digitized bodies, virtual spectacles

Futures 32 (2000) 103–120www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Digitized bodies, virtual spectacles

Nina Czegledy1,*, Andre P. Czegledy2

Department of Social Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

The magnitude of recent advances in biomedical technologies has contributed to a significantshift in the common perceptions of the human body. This visual revolution has been achievedthrough the combination of prosthetic science, simulation technologies, genomics, informatics,biomedical engineering and—most importantly—advanced visualization techniques thatinclude entirely new vectors of bodily image enhancement. Digital manipulations have contrib-uted to a dramatic change in the relationship(s) between humans and machines and even thosebetween humans themselves. While the theoretical, ethical and practical features of thesedevelopments permeate practically every aspect of our daily lives and have extended our under-standing of communication with respect to the human body, the consequences for the futureare obscure. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

“The future is clear” claims the lead sentence of a striking advertisement forApplied Imaging, a biomedical technology company whose new product is an inte-grated DNA probe reagent for RX Fish Chromosome Analysis. The product adver-tisement, which appeared in the March 1998 issue of the distinguishedNature Gen-etics Journal, artfully combines this conclusive statement with powerful imageryand a positivist, explanatory text. The backlaid image shows a colorful chromosomekaryotype arranged against a black background. The neon colors of the karyotypeecho the implicit message of corporate creativity just as their contrast with the black-

* Corresponding author. Tel.:+1-416-929-9383; fax:+1-416-929-9383.E-mail address:[email protected] (N. Czegledy)

1 Nina Czegledy is an independent artist, curator and writer.2 Andre P. Czegledy is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of the

Witwatersrand, South Africa.

0016-3287/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0016 -3287(99 )00070-1

104 N. Czegledy, A.P. Czegledy / Futures 32 (2000) 103–120

ness around them suggests Science as a solution to the metaphorical blackness of aprevious era’s limitations. The high contrast of the karyotype colors is paralleled bythe white starkness of continuing text whose message is that the espoused technologyis part of the “only” method by which we might realize “pioneering solutions forlife”. Such text and imagery illustrate post-industrial society’s current fascinationwith biomedical technology as well as confirming the force of enhanced imagingsystems and visualization technologies in creating a fundamental shift in how imagesof the human body are being (re)produced in terms of the social imagination.

The investigation of certain unresolved issues regarding the body politic, objecti-fication of the individual, bodily ethics and the sometimes contradictory discoursessurrounding certain experimental technologies seems essential to reinterpreting theplace of the individual as a corporeal entity in society. How can we decipher theambiguities surrounding the documented data body? Simultaneously, how can weobtain precise information about ourselves, particularly in the coded terms of medicalscience? How can we preserve our individual integrity without becoming mere elec-tronic spectacles held fast under what Scheper-Hughes and Lock have termed the“controlling gaze” [1] of modern medicine? Perhaps more importantly, how will theprospects of increased visualization affect our very future as social beings? A criticaldiscourse extended to artists working through scientific and biomedical concepts(related to the imaging technologies), may shed some light on the answers to theseelusive questions. It is in the contemplation of this decidedly creative (and admittedlyspeculative) commentary on the transforming body vis-a`-vis the manifestations ofthe digital revolution that we might gain a better understanding of both changingperceptions and future trajectories.

This paper deals with the subject of advanced biotechnologies, current biomedicalpractices and considerations of their impact on human society in the near future.Instead of thinking of the body as a “socially informed” whole in the meaning ofBourdieu [2], or from the perspective of cultural definition in the vein of classicalanthropology [3], it will be examined primarily in terms of technological objectifi-cation and to a lesser extent, artistic expression.

There is nothing novel about nudity, neither in private nor public circumstancesof expression/representation. The nude has an important place in art history and hasbeen celebrated throughout the ages by magnificent representations. The naked,stripped subject of this essay, however, differs greatly from the sometimes erotic yetabstract distance of conventionally mediated representations and anatomical studies.It is, instead, a post-modern body divorced from its own reality; one which attractscuriosity, centers on persistent anxiety, and is simultaneously a subject of explorationand analysis.

