New online seminar series explores health data communication through art

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou has organised a series of seminars focusing on creative and artistic representations of public health data during the COVID-19 pandemic.

30 March 2021

Beginning on 30 March with a talk by globally-renowned BioArtist Anna Dumitriu, and running through April, the ART/DATA/HEALTH seminar series explores how health data has been communicated before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, looking at innovative reflections of quantitative data including community art, dance and film, alongside traditional representations such as infographics.

The series concludes with the premiere on 20 April of the film Human, Planet, Weaker, Other directed by Dr Fotopoulou, featuring animation by Caroline Beavon, and filmed by renowned performance art pioneers Hydrocracker.

The importance of data and wellbeing has been sharply highlighted by the COVID pandemic, and the ART/DATA/HEALTH project shows bridges between data, creativity and experience. Via workshops, plus online and offline meetings, a community of artists, service workers, academics and diverse residents of Brighton & Hove explored ideas around health and wellbeing using a combination of creative media, storytelling and data analytics.

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou

'View Of A Lounge During A Migraine' by Debbie Ayles (abstract image)

'View Of A Lounge During A Migraine' by Debbie Ayles

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou - Principal Lecturer in Media and Communications in the School of Media, and Academic Lead of Creative Futures, said: “For more than two years as part of ART/DATA/HEALTH we have explored innovative ways that bridge data science and the arts. The seminar series concludes the project with an intellectually stimulating discussion about the role of creativity in communicating public health matters during the pandemic.

“I am glad to be hosting some amazing international speakers from the fields of community and participatory art, data science, digital media studies, data visualisation and new media arts, and to be launching the ART/DATA/HEALTH short animation film!”.

Seminars in the series include:

  • 1 April - Get Off The Screen!!! Creative Approaches To Embodying Data In The Real World (Professor Rahul Bhargava, Northeastern University)
  • 9 April - Data Art: Exploring Data As Artistic Material And Medium (Dr Younghui Kim, Queensland University of Technology)
  • 12 April - Touching Data: Touch Me With Your Naked Hand Or Touch Me With Your Glove (Professor Sally Wyatt, Maastricht University).

The ART/DATA/HEALTH project has been funded as part of a UKRI Innovation Fellowship/AHRC Leadership Fellowship.

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