Visualising pain

Headache

Finding forms with which to visualise pain is not as easy as you might think. For one person a jagged yellow may feel exactly right as a visual translation of their headache but for someone else it doesn't work at all. Perhaps there is no universal correlation between a pain and a visual form and if not why am I working in this area? I think it's because there is some correlation, some instinctual connection between a pain and a shape, but not one that can be pinned down into a grid of references that allowed us to see a throbbing pain as one form and a sharp pain as another. Perhaps it is also because the more I work with people I realise that it is not the images that I produce with them being accurate representations of pain or other somatic feelings that are the most important thing, it is rather the process of forward and backward iterations of change and adjustment in response to conversations, and the record of this that is important. During this process people become more aware of their feelings and as they do, something happens in their mental life that allows in change, something new begins to work its way into neural pathways and possibilities begin to open out. The forms discovered therefore represent 'possibilities' and are open to interpretation, rather than them being dictionary like fixed readings. The images are more about visualising the human condition of being always unsure as to how other humans receive our complex communications. We feel certain things about life and our consciousness of it but we might also feel that only our own mind is certain to exist and that we are locked inside our own subjective experiences. In philosophy this is called solipsism and is to do with the problem of other minds, the emotional realisation of this being sometimes seen as a form of existentialism. However, I'm a believer in intersubjectivity, not just amongst people but in a pan-creation intersubjectivity and believe that consciousness and meaning do not originate inside my own individual brain, but are collectively co-created across the entire relational and environmental fabric of existence. Therefore altruism is of vital importance to me, not just in terms of the value I put on the existence and welfare of others but on my awareness and value of our interconnectedness with everything else. In having conversations and responding to them through drawing, the images that evolve are for myself, a materialised realisation of these ideas.

In an earlier post on decor art, I was ruminating on the fact that surveys had found that people did not like certain shapes and colours in paintings and that perhaps spiky shapes, sharp, jagged and angular forms reminded us of aggression and pain, because they resemble thorns, teeth, or claws and these forms therefore possibly trigger primitive survival instincts and raise alertness. I also stated that harsh, bright colours, high-contrast hues and highly saturated colours demand immediate attention, as psychologically they represent warning signs, urgency, and intensity. However there would be a very different response to these forms when experienced as part of a fireworks display. How we would then emotionally react to those fireworks, would though depend on our current mental state. When we were hosting a Ukrainian couple, a boy and his mother, who had come over to England to escape the war, we had not thought about this. When a firework display began in our local Sikh temple, the boy hid under a table, the loud bangs signifying for him immediate danger. Someone suffering from PTSD may well find the experience of fireworks frightening and disorientating but most people who have been introduced to fireworks within calm, family orientated situations, are able to get an uplifting mental excitement from the experience.

For myself, watching fireworks triggers a feeling of awe, which creates a space for me to enter the sublime, a state that blends wonder with a thrilling touch of terror. Unlike traditional beauty, the sublime challenges and humbles us. In the case of fireworks, the emotional state that arises, combines visual stimulation from bright, dynamic colours with the sudden, thrilling crack of loud bangs; leading to a temporary state of euphoria and excitement. From their stunning colours to their thunderous booms, fireworks trigger reactions that are emotional and instinctive.

A certain class of fireworks that I come across, especially during large scale organised firework displays, tends to evoke a more complex series of emotions, I'm thinking here of the firework effects such as airborne chrysanthemums or peonies, forms that jellyfish like grow and fluctuate, often exploding with bangs and crackle effects, some of which begin and others end their sequence of unfolding. These forms heighten excitement by activating neural pathways associated with curiosity as well as awe. These fireworks I believe tap into an evolutionary preference for eye-catching stimuli, similar to how flowers or ripe fruit grab our attention. Watching these types of fireworks doesn’t just captivate us, it feels good. The brain releases dopamine, these vivid visuals paired with loud sounds, also helping forget everyday worries, creating a temporary state of euphoria. The intersubjectivity that I mentioned earlier is in my mind confirmed by then looking around the crowd that has gathered to watch the fireworks. I see that sense of awe in many faces and know that others are feeling something similar to myself. But not everyone has the same expression, some are excited, others calm and contemplative; some are quickly distracted, whilst others remain entranced. I wonder if this is to do with the five personality traits. Often condensed into the acronym OCEAN, these are 'Openness to Experience', a measure of creativity, curiosity, and interest in new ideas; 'Conscientiousness', a measure of self-discipline and focus on goals; 'Extraversion', a measure of how sociable you are; 'Agreeableness', a measure of kindness, warmth and your cooperative nature and 'Neuroticism', the measure of your emotional stability and how easily you experience negative feelings like stress or anxiety.

