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Reimagining Pain from the Personal to the Planetary
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine
P.A.I.N. reimagines pain as an interconnected reality (environmental, emotional, socio-political and intergenerational) and explores how individual and planetary wounds mirror one another. When forests burn, do our nervous systems feel the same inflammation? Could grief be mapped alongside extinction curves?
Merging art, AI and network science, P.A.I.N. weaves often disconnected data sets (climate indicators, public health records, social media sentiment and poverty indexes) into an interactive 3D globe called the Personal-Planetary-Pain (PPP) Map at p-a-i-n.world. Users contribute their own pain stories while an AI engine intertwines them with the planet’s suffering, inviting visitors to feel as nodes within the Earth’s body. In collaboration with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine, the project reveals a vastly hidden architecture of pain and transformation, where care for the self becomes inseparable from care for the more-than-human world we are situated within.
JKU MED Campus, Laboratory Building (LAB), Level 1 // MED CAMPUS
P.A.I.N. is PERSONAL AND INTERCONNECTED with NATURE
PPP was developed during the Hackathon 2025, a three-day program organized by @jkulinz’s LIFT_C, @arselectronica, and @ludwigboltzmanngesellschaft's OIS Center. The work was presented at the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 in Linz, as part of the showcase "Transforming Medicine through AI and Art."Team: Hollis Hui, Dora Siafla, Julia Guthrie, Jack Heseltine, Ines Gerard-Ursin, Lukas Troyer, Mary Maggic, Mathieu Mahve-Beydokhti, Michael Artner, Péter Velősy.
The second reiteration of the PPP Map was developed in 2026: The P.A.I.N. Collective The P.A.I.N Collective is an interdisciplinary group of artists (Mary Maggic, Dora Siafla, Hollis Hui and Dominika Kolenda), alongside computer scientist Michael Artner, AI researcher Christian Stelmach, network scientist Ines Gerard-Ursin, UX/UI developer Isra Viadest and facilitator Mathieu Mahve-Beydokhti (LBG-OIS).
Credits
The P.A.I.N. project is lead by independent artist and researcher, Mary Maggic. From the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Open Innovation in Science Center, Mathieu Mahve-Beydokhti (OIS Expert) is appointed as the Lead Facilitator. From the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine, the team includes Ines Gerard-Ursin (PhD Researcher) - Lead on Data Harmonization, Iker Núñez-Carpintero (Post-Doc Researcher) - Multiplex Systems Expert, and Norbert Unfug and Sebastian Pirch - Data Visualization. The Technical Team consists of Michael Artner (Masters Graduate of JKU Linz) - Technical Lead and Back-End Developer, Isra Viadest (Independent Artist) - Front-End Developer, and Christian Stelmach (Masters Candidate at University of Vienna) - Lead on AI Model. Finally, the Art & Design Team consists of Dora Siafla (PhD Student at University of Washington), Hollis Hui (Independent Artist; Central Saint Martins), and Dominika Kolenda (MA Candidate in Philosophy, Biology, and Ethnology).
