MINDSCAPES
MINDSCAPES – Visualising Mental Health Landscapes will use data visualisation, urban informatics and mental wellbeing to explore the potential of art in translating two-dimensional data into immersive environments and creative installations.
Maria Teresa Ortoleva, Oneiric -Scape, Courtesy of the gallery Luca Tommasi, Milano. Private collection. Credit: Fabio Mantegna
With support from the Department of Informatics in reading, selecting and analysing relevant data, Maria Teresa will deepen her ongoing interest in electroencephalogram (EEG) records of brainwaves in elusive moments of remembrance, dream and hypnagogia (the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep). In addition, the project will examine data addressing the divide between productive work and leisure activities (such as relaxation, engagement in culture and sleep). The project will pay specific attention to data patterns across diverse groups and the consequent impact these activities have on wellbeing.
The residency intends to establish communicative and meaningful correspondences to the data being analysed and Maria Teresa’s artistic practice, with the aim of gathering feedback through workshops to guide the development of the project. Maria Teresa will then create artworks from acrylic glass, transforming the data into sculptural objects with different colours, textures and surfaces. These coded qualities will convey the content of the analysis in an accurate yet accessible and artistic way. The same method will inform how the objects are placed – their heights, distances and layout – to produce sculptural renditions of data in space.
The outcome of the project will be an immersive and sensorial visualisation of a collective mindscape. The visualisation of data will show the ratio between conscious productive activity and moments of speculative thinking and imagination, pointing at the importance of this balance to health and wellbeing.
Maria Teresa Ortoleva is an artist based in London. She graduated with Honours from Brera Academy of Fine Arts. The research she started to develop there twice received the Incentive Award for the Art Practice. She is also the recipient of a Leverhulme Scholarship in 2013 for a Summer residency programme at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire. In 2014 she completed her MA in Fine Arts at The Slade School of Fine Art (UCL).
Maria Teresa's practice researches the influence of mental states and imaginative processes in our human experience of a globalised and digitised world. Through drawing and installation, her work raises questions about the cognitive role of the use of objects, ways of inhabiting places, developing bonds of familiarity and finding a sense of community.
Dr Rita Borgo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Informatics and the head of the Human Centred Computing Research Group. Her main research interests lie in the areas of information visualization and visual analytics with a focus on the role of human factors in visualization.
Her research has followed an ambitious program of developing new data visualization techniques for interactive rendering and manipulation of large multi-dimensional and multivariate datasets. Her research has been awarded supports from Royal Society, EPSRC and EU. She is currently championing the Urban Living hub at King’s and works in close collaboration with the Centre for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) to increase impact of visualization within urban related challenges.