Of first consideration will be the issue of spectacle in connection with shiftingperceptions of the human body via advanced biomedical technologies of visualiz-ation. Secondly, the paper will interrogate some of the recent developments in mol-ecular modeling and virtual reality programming in terms of their significance forbodily perceptions. Next, we will consider the impact of the sort of digital imagingtechnologies that are now intrinsically linked to many of the new forms of visualiz-ation. Fourthly and fifthly, the themes of invasiveness and distance are reviewed in

105N. Czegledy, A.P. Czegledy / Futures 32 (2000) 103–120

conjunction with changing notions of spatiality (bodily and otherwise) in reference tovisualization technologies. Rather than concluding the discussion in the conventionalmanner of a summary, leading examples of artistic expression in relation to the socialplay of such technology will be examined—particularly those relationships linkedwith the interconnected issues of bodily alteration and corporeal invasiveness. Whatwill become clear upon closer inspection is that the significant technical advancesin the biomedical sciences are inalterably constructing new human vulnerabilities incontemporary society just as they open our eyes to new visions of ourselves.

2. Technology and the spectacle of the body

The confluence of medical science with the dimension of spectacle constitutesneither a complex nor convoluted history. As early as approximately 300 B.C. Hero-philos is thought to have conducted a dissection of the human body for the first timein full public view. It is not known whether the sense of presentation accruing tothis event fell within the secular or sacred perspective of ancient Greek sensibility—although the possibility exists (given then held cultural understandings of the cosmo-logical place of the body in society) that such a differentiation was not in evidenceat the time. What is clear is that by the 16th and 17th centuries, when medicalpractitioners and amateur anatomists were dissecting corpses in front of open audi-ences, such events were considered a valid form of popular scrutiny as much as anopportunity for anatomical examination conducted in the name of scientific advance-ment [4]. Without question, the human body was by this time an accepted part ofthe public domain of inspection and spectacle in the sense of formal exhibition andtitillating display. This display (for whatever purpose) was, however, still very mucha matter of direct sight.

Until recently in human history, the body was solely viewed through the nakedeye or (since the 17th century) via elementary mechanical magnification in the termsof compound lensed microscopy. These two means—one natural in the sense ofimmediate anatomical potential and the other aided through simple optical tech-nology—allowed little room for image distortion. Although the latter form of sightmay be said to have significantly changed our way of perceiving biological scale(especially that related to ourselves as complex continuums of organic activity), bothof these sources of visualization traditionally carried limited possibilities for visualreproduction and, moreover, manipulation. Except for the later intrusion of clinicalphotography, they depended upon a critical temporality of visual access that connec-ted the viewer with the viewed object as an immediate physical presence (in part orwhole). This temporality ensured that control of the material body included a largemeasure of control over its life-like image in the gaze of others. With the advent ofthe modern era and the development of advanced biomedical technologies which putthe use of bodily imaging at the center of diagnostic medicine, this and a host ofother relationships no longer seem to pertain.

Today, we consider our bodies through the thick filter of scientific fact, animposing edifice that provides an objective seal of approval thoroughly consonant


with the Enlightenment tradition of rationalist thinking. Here is entrenched the Car-tesian idea of philosophical introspection, a simultaneous separation of mind fromlived-in body which has dominated Western thought for the last three centuries. Tothis idea may be added the further—social—separation of the person as patient–object vis-a-vis the medical establishment, a hyper-patient relationship whichreinforces our lack of certitude with respect to the self-knowledge of our own bodies.The only place where this relationship seems to (but partly) break down is in the areaof bodily image, more specifically, in our increasing access to scientific knowledge.

The visual material of our bodily reality is now supplied not simply through thepersonal sensory realm of experience and self-judgement but it is augmented by wayof an overwhelming stream of information from a variety of quarters—albeit manyof them arbitrated by the medical establishment. From physics and (bio)chemistrythrough astronomy, to neuroscience, molecular genetics and even cosmetic surgery,technological imaging is thus changing the way we see ourselves as much as theworld around us: it tells us what we are and how we really look (like).

