Sight
This page contains interviews with sensory experts on sight during the COVID19 pandemic. It also includes an evolving bibliography of news media and academic articles on the same topic.
Have an academic article or news piece you think we should include? Let us know at pandemicsensoryarchive@gmail.com.
If you want to submit your own sensory experiences to the Pandemic Sensory Archive then you can do so here.
Expert interviews – Click below to listen to our chats with various sensory experts.
A/Prof Hassan Vally
Associate Professor Hassan Vally is an applied communicable diseases epidemiologist and academic with over 25 years’ experience. He is an epidemiologist with expertise in the analysis and interpretation of health data, and in the understanding and critiquing of evidence in the health domain. He has background in a number of disciplines in addition to epidemiology and applied epidemiology, including molecular biology, virology and immunology. Dr Vally has been actively involved throughout the current pandemic, consulting for both the State and Federal Governments, and advising the public on COVID-19 epidemiology through extensive media engagement.
Ruth Cummins
Ruth Cummins is an artist from Wagga Wagga, NSW who currently lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne. Working within the framework of textiles, painting and sculpture Ruth hybridizes objects of utility, sentimentality and the decorative. Ruth’s work uses humour and form to highlight and expose the absurdities of contemporary domestic life. You can explore Ruth’s work here.
Elese Dowden
Dr Elese Dowden is a writer, poet and independent academic living on unceded Boonwurrung country in Naarm. Elese is originally from Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa, and founded the Australasian Posthumanities in 2020 as an interdisciplinary network of thinkers across timezones and travel bans. She is currently researching and writing on George Grey, settler colonial mythologies, poetics and affect. You can find out more about her work at elesedowden.com.
Eleri Harris
Eleri Mai Harris (she/her) is a cartoonist, journalist and Features Editor at The Nib. Her comics have been published online and in print in a bunch of places, including The Nib, Vox, McSweeney’s Illustoria, The ABC, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Education Union News Magazine, kuš!, Meanjin, Symbolia, Narrative.ly and Taddle Creek. Her Nib comic serial ‘Reported Missing’ was shortlisted for the 2018 Center for Cartoon Studies & Slate Book Review Cartoonist Studio Prize and won Gold at the 2018 Australian Ledger Awards. Eleri’s work as a comics editor has garnered two Ignatz awards and a Harvey award, as well as multiple Eisner nominations. Eleri was proud to be co-director of the Comic Art Workshop when the team received a 2020 Platinum Ledger for outstanding contributions to Australian comics. She hails from lutruwita/Tasmania and works in Naarm/Melbourne on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
You can read The Nib here and catch their collaboration with The Reveal about inequality in pandemic times here.
Key articles – Collating expertise and key links on sight during the pandemic.
Media:
- Make COVID-19 Visuals Gross – Kristin Marie Bivens and Marie Moeller for the Medical Humanities Blog
21/04/21
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2020/04/21/make-covid-19-visuals-gross/
A reflection on the public health campaign importance of making COVID-19 visuals more visceral. - Hidden in plain sight: How the COVID-19 pandemic is damaging children’s vision – Debbie Jones and Kate Gifford for The Conversation
28/04/21
https://theconversation.com/hidden-in-plain-sight-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-is-damaging-childrens-vision-158737
How children’s vision is being affected by higher than normal screen use during the pandemic. - Data visualizations are key to COVID-19 communication, but we still don’t understand their impact – Helen Kennedy for Nature Index
18/08/20
https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/simple-data-visualisations-have-become-key-to-communicating-about-the-covid-nineteen-pandemic-but-we-know-little-about-their-impact
On the importance, but lack of research around, using visuals as a communication strategy during the pandemic. - Pantone’s Pandemic Colours for 2021 – Kyle Chaka for ARTnews
11/12/2020
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/pantone-gray-yellow-pandemic-colors-2021-1234579124/
An article on Pantone’s annual colours of the year for 2021. For this pandemic year Pantone chose grey and yellow, the former signalling dependability and the latter signalling hope. - The Surprising Power of Color to Ease Quarantine Anxiety – Kyle Chaka for ARTnews.
22/10/2020
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/wall-paint-color-quarantine-1234574643/
A piece on the trends in interior wall paint during lockdown, suggesting that consumers went for escapist blues, greens, and yellows over darker colours and the flat grey that had been popular in the 2010s. - Processing the Pandemic at the Manchester International Festival – Roslyn Sulcas for the New York Times
06/07/21
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/arts/manchester-international-festival.html
A piece detailing some of the artistic responses to the pandemic found at the UK’s Manchester International Festival, along with some of the challenges of organising arts festivals in the pandemic era. - Bentley’s COVID-19 collection offers varied look at pandemic – Ann Zaniewski for The University Record
06/06/21
https://record.umich.edu/articles/bentleys-covid-19-collection-offers-varied-look-at-pandemic/
A piece detailing how the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan has been collection textual, visual, and film evidence of COVID-19 from students, staff, and local people. - Virtual contact worse than no contact for over-60s in lockdown, says study – Amelia Hill for the Guardian
26/07/21
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/26/virtual-contact-worse-than-no-contact-for-over-60s-in-lockdown-says-study
A piece which suggests that virtual contact via Zoom and other web-based virtual ways of keeping contact with relatives has actually caused some people – especially the elderly – to suffer more with mental health issues.
Academic publications:
- Ryoko Hamaguchi, Saman Nematollahi, and Daniel J Minter (2020). Picture of a pandemic: visual aids in the COVID-19 crisis, Journal of Public Health, 42(3): 483–485
https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdaa080 - J. Scott Brennen, Felix M. Simon, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (2021). Beyond (Mis)Representation: Visuals in COVID-19 Misinformation, The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(1):277-299
https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220964780 - Brian Callender, Shirlene Obuobi, M K Czerwiec and Ian Williams (2020). COVID-19, comics, and the visual culture of contagion, The Lancet
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32084-5 - Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert (2020). The birth of sensory power: How a pandemic made it visible?, Big Data and Society, July-December, 1-15.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720969208 - Joshua M.Ackerman Wilson N.Merrell Soyeon Choi (2020). What people believe about detecting infectious disease using the senses, Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 1, 10002
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2020.100002 - Alison Young (2021). The Limits of the City: Atmospheres of Lockdown, British Journal of Criminology, advanced access February.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1093%2Fbjc%2Fazab001