition, thereby triggering a feeling of expansion and well-being.”
Employing Sky Factory’s award-winning Open Skies Image Technology, an artistic tool that consistently elicits an experience of vastness by engaging the cerebellum, which is involved in the perception of depth, the Personal Revelation SkyCeiling provides visual respite from clinical surroundings — helping patients relax — and imbues healthcare settings with nature’s unmatched healing properties.
Pioneering Scientific Validation
Sky Factory’s illusions of nature have been studied by Texas Tech University’s Neuroimaging Institute and the results published in the peer-reviewed Health Environments & Research Journal (HERD), winter, 2014.
A second study by Texas Tech University, In the Lap of Nature: Benefits of Nature Stimulus in Patient Room Ceilings, found that Sky Factory’s Luminous SkyCeilings™ installed in a medical-surgical inpatient unit significantly lowered the level of acute stress and anxiety among subjects, by over 50 percent and 34 percent respectively. (This study is currently undergoing peer review in a scholarly journal.)
Virtual skylights designed as biophilic illusions of nature™ are used by leading healthcare and commercial environments worldwide to trigger an automated relaxation response in the physiology. This experience enhances human wellness and task performance by enlivening our innate connection to nature – biophilia.
“We can now exploit the full range of our Open Skies Image Technology™ and endow traditional patient rooms without access to the restorative power of views to nature with equally healing and restorative illusion of overhead skies,” remarks Witherspoon.
Sky Factory uses proprietary large format digital sky compositions in modular arrays to create biophilic illusions of nature™ that visually ‘open up’ enclosed environments. Using high CRI (color rendering index) 6500 K daylight-quality light, Sky Factory’s custom SkyTiles™ are designed to retain 70 percent of the emitted light, yielding a luminescence that faithfully reproduces the soft hues and rich saturation of real skies.
The image panel used for the Personal Revelation SkyCeiling™ is much longer, providing an uninterrupted visual surface that combines with a deeper reveal (2.75” vs. 1.25” or 69.8 mm vs. 31.75 mm). At the same time, the linear direction of the reveal was modified from a rectangular design (90 degrees) to a softer, wider angle (106 degrees), effectively directing the viewer’s perspective and leading the mind to a more engrossing ‘view’ of open sky.
The launch of the Revelation SkyCeiling™ comes on the heels of a recent study, Neural Correlates of Nature Stimuli: An fMRI Study, published in the winter 2014 issue of the peer-reviewed Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD). The study explored the unique neural pathways involved in the perception of open sky photographic compositions, a key component in the design of virtual skylights that deepen biophilic engagement.
Virtual skylights designed as biophilic illusions of nature™ are used by leading healthcare and commercial environments worldwide to trigger an automatic “relaxation response” in the physiology. This experience enhances human wellness and task performance by enlivening our innate connection to nature – biophilia.
The Sky Factory, LC is a unique fine art and technology company based in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. Founded in 2002, the company creates realistic Illusions of Nature™ - virtual skylights and windows - that transform interior spaces. Sky Factory’s new digital cinema product line features UltraHD motion and sound displayed on commercial-grade LED monitors. For more information and a complete list of International Partners, visit http://www.SkyFactory.com.
David A. Navarrete, The Sky Factory, http://www.skyfactory.com, +1 (641) 472-1747 Ext: 213, [email protected]
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