Some technologies have had greater influence than others. Wilhelm Roentgen’s1895 discovery of X-rays led to seeing the human body through the primacy ofcorporeal density. M. Kroll, Ernest August and Friedrich Ruska’s construction ofthe first electron microscope in 1932 opened entirely new vistas of material structureand scale, thereby unalterably changing the way in which we visualize the architec-ture of the physical. Over the last three decades, in particular, the wide-spread useof high-resolution electron microscopy has provided powerful micrographic imageson a molecular level. These images have further extended the range of visualization,working to separate it from the very fabric of life.

Recently, the FISH technology noted in the Introduction above has “profoundlyaltered the aspect of genome research and molecular diagnostics” [5] by allowingthe visualization of individual genes on chromosomes. Formerly, chromosomes wereanalyzed manually, by way of an extremely time-consuming and labour-intensivemethodology. FISH has changed all that. Now the analysis of DNA has beenextended via computer-aided technologies to the examination of chromosome meta-phases such that formerly invisible diagnostic and research areas have opened upour notions of bodily mapping.

Other technical advances related to enhanced visualization include: TI (ThermalImaging), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), CT (Computed Tomography X-rayimaging) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography). The extensive use of thesetechnologies has contributed to a radical shift in bodily thinking involving a bifur-cated path. On the one hand, the conceptual space of the corporeal has becomegreater than ever before: there is literally more of it to see in a quantifiable, volumin-ous fashion. This radical shift in perception has resulted in no less than a re-drawingof the human body in terms of its essential nature. Where before it was just fleshand bone; now it is a mass of various readings, each one giving a different characterto the whole.

On the other hand, the new technologies have produced a dimensional multipli-cation of how the human body is conceptually and visually recognized. Simply said,we now see the body in plural ways: via electronic pulses, magnetic cadences, ther-


mal signatures, etc. Such differing forms of visualization signal a qualitative differ-ence in bodily understanding by way of technological mediation; one which funda-mentally restructures the historical conclusiveness of independent visual ability whilecornering the mind into a new cage of cognitive dependency.

3. Molecular modelling and the virtual body

Before the advent of the latest visualization technologies, the French philosopherMaurice Merleau-Ponty noted that:

Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps thevisible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly,and with it forms a system. [6]

It is entirely possible that the new technologies can mediate this perspective on theprimacy of the sensory consciousness by providing an opportunity to divorce our-selves from the conventional cognity of bodily-determined knowledge. In their pro-vision of direct sensory liberation, we now find ourselves possessed of the abilityto increasingly visualize far beyond what is called “normal” sight.

In particular, advances in computer visualization and user interface programs carrywith them the widening prospects of 3D modelling. These developments have alsoencouraged the growth of increasingly sophisticated virtual reality (VR) programswhich allow their users to interact with objects (including objectified bodies) in com-pletely simulated, artificial environments. In this way, medical researchers (studentsincluded) may soon be able to explore the minutiae of the human body without evencoming into sensory contact with it. The level of programming complexity may notbe able to duplicate the living detail—nor introduce the element of chance—whichwe find in the real world of our direct bodily experience. Nevertheless, it is alreadyclear that the power of the mind to fill in the gaps between sensory data, coupledwith the increasing potentialities of AI (Artificial Intelligence), leaves considerableroom for the increasing rewards (and pitfalls) of simulation. This evolving technicalfaculty is not without direct importance for the development, transmission and appli-cation of both codified and experiential knowledge.

In technological terms at least, it is now possible to say that the computer-gener-ated and digitally-enhanced images produced by the modern forms of visualizationnot only permit the representation of completely abstract phenomena such as math-ematical concepts and formulae crucial to the field of molecular genetics, but alsoallow for the representation of medically conceptual phenomena (such as the nervousand circulatory systems of the human body). Now we are able to visualize the think-able body, including states of motion which would be impossible to naturally cap-ture otherwise.

