‘Visualising the invisible’: Arts and science collaboration

This research explores, psychoanalyst/linguist/philosopher, Julia Kristeva’s concept that female subjectivity seems linked to both cyclical time (menstruation/pregnancy/repetition) and monumental time in sense of eternity (motherhood/reproduction/genetic chain). Whilst also investigating ‘psychological resonance,’ a particular part of the creative process that conjures up the idea of movement between something experienced (object) and it’s impact on the individual (subject). Heald and Liggett are developing ideas relating to a ‘space’ an ‘in-between-ness’ and ‘cyclical time’ from an art/science perspective. Heald began exploring Kristeva’s notion of the semiotic chora as a preverbal space that relates to rhythms, colours and trace, the preverbal infant, the depressive and the psychotic. She became interested in the aspect of the unconscious/subconcious, through working with the patients, exploring maternal/cyclical/monumental time, poetics and the chora. Through ‘dream films’ she creates ambient environments, where the audience is unsure as to whether one is asleep/awake, or even in a state of ‘in-between-ness’. Liggett found ‘in-between-ness’ relates to the stage in the creative process where the artists in her research could not articulate in words exactly what they were intending in their work. The dream state described as occupying ‘in-between-ness’ could also be akin to ‘psychological resonance’, the movement between ‘sites' or 'states of being', that exists, but are intangible and difficult to articulate. Exploring Winnicott (1994) and Witkin (1974) Liggett suggests that there are three areas of related experience, the subjective, the objective and what Winnicott calls 'potential space'. This 'potential space' Liggett sees as having similarities to ‘in-between-ness’. Heald and Liggetts work at the hospital only enabled the artist’s access to patients who are on/adjusting to medication. Building upon the work being completed at the psychiatric unit and in collaboration with Dr Richard Tranter, consultant psychiatrist, Prof. Rob Poole, Professor of Mental Health and GP surgeries, Heald and Liggett are proposing new perspectives into the effects of anti-depressant medications. Scientists know that antidepressants subtly alter the way people perceive emotional stimuli around them, altering people’s social behaviour’s, on a level that people are not consciously aware of. Through arts/science research the collaborators are interested to explore if patient changes are reflected in the way people express themselves and respond to their environment, prior, during and post antidepressant medication. The collaborative arts/science practice will explore these interests through creative, patient lead, artistic expressions of change alongside conventional, reductionist measures of changing depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory) producing sophisticated fusions of art/science