Visualisations of the surgical removal of uterine polyps: (c) Nora Kennally: 2025
I have been sent images made by a friend of mine, who has visualised how a recent surgical experience felt. At the centre of the communicative effect of these beautiful and at the same time difficult images is texture. Their visceral nature is reinforced by an awareness of the paper being folded, creased, stained and re-flattened; Rorschach tests for inner pain. In 2016 Stephens and Hoffman published a paper in which they looked at why people might react to different visual textures in different ways. Fur feels soft, tree bark feels rough and silk feels smooth and when we look at these surfaces we conjoin our tactile knowingness with what we see. Our tactile knowingness is built from a one to one correspondence with our bodies and is deeply connected to the emotional associations we have had with different textures. For instance we may well have cut ourselves on something sharp, have felt deep comfort by being pressed into our mother's breast, or have reacted strongly to having to touch the decaying corpse of an animal. Both pain and comfort, usually begin with a tactile experience. As our brains join up memories of touch with visual experiences, we then think that fur looks soft, tree bark looks rough, and silk looks smooth. These types of connections can then hopefully be used by a visual image maker to evoke emotion. Texture in a visual image being not just something that helps create illusions of reality, it can be used in the development of forms that can stimulate emotion. Stephens and Hoffman (2016) asked, what visual textures do people like and why? In order to research this they used an ecological valence theory as developed by Schloss and Palmer (2009) in order to explore colour preference. Schloss and Palmer had realised that colour preference was an important aspect of human behaviour and they wanted to find out how individual colour preference was developed. They argued against a physiological explanation, presenting an ecological valence theory, which posited that colour preference reflected a cumulative emotional response to objects and experiences strongly associated with particular colours. Then, Stephens and Hoffman when going on to use ecological valence theory to test for people's textural likes and dislikes, presumed that people would in effect, like visual textures associated with positive things and dislike visual textures associated with negative ones. All of which seemed pretty basic stuff as far as an artist was concerned, but being an artist I had never had to test out a theory, I would simply use an idea. The basic idea being that there was a connection between texture and the expression of emotion.
But how to test this out? I had when working with an older man who had spent a lifetime smoking, produced images of how he felt his lungs seemed to him. He was a wheezer and knew that it was smoking that had damaged his lungs, even though he continued to smoke. The image we decided upon that for him felt the closest, had a certain 'smoky' feel to it and its colour was influenced by association with the brown stain that a smoker's finger's can take on. It was made on grey paper, using brown inks that were 'bled' into a surface which had been wet with clear water beforehand.
Interoceptual awareness of a smoker's lung
The image seemed to work well and it was chosen as one of several images used as a stimulus for other people to think about how they might visualise internal body experiences. However when the image was shown to other people, it didn't always evoke a similar response, and an alternative image was developed, this time using print processes and making it much more screen and print friendly, so that the texture was not lost when the image was seen on screen or printed off.
Interoceptual awareness of damaged lungs
The basic triangular form was maintained, but the brown colour was dispensed with and the feeling of a lung being broken or made unworkable, was developed using a more geologic way of thinking about texture. The gaps in the lungs were seen as in effect caves. This image was for some people far more effective than the previous one, several people noting that the unnatural colour made them more aware that something was wrong.
Bronchitis lung
The feeling tone associated with the harsh reality of bronchitis was the next image to be developed, this in conjunction with someone who really had thought they might die as their lungs filled and they became breathless. Initial drawings made during one to one conversations about the experience and how it felt, were made using ink washes and these were scanned into Photoshop and developed as digital prints.
Interoceptual image of restricted breathing due to covid19
A while after making these very different images of damaged lungs I was making another lung image, this time trying to visualise the breathlessness that resulted in a covid19 attack. The feeling of ribs holding down the squashed mass of lung tissue was made this time by using felt-tip pens, alongside a variety of water based pigments dissolved in water.
Each image has an emotional resonance, they all suggest in one way or another that something has been damaged, but it is only in conversation with groups of people who are introduced to the history of these images, that any more refined mediation can go on. However when it does, I have found that very quickly people grasp the metaphorical potential of the work. Once they get it, they can own it.
One of the most interesting aspects for myself has been the degree of abstraction that people will accept when confronting these images. People who have previously stated that they have no interest in abstract art, will quite happily argue the merits of a shape, surface texture or a colour's ability to carry emotional meanings, when they are engaged in an interoception workshop.
What I presume I need to do is to develop a much more comprehensive data base of images related to different inner body experiences and to find a way of making these images readily available to any interoception workshop participants. At the moment I'm thinking about making books developed on the model I was using when I first began hosting these workshops. See: On reflection though, I now realise I will need to develop a much wider range of textural surfaces if I am to tap into the full width of people's emotional registers.
References:
Schloss, K.B. and Palmer, S.E., 2009. An ecological valence theory of human colour preferences. Journal of Vision, 9(8), pp.358-358. Available from: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=5940b3758ccb9291cf7e7fad7aad1b16364f82e7#:~:text=The%20ecological%20valence%20theory%20thus,situations%20associated%20with%20each%20color. Accessed on 18. 12. 24
Stephens, K. D., & Hoffman, D. D. (2016). On visual texture preference: Can an ecological model explain why people like some textures more than others? Perception, 45(5), 527–551. https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006616629026
See also:
Texture: Part one
Texture: Part two
Surface perception in an age of CGI
Analogue and digital processes
The emotional line
Measuring emotions and colour
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