How do cognitive tests help us understand how the human mind works? By adapting existing tests and utilising artistic methods this project uncovers experiences of assessment whilst communicating the ways we perceive the world.

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Testing Situations is a research project working with the mechanisms of neurological assessment. A series of artworks have been created in response to testing materials and archival videos of people undertaking assessments, and the project has initially focused on tests of language, object, spatial and semantic perception developed at UCL Institute of Neurology. An archive of examples detailing similarities between cognitive tests and conceptual artworks is being formulated and through this research new tests and situations are being explored. The project aims to straddle forms of creativity used in the fields of neuropsychology, conceptual art and experimental technology to discuss the historical evolution of tests and adapt the ways people are assessed in the future.

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Testing Situations toured around the UK throughout 2019, funded by a Wellcome Public Engagement grant. The project has been developed through the Created Out of Mind research residency at Wellcome Collection and collaborations with members of Rare Dementia Support groups and researchers at the Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology. 

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Learning from this project was expanded on as part of the Understanding Intelligence residency at PRAKSIS, Oslo which asked how constructs of intelligence are measured, used and abused, and how changing understandings of human and more-than-human worlds might require radical redefinitions. More information can be found here.