(Royal College of Art 2007)
In 2001 I made a sculpture called I know you inside out. I know you inside out is a reconstruction of a 39-year old convicted murderer named Joseph Paul Jernigan, who prior to his execution, was persuaded to donate his body to medical science in order to become the ‘Visible Human’, a dataset of cryosections, CT scans and MRI scans. My desire to create a sculpture of Jernigan was not anatomical nor medical – I was fascinated by the virtuality of the Visible Human – in becoming ‘visible’, Jernigan’s body was converted from flesh to voxel: in order to create the dataset Jernigan’s corpse was frozen and sliced so finely that it disintegrated to mush, leaving only digital photographs and scans. The images of his body where uploaded onto the Internet allowing him to be viewed at anytime and any place (but never all at once), he was under constant threat of being copied or translated. I downloaded images of his body and printed them onto sheets of acrylic and then ‘put him back together again’. In making I know you inside out Jernigan was relocated in time and space; returned from a digital to analogue state; no longer decentralized, fragmented and prone, but centered, whole and upright.
After making I Know You Inside Out I was inspired to preserve as well as resurrect so sought out technologies that offered images of the inside of the living body. I soon found that the photographs of cryosections of Jernigan’s body, which I used to make my sculpture, were mimicking the axial (cross section) scan of MRI and CT scanning. After some initial research into the different scanning methods and seeing that a dataset similar to the Visible human could be created harmlessly with MRI, I embarked on making Family Portrait – a series of sculptures of my family made from MRI scans. In making Family Portrait my engagement with medical imaging was firmly sealed and I have since worked with a number of different scanning technologies to create artworks including CT (After and Iceman) and PET scanning (Radiant). The privileged access I was granted in order to make these sculptures inspired me to formalize and develop my experiences by starting a research project at the Royal College of Art in 2006.
The aims of my practice based research project are to examine from an artist’s perspective, the processes needed to digitize the body - how flesh can be translated to pixel (digital photography), to voxel (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Computerised Tomography, Positron Emission Tomography and Ultrasound) and to xyz co-ordinate (3D laser scanning). By looking at the history and evolution of these technologies as well as working closely with radiologists, scientists and technicians to acquire medical imaging datasets and 3D laser scans, I seek out metaphors and poetic readings of the translations that take place as well as finding ways to repair the fragmentation they promote.
I work with different datasets in order to compare and contrast them. I allow data to move freely from medical imaging to image editing to computer-aided design to data processing software. The ‘Scanned-In’ body is manipulated and processed until the body bears, as a mother bears stretch marks, scars of the virtual world. The scars are inflicted /informed not only by the scanning processes but by parallel digital phenomena such as mutli-user hack/slash gaming and on-line worlds where bodies are not ‘Scanned-In’ in order to exist in virtual space but designed, styled, maimed and destroyed with a click of the mouse. Ultimately, my major and quantitative research aim is to create new and bespoke methods for exporting the processed data as figurative sculpture in the real world allowing data to become relic.
Entwined with and emerging from the studio research are a number of philosophical and ethical questions; what is the affect of seeing the body fragmented and screen based? What are the implications of digitally mutating the transforming the body? To whom does the data belong – the original subject (patient), the medic or the artist? What does it mean to have a dataset from a living body rather than a corpse? What new kinds of vision are emerging from 3D datasets (is the panoptic being replaced by the pivot optic)? Are 3D medical datasets simulations or representations of the body? These questions are invigorated by the writings of theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Arthur Kroker, Donna Harraway, Katherine Waldby and Katherine Hayles.
As I near the end of my first academic year I realise how much I have achieved and learnt since starting my project. My research demanded I invest time in learning about the technologies involved in the digitisation of the body. In order to do this I used the resources of Imperial College (which RCA students are given access to), complimented by a period of clinical scanning observation at the Paul Strickland Scanner Centre. This period of research enabled me not only to properly understand how the different scanning technologies work, but also to identify characteristics for different scanning modalities, which hold true from acquisition to image. The shadowing has prompted me to learn to work with medical imaging software in order to able to post produce it myself rather than rely on radiographers which in turn is further fuelling and identifying new avenues for the research.
In addition to the more technical research aspects of how the body is digitised I have also expanded my vocabulary for exporting my processed data. The RCA’s dedicated rapid prototyping department offers a number of cutting edge machines which as a research student I am able to experiment with: being at the RCA with its cross departmental opportunities has introduced a fruitful play ethic into my practice.
The introduction of writing into my practice has brought a new rigour to my already established enquiry. At a time where the technology I am working with is evolving so rapidly (and is so seductive visually) the discipline of writing has carved out an important space for reflection and contextualisation. I have now reached a stage where I both write from and through the practice and practice from and through writing. I do not seek to validate my work through theory - but rather create a feedback loop between the two which hopefully enriches both.