If the prospects of existing virtual reality computer programs allow the viewer toexplore the simulate corporeal as if s/he were a molecular astronaut in the humanbody, then it becomes apparent that the very concept of physicality—let alone the


body—is being undermined by the new technologies of visualization. One can nowfloat via computer programs through the vascular system and slide in and out of thebody’s musculature with as much ease as it takes to push a computer mouse alongthe table. Although the creation of this sort of artificial bodily realm is as much apart of the art of computer generation as the actual reproduction of any given bodythrough visual imagery, it nonetheless incorporates a radical shift in bodily perspec-tive. Not only is the corporeal become visually unstable but, with the touch of abutton, the body can appear and disappear; it can be pulled and pushed, mutatedinto impossible agglomerations with a totally new plasticity. In conceptual terms atleast, such plasticity paints the viewer/interactor with the controlling brush of thedivine(- like) while echoing in bodily terms the post-modernist cant of the immateri-ality of spatiality, what is now called “hyper-space” [7].

Diagnostic telemedicine—widely used in a variety of medical disciplines—is anexample of remote visualization techniques where the individual human body itselfbecomes transparent from a wide range of visual perspectives. Indeed, telediagnosticconferencing has a tremendous potential for the future practice of medicine [8]—and corporations promoting the related equipment are fully aware of this. A recentBritish Telecom advertisement [9] extolling the company’s involvement in advancedISDN technology shows an ultrasound image with the caption: “The ultrasoundexamination was conducted by a specialist in London, the patient was in the Isle ofWight”. The advertisement aptly illustrates how the human body has not only becametransparent, even remote, due to recent technologies—but that it is presently beingused as visual spectacle for blatantly commercial purposes.

The process of divorcing material artefact from lived reality involves both thetechnology itself and a veritable industry of malleable replication underpined bycommercial rather than altruistic interests. Delving even deeper into the realms ofminute scale, a long list of molecular modeling software programs ranging from“Babel” to “XMol” are currently being advertised on the Internet. Many of theseprogrammes are intended for maximal distribution—a direct corollary of the sort ofmarket commercialization which dominates scientific efforts of all kinds in contem-porary society. The advertisement for the molecular visualization freeware “Rasmol”,for example, intentionally seeks a broadly based clientele; it entices prospective cus-tomers with “a little basic biochemistry [knowledge] . . . to get lots of molecules”because “learning how to use [RasMol] is easy and fun” [10]. This ideology ofaccess—a psychological commercialism which hides behind the facade of democraticaccess—is reinforced by the corporate website on the Internet, which reads:

Rasmol and Chime Molecular Visualization Freeware [our emphasis] This isthe Rasmol Home Page visited by 250,000 people from 115 countries/Two millionaccessioned per year.

The proliferation of the new bodily imagery in the public domain (primarilythrough the media of popular cinema and commercial advertising) has paralleledcontemporary trends in visual culture, a development that returns us to the issues ofspectacle. The strong emphasis on imagery in contemporary—particularly Western—


culture has contributed to a visually privileged society in more than one way: privi-leged in the terms of access to technology and/or its images, and privileged in respectto the social valuation of the human senses. Of these two dimensions, it is the secondwhich has particular bearing upon our discussion at hand.

The contemporary domination of the visual in society has occurred at the expenseof our other senses, especially the olfactory, but including that of tactility. Touchingimplies intimacy [11,12]—a controversial notion in an age when direct contact isincreasingly replaced by systems of remote control. We mean to imply here thattechnical means have increasingly allowed for the spread of complex, yet disem-bodied communication practices such as voice-mail and other forms of indirect inter-action. These practices transmit received knowledges in a fashion much like the newvisualization technologies: by way of technical separation and technical restructuring.The resulting (re)constitution, whether that of vocality or the (image of) physicalpresence, has brought into sharp prominence an increasingly virtual, rather than atemporal, point of view. In her influential volume,Body Criticism, Stafford has goneso far as to argue that the gradual process from a text-based to a visually dependentculture has not simply revolutionized our perception of the world in general and thehuman body in particular, but that we live in a predominantly service economy whichis predicated on “televising and videoing constructed, antisensual, and intangiblesomatic experiences rather than manufacturing tangible objects” [13].

