pain :: mobility :: happiness

I realise that I never got around to explaining what the heck my art project actually is. The big idea (well, small idea really) was that I would collect metrics while I was in hospital and then turn those into a piece of art/pieces of art.

Plan 1: carry a pedometer with me to record how many steps I took each day of my recovery. Pro-tip: if you are planning to do something similar then source your pedometer more than a week before your surgery ... I found one I owned but it turned out to be borked. I then borrowed one from a friend but it didn't register my footsteps (most likely because I was wearing slippers and shuffling). Plan 1 was abandoned.

Plan 2: choose three things to score on a daily basis (at least) and turn the resultant metrics into triangular artwork of some description at a later date. The things I decided to score were my 'pain', 'mobility' and 'happiness' - I started on the day of my operation and have continued each day since, sometimes just once a day, sometimes several times a day ... basically whenever the mood took me. The scoring system is as follows:
Pain --> 0 (no pain) through to 9 (absolute agony)
Mobility --> 0 (unable to move) through to 9 (skipping about, happy as a daisy)
Happiness --> 0 (deep paralysing despair, probably crying) to 9 (over-joyed, probably crying)

I've found it pretty easy to score each of these every day - I haven't been much more scientific in my approach than thinking 'do I feel more or less pain/mobile/happiness than last time I scored myself?'.

Every time I scored myself I broadcast the score on twitter (@moremorphine). At first I included a hashtag (#myopart) but that fell by the wayside due to shortfalls in wordcount and my poor memory.

I have a vague idea for how I'll visualise the metrics as a piece of digital art and some other ideas for more abstract pieces which will incorporate other metrics I got from the hospital (e.g. morphine intake rate, blood pressure readings etc). I'm also planning to release all the various scores and readings as open data so that anyone else can turn them into artwork/data visualisations if they feel inspired to.

Watch this space! ;-)

What I hadn't really accounted for was the fact that my friends and family would start checking my twitter timeline to see what my latest scores were and would then feel worried/comforted depending on how I was doing. At one point I found myself hesitating before broadcasting scores that I knew they'd find worrying - In the end I posted the scores as they were but often added a mitigating comment which I thought would stop folks fretting about me.

I haven't set an end date for taking readings yet ... I'm possibly going to continue with a daily broadcast until my 100 days of recovery are up - I'll have a proper think about that and let you know :-)