Several years ago, the World Health Organization studied the role of art in improving health and well-being. They found that the arts can potentially impact both mental and physical health. The WHO study focused on how art can help prevent ill health, encourage better health behaviors, and help people experiencing mental illness and neurological disorders. Daria Tsoupikova, a professor at the University of Chicago, offers her thoughts on art and its relation to mental and physical health.<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>here\u2019s no argument, that when it comes to art, it has the power to educate, move, and impact people. One often hears the expression \u201cArt is subjective,\u201d and it is.<\/p>\n Art can be found in many aspects of life. The recent pandemic brought many art forms to the forefront\u2014out of frustration, shock, and fear, among other factors.<\/p>\n Artists have keenly paved paths to what the future may bring to the masses. During the pandemic, artists seem to have pushed the boundaries of the impossible and experimented more with technologies and virtual platforms, especially when studios, galleries, theaters, and museums were closed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a reason that we may be seeing a surge in art in relation to health, both mental and physical, and the diversity of art helping humanity. This type of art comes in many forms to promote health, fight social and cultural isolation, and improve physical well-being, and particularly poignant is art being a vehicle to improve communication over distance brought upon by the pandemic.<\/p>\n Virtual production, labs, and technologies were tried and tested to create their visions. Their experiments and discoveries will surely guide the next wave of digital and media arts, as well as healthcare research, post-pandemic.<\/p>\n The connection between art and physical well-being has had a positive impact. Benefits to daily lives include reducing stress, improving moods, and even making powerful contributions to the healing process. One study in the American Journal of Public Health by Heather L. Stuckey, D.Ed and Jeremy Nobel, MD, concluded there\u2019s a direct link between creative arts and health outcomes, both physical and mental. \u201cEngagement with creative activities has the potential to contribute toward reducing stress and depression and can serve as a vehicle for alleviating the burden of chronic disease,\u201d they found.<\/p>\n Art also provides a positive connection to mental and emotional health. Artistic activities and participating in a creative process provide a welcome distraction to the nuisances of daily life and reduce stress levels. Art therapy has been known to be used as a treatment for PTSD, those suffering from depression, pain, anxiety, and stress.<\/p>\n Finishing an art project can also bring a sense of accomplishment and improve cognitive abilities and memory for people with brain disorders. Research indicates there are many parts of the brain at work depending on the type of media and art task being used.<\/p>\n Art was probably never more prevalent than when COVID-19 emerged. Art became a therapeutic escape that has aided in promoting physical, mental, and social health and overall well-being. Social distancing was another aspect of the pandemic that affected people\u2026bringing in a sense of helplessness, uncertainty, loneliness, and fear.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen a growth in how artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and design fabrication technologies laid the foundation for an Art and Healthcare collaboration. There have been programs and conferences that asked artists to submit their creations with this \u201cart and health\u201d theme, and how they view the two converging.<\/p>\n For the past two years, artists have applied technology to their experimental works. These works of art have been created to push boundaries to reexamine the body and our place in the world as well as explore how art and health are intertwined by promoting mental health, boost physical well-being and improve communication.<\/p>\n Art and its relation to mental and physical health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2022","category-fall-2022-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12831"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13088,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12831\/revisions\/13088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Benefits of art to life<\/h3>\n
Art during COVID-19<\/h3>\n
Photo Note: My Data Body<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is a virtual reality (VR) artwork created at the University of Alberta as part of the interdisciplinary research creation project\u00a0Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality<\/em>. The project which developed from a previous artwork\u00a0Deep Connection<\/em>\u00a0(Oliver 2021) brings together different forms of personal data such as medical scans, social media, biometric, banking and health data in an attempt to make visible and manipulable our many intersecting data corpuses so that in VR they can be held, inspected and dissected.\u00a0In\u00a0My Data Body<\/em>, the medically scanned, passive, obedient, semi-transparent body (Cartwright 1995) becomes a data processing site that can be pulled apart, de- and re-composed or as Yuval Harari warns \u2018surveilled under the skin\u2019.<\/h5>\n
Daria Tsoupikova is a professor in the School of Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory<\/a> (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she is responsible for the integration of advanced technologies such as Virtual Reality, Visualization, Game Design, Mobile Design, and Creative Coding into curricular and professional practice. She is the Art Gallery Program Chair for SIGGRAPH 2022<\/a>, the world\u2019s leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The ART GALLERY Program is aptly titled \u201cArts and Health, the Convergence.\u201d<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"