4. Digital imaging of the body

Via the aid of digitization processes, current images of the body are manipulated,processed, communicated, stored, compressed and archived. These processes areaccomplished to the point where it is difficult—if not impossible—to ascertain theirprecise origin, as well as determine the source from a legal point of view becauseof its essentially intangible nature [14]. Has the image of the human body in medicinechanged significantly over time?

Medical practice in the Medieval Ages consisted mainly of homeopathy, some ofwhich was rooted in pagan traditions of curing and then adjusted to suit the doctrinesand cultural sensibilities of European Christendom [15]. During this time, medicinalmaps of the body featured both organs and fluids. The functions of each organ werecorrelated to the heavenly constellations and, in a similar fashion, the body’s dif-fering fluids were depicted as linked to the heavenly elements. This vision of bodilyconnectedness reflected the primarily religious coloration of the European imagin-ation at the time, a system of influenced knowledge which would not be fully chal-lenged until the Reformation and Enlightenment. By the 18th century, however,much had changed. Medical records from Germany studied by Barbara Dudenpresent us with a very different conception of the body, one completely at odds withcurrent conceptions: a body in which substances we would not now recognize weredeemed to find corporal pathways which we would regard as anatomically impossible[16,17]. Nevertheless, contemporary illustrations of the body were by then alreadyprecisely executed in a manner which foreshadowed the scientism of today.


By the end of the century, Lomas informs us, representations of the body putgreat emphasis on delineation and detail:

Anatomical illustration flourished in the latter part of the eighteenth century asthe emergent medical sciences laid increasing stress upon empiricism. Art lent tomedicine not just the prestige of high culture but, more vitally, a repertoire ofrealist tropes designed to convince the viewer of the truthfulness of unimpededsight [18–20].

The peculiar artfulness of these images contributed to the prestige of the medicalprofession in the eyes of the wider scientific community and received the addedattention of an interested public [21]. Both of these audiences were to follow thefurther course of medical visualization for some time, including the crucial discoveryof X-ray imaging. This brings us to the current day, for, according to Stafford:

If the late nineteenth century developed the photographic sounding of the livinginterior through endoscopy, gastroscopy, cystoscopy and most dramatically X-rays, the late XXth century revealed its dark core three dimensionally throughMRI scans [22].

MRI technology is highly dependent upon digitization technology, and among thenew biomedical technologies currently being developed, it is the variants of digitalimaging which are fast becoming star performers for profit-minded institutions andenterprises. This is a nascent bio-science which utilizes the power of computer analy-sis to visually isolate parts of the body picture by as much as molecular picture—and then reconstitute them into a whole which is subject to intense digital evaluationprior to diagnosis. Given the development of computer sophistication, a real questionin this specialized field is whether (in time) the eventual diagnosis will continue tobe conducted by human or machine?

As a separate subfield of commercial science, digital imaging technologies areone of the fastest growing industries of the current decade. They generate close to10 billion dollars in annual revenues and involve a projected growth rate of 55%per year [23]. The commercial expansion of these technologies has reshaped biomed-icine in ways that would have been barely imagined a decade ago:

Although the inroads made by imaging technologies are occurring throughoutscience, they are most pronounced in biomedical research, where radiology depart-ments have been rebaptized as departments of Medical Imaging, where entireissues of journals are devoted to imaging technologies and where a prominentpublication—theNew England Journal of Medicine—now carries a regular featureon medical imaging [24].

These and similar ramifying developments have significantly contributed to the insti-tutional shift from mono-visual views on the body to the sort of multiple visualiza-


tions which are increasingly part of the technological hyper-world of our socialimagination.