I'm rambling on, but in effect as I ramble, I'm trying to think about why similar things may evoke different feelings in different people and yet at the same time a certain amount of similar or collectively understood information is also communicated. My curiosity allows me, or predisposes me, to see associations between flowers and fireworks and also at the same time because of my research into interception, I can see a connection with the shapes of firework explosions and the sorts of forms that people have used to visualise how they experience a pain.

As soon as you begin to ask someone about a pain, you begin to realise it will be a complicated answer. For instance it may feel as if it is constantly in flux, it may be flickering in and out of consciousness or pulsing, throbbing, beating, pounding, jumping, flashing, shooting, boring, drilling, stabbing, sharp, cutting, lacerating, pinching, pressing, gnawing, cramping or crushing. It may feel as if it is tugging, pulling, hot, burning, scalding, searing, tingling, itchy, smarting, stinging, dull, sore, hurting, aching, heavy, tender, taut, rasping, splitting, tiring, exhausting, sickening, or suffocating, some of these feelings coming with more emotional associations than others. Certain feelings are very closely associated with pain, someone may be fearful, frightened, terrified, or feel the pain is punishing, gruelling, cruel, vicious, blinding, annoying, troublesome, miserable, intense, unbearable, spreading, radiating, penetrating or piercing. It may also be felt as a numb pain or as if you are being squeezed or torn. Cool, cold and freezing feelings can be experienced, alongside nagging, nauseating, agonising, dreadful and torturing pain. These feelings of pain might be brief, rhythmic, continuous, momentary, periodic, steady, transient, intermittent or constant and you may feel sad about them or angry or bored or worried or just accept them. It is in the unpicking of this complexity that the individuality of interoceptual feelings are unearthed.
Basic experiences such as throbbing, burning, stabbing, shooting, aching and itchy pains have been initially in drawing led conversations visualised by dots, lines, textures, colours, etc. in both two and three dimensions. I am also aware that others have been there before me such as Tong et al 2014 and that the forms they came up with were not dissimilar to some of the shapes and colours used by myself. Their goal of "Transforming invisible physical index data that represents chronic pain as art can provide patients with an overall visual feedback of their pain experience and how it changes over time. " (Tong et al 2014, p. 1) being much more focused on achieving a set of fixed correspondences between colours and shapes and the pain experienced, whilst I'm more concerned with visualising the complex human condition of feeling pain, one that also has an emotional landscape. At the same time I'm always careful to ensure that everyone also is aware that these are images made by an artist, and even though these images are made in response to a back and forth, critique and edit process, I am in the end the originator of the colours, forms and shapes used. As to how other humans receive our collaborative and complex visual communications, I'm not sure, but it is interesting to set them out as a comparison with the work of Tong et al., especially as by putting them on black backgrounds Tong et al make their forms somewhat like fireworks exploding in a dark sky. I also like Tong et als idea that their forms are like some sort of self illuminating jellyfish moving in dark waters and as I do I begin to see a family of forms begin to cluster in my visual mind. Which may be more to do with the sorts of correspondence we find in magic rather than in any scientifically verifiable activity. 

From: Tong et al 2014

Each of the images below is an attempt to visualise pain, what I think is interesting is that although these images are built up from agreements with several other people who have these pains, there is no clear correspondence between them except they were all made by myself. So are these images in reality simply my own visualisations of pain? Should my idea of developing a new pain chart have to be parked? I shall see. But at the moment my worries about subjectivity are growing and I begin to wonder if all I have done is give myself opportunities to engage in image making that stretch my capacity for visual invention, rather than my making an objective visual record of a collaborate conversation. It is very hard to remove myself from the process. 

Images of people in pain

Reference

Tong, X., Gromala, D., Shaw, C. and Clarke, P., 2014, July. Transformation between Electronic Arts and Chronic Pain: Long-term Body Activity Data Visualisation and Pain Animation. In Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2014). BCS Learning & Development.

See also:

Decor Art

Fireworks

Drawing and healing traditions

A highway code for pain