Soma}News – Issue 6

Soma-related emotion news from Nov/Dec 2014. Connections to art, tech, memory, smell, touch, memory, pain and more…

People with disabilities empowered through mind-generated art: Jody Xiong.

Soma}News – Issue 5

Soma-related emotion news from Sept/Oct 2014. Connections to art, tech, memory, smell, touch, memory, pain and more…

“What sex and birth look like through an MRI machine” is a collection of Magnetic Resonance Imagery. Beautiful and captivating. (NSFW)

Sonja Bäumel

Sonja Bäumel is a fashion designer based in Austria who collaborates with microbiologists to create stunning art. My favourite at the moment is the Human Petri Dish. Check out her bountiful site. You can also access a full paper she presented at Design4Health 2013 conference here.

Cartography of the Human Body, 2010/11, in collaboration with Erich Schopf

Soma}News – July/August

Soma-related emotion news. Connections to tech, memory, smell, touch, fashion, stand-up comedy and more…

Soma}News – May/June

A round-up of soma-related emotion research and connections to mobile tech, media, crossing senses…

Taste metaphors engage the emotional brain

Soma}News – March/April – Part 2

Continued round-up of soma-related research and connections to emotion, sound, morality, mind, soul, health and contagions. Plus this edition’s featured lexicon entry: “wu-wei”.

The higher the sound in pitch, the higher we perceive it to be in space.

Soma}News – March/April – Part 1

A round-up of soma-related emotion research and connections to facial expression, pain management, body in space and technology. Plus two upsides of sadness.

OLED displays show images of eyes that reflect engagement and emotion.

Soma}News – Jan/Feb 2014

Hello! Today I’m kicking off a more newsy approach to the E}V blog reflecting ongoing interests in the overlaps between art/design, science, dataviz and the body. Your comments, shares or suggestions are warmly welcome. 

This Finnish research project about the body and self-reported emotions was the main interest in January. See my review here.

Art and Illness Symposium: What does illness feel like?

For the vast majority of us, illness is where life and death meet. It’s a guarantee that even if we ourselves don’t get seriously sick soon one of our loved ones will. Knowing a little of what to expect and trying to imagine that will prepare us and help us be more compassionate if our mother, say, screams random obscenities at us. Or we ourselves might find strength knowing that this indescribable agony is shared with countless others. I know it did for me. I hope this post may be of some value to even one person who may feel confused or misunderstood right now. The speakers gave so much of their time to the symposium (more here) that I hope to do a little justice to them here.

What I learned from ‘The Experience of Illness: Learning from the Arts – a Symposium’ at University College Cork, 2012.

Roundtable Discussion

The reductionist methods of science, so well taught to physicians, need to be linked with an imaginative investigation of our patients’ experience.– David H Alpers

Without exception, everyone’s lives are somehow or other effected by illness. It is a pressing concern to develop understanding of, and therefore empathy for the ill, which leads to better care. Empathy involves being able to put oneself in another’s shoes and to actively imagine their experience. To do so we must understand the experience in detail. However, the ill have greatly reduced verbal capacities and verbal language cannot fully describe pain and experience. So communication methods must go beyond words to better describe experience.