Weathering Walkways
creating public art installations visualizing pain data
Cloudy with a Chance of Pain is a research effort led by Dr. Will Dixon of the University of Manchester to understand the links between the weather and symptoms associated with long-term (chronic) pain. OCR had the opportunity to switch gears from their web-based visualizations for the project, and make something physical for Manchester Day on June 19, 2016, a celebration of what makes Manchester unique.
The piece is a physical representation of data collected from February 1st through the 14th of this year. Each banner illustrates the level of pain a person reported feeling during this time period with a greater level of pain corresponding to a spot closer to the ground. On the ends are two different colored banners. The yellow shows the average temperature per day for this time period with a low of around 3°c to a high of 10°c with the higher temperature being closer to the ground. The blue shows the adjusted sea level pressure. Participants were encouraged to walk through and see if they could make a connection between the weather and the levels of pain.