Looking Outwards 07: Information Visualization

Stefanie Posavec created art at the Papworth Hospital, which was an Inpatients Ward. She was commissioned to create artwork that considered the human body and was human-scaled. Most importantly, she wanted it to be calming to patients who had just come out of surgery. I admire her work as she chose to show important computational information through understanding of the heartbeat, breath and lungs, and the blood and blood vessels that connect the two. Then, by incorporating “calming” nature she focused on aesthetics which showed waveforms (which is shown in ocean waves and heartbeats), branching (which is shown in the lungs and trees) etc. This ended up fulfilling the needs of both the patients and the staff as if offered patient privacy as well as a clear line – of-sight for nurses and staff. It was also really cool how she mapped data to concept showing how “medical data relevant to either the heart, lungs, or blood” was used as a ‘seed’ for that floor’s specific artwork.

Link