When Art Brings Calm

By Karuna Meda | Illustrations by Sara Gironi Carnevale

On the 16th floor of Jefferson Health’s Honickman Center, there is a bustle of patients, staff, nurses and doctors. Various information is displayed on the walls and in pamphlets that some patients are distractedly thumbing through. The nervous anticipation of a doctor’s appointment is palpable. But, in the middle of the waiting area, there seems to be an oasis of calm. An expansive watercolor painting covers the entire wall, an impressive four-by-eight feet. But it’s no ordinary painting — it is overlaid with an animation, making it come to life. The colors dance; fumes of yellow seem to waft upwards and then magically disappear; bubbles of blue and gray play hide and seek, bursting and blooming in a mesmerizing pattern. New waves of light and hues emerge from different vantage points, immersing the viewer in a dynamic interaction with the art. And just as another wave unveils itself, a patient’s name is called, breaking the reverie — but the nervous energy has dissipated a little.

The art installation, one of nine in the Honickman Center, is motivated by one core question — can immersive art reduce stress and promote well-being in a healthcare setting? This is exactly what a team of interdisciplinary researchers at Jefferson’s Center of Immersive Arts for Health (JCIAH) are interested in answering. The average wait time in a doctor’s office ranges from 15-30 minutes, inevitably leading to frustration and exacerbating anxiety. In fact, one survey showed that 63% of patients reported the most stressful part about going to go see their doctor was the waiting.

At the same time, healthcare providers and staff are under tremendous daily stress, reflected by the fact that healthcare workers have burnout, depression and suicide rates twice that of the general population. 

In an effort to alleviate stress for both patients and practitioners, more attention is being paid to the ambiance of healthcare spaces like waiting and examination rooms. Many hospitals are incorporating ample natural light, plants, soothing music and artwork, mostly in the form of paintings, photography and sculptures. A relatively unexplored element is dynamic or interactive art. Lyn Godley, MFA, a professor of industrial design and the artist behind the animated watercolor installations in the Honickman Center, has been on a mission to uncap the potential of dynamic art to improve the overall healthcare experience.

As director of JCIAH, which launched in 2021, Godley has teamed up with other artists and designers, public health and psychology researchers, and clinicians to create and research immersive art environments. “We’ve built a pipeline from design, to testing in real-world settings and then iterating based on our results — all at Jefferson,” she says. “This doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

Light and Shadow – Creating Immersive Art

Over her prolific career as an artist, Godley has always used her work to engage in a dialogue with the viewer. More than two decades ago, she began incorporating light into her artwork to create movement and shadows, offering a more dynamic and immersive viewing experience. “There is something inherently magical about light,” says Godley. “Think about sunlight shimmering on a lake, or filtering through tree branches, or a burst of fireworks in the sky. Light has the ability to excite or calm.”

A solo exhibit she put together 15 years ago in Cologne, Germany, ignited her interest in actually measuring these effects. She had a created a panel of images of birds in flight, and had threaded fiber-optic cables so that there were pixels of light along the edges of the wings and tails of the bird. One evening, she got a call from the gallery owner that people were acting curiously when they got to her exhibit — they were spending up to hours at a time sitting in front of it, just quiet observers, seeming to relish in the serenity of the space. Godley suspected the nature-based imagery, which has shown to be calming, was partly responsible. But, she later found out that the wavelength of the fiber optics was the same as used in light therapy to alleviate depression. “That really got me thinking about how light can not only create experiences that are deeply engaging for the viewer,” she says, “but also positively impact emotional well-being.”

New developments in technology and digital media have allowed artists like Godley to combine light with sound to create an even more immersive experience. This is the basis of virtual and augmented realities, where a person wears a headset and is transported to different environments through animations and sound. Researchers have explored the use of virtual reality headsets in healthcare settings as part of an approach called “distraction therapy” that engages a patient in a task or experience to distract from discomfort or anxiety. In one study, cancer patients reported that using virtual reality made chemotherapy treatments seem shorter. Another study showed that a virtual reality headset can reduce procedural pain by 35-50%.

“But there is a learning curve to getting comfortable with the headset,” says Godley. “So when we launched JCIAH, we really wanted to know — can we create an immersive environment without a headset, and still elicit the same calming effect?”

Reimagining the Waiting Room

In the fall of 2022, Godley and several researchers wanted to test this idea by creating intimate spaces with immersive, light-based art. They decided to recreate a waiting room, the starting point of most medical interactions.

“It felt like the ideal place to start – if we can improve a patient’s experience from the time they get to their appointment, it could set them up for a more positive visit,” says Godley.

The Hot Bed gallery in Philadelphia’s Old City became home to the “Waiting Room” exhibit, which featured the work of six artists, including Godley. In total, there were 11 installations, each set up as a waiting area. All the art involved dynamic light, either with a light source in the art itself or projected onto it: a 3D printed structure with light shining through it; a convex mirror that reflected flexible LED arrays; sculptures and mobiles made of plexiglass pieces and metallic surfaces hanging from the ceiling, creating sparkling reflections of light on the wall. Godley’s installation featured a panel of six tiles with a video of swirling blue light projected onto it, creating a ripple effect on each tile. Each piece immersed the observer by using a complex interaction of light and shadow.

They were also each accompanied by a QR code that took the viewer to a survey — this is where art meets research. The surveys were designed by population health researcher Rosemary Frasso, PhD, (the Victor Heiser, MD Professor of Population Health) and her student Julianna LeNoir to enable viewers to assess how the art made them feel. They gathered 195 responses, and overwhelmingly, viewers reported a sense of “calm” and “peacefulness” after experiencing the dynamic light-art installations. The researchers had successfully created an immersive environment — without headsets — that had a calming effect.

The attendees were also asked if they would like to see similar artwork in a doctor’s waiting room. One person reported, “Yes, since it would be a good form of distraction while waiting for an anxiety-ridden appointment.” Another said, “Yes, it’s calming; it’s something to focus your attention on; something to take you outside of whatever else is going on and stop and just imagine something completely different.”

Transporting a Chapel to Oceans and Galaxies

Buoyed by the positive effects of the “Waiting Room” exhibit, the research team at JCIAH wanted to build on that study and turned their attention to a larger space — the Ravenhill Chapel on Jefferson’s East Falls campus. The goal was to create a fully immersive art installation and test the potential positive effects on well-being in another population that faces many stressors — college students.