At the heart of digital image management and communication lies the image itself,a picture whose scale can be manipulated with astonishing ease. Whether it be fetalheart changes or the CT (Computed Tomography X-ray imaging) diagnosis of humanremains, minute details of the human body can be technologically surveyed and then,via computer analysis, evaluated on a level of sophistication previously unavailableto the medical and biological sciences. This is apparent in recent applications of CTtechnology which include its use in the research of Lewin et al. [25] who, since1977, have been using two-dimensional CT images to study ancient Egyptian mumm-ies held in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Since 1984, Lewin’s forensic and medical team has extended their pioneeringimaging techniques by developing a three-dimensional serial X-ray tomographyimaging system to study the cranium of one of the specimens. The three-dimensionalscans have revealed a wide variety of internal bodily information ranging from thespecific mortuary techniques used in the preparation of the corpses to aspects ofindividual dietary condition—without the use of invasive forensic techniques whichwould have irrevocably damaged the valuable specimens.

It is not only in forensic archeology where unprecedented changes have takenplace as a result of the new visualization technology. In fetal cardiology, the dramati-cally improved image resolution of echocardiographs has enabled scientific andmedical professionals to see and diagnose cardiac abnormalities in fetuses as earlyas 17 weeks of gestation [26]. This has dramatically changed the comprehension offetal cardiac physiology in terms of diagnostics and, via videotaping, has beenextended to medical education and family counseling programmes. The latter com-munity outreach activities are not without considerable import; they extend theexperience of the new visualization technologies far beyond the medical and scien-tific communities and into the layperson’s realm of popular knowledge and discourse.In this way, through (especially) the familial chains of society, the surface (image)of visualization technology is broadly disseminated—although the actual techniquesremain a part of the specialist’s protected domain of arcane expertise and control.

5. Invasiveness and the bodily spatial

Until very recently, the practice of surgery was a purely manual skill not leasttouched by the idea of artistic dexterity. Today, the intrusion of technology into evenbasic surgical techniques may be producing an entirely new—and considerably moretechnical (as in technological)—sensibility. With image-guided, stereotactic navi-gation in tumour surgery, the localization technology is combined with real-timevideo to permit the visualization of medical imaging data as a video overlay duringthe course of the surgical procedure [27]. In the process of such relay and trans-mission, the transformed biotechnical body can be virtually (i.e. digitally) dissected,fragmented into a plethora of arbitrary and component parts which may or may notrespect the bounds of physiological reality.


The notion of bodily malleability in which such imaging processes are rooted hasimportant cultural considerations with respect to our social desires to conform tobeauty stereotypes by way of bodily adornment and, in the more extreme cases,actual alteration. At the far end of this spectrum, visualization technologies invitethe imagination to loose the connection between one’s natural (i.e. birth) body andone’s self-desires by way of the possibilities of physiological reconstruction. Suchreconstruction goes well beyond the transformative vertices of body-building [28]to arrive at a point of veritable bodily exchange. There is no better illustration ofthe conceptual elasticity involved here than to refer to the growing industry of cos-metic surgery and its use of computer modeling programs which generate compositefaces intended to show the clientele their new appearance after the work is done.

What is striking about this use of visualization technology is not so much itsencouragement of visual licence but what it has to offer for our future understandingsof individuality: essentially, an ebbing of bodily grounded uniqueness via the pros-pects of physiological replication in first visual, and then practical, terms.

Some of the latest visual surgery techniques (in tandem with compound laserinstruments) allow physiological interference by which it is not even necessary tophysically cut into the body. This sort of technologically-oriented surgery relies evermore on the precision of non-human elements, a development which points to thediminution of the surgeon as the Ultimate Authority. Further, it contributes to thefetishization of technology in medical practice, a sensibility which parallels widercultural mores in (especially) the Euro–American world.

The term “non-invasive” technology refers not to the elimination but to the minim-ization of physical intervention. The corollary issue of a scalar dimension therebyinvites a rhetorical question: are these non-invasive technologies truly non-invasive?On the contrary, it seems our bodies are increasingly scrutinized, recorded, evaluated,penetrated and ruthlessly appraised (by other than traditional means). MRI, PET andsimilar techniques have revealed our bodies in terms of hitherto unseen detail.Whereas previously the body had to be stripped away layer upon layer to reveal itscore of hidden structure, the inner body is now apparent at the quickest of glances—just as the classical anatomical diagrams (which draped a strict succession of organs,musculature and skin onto the human skeleton) are being replaced by the translucentimages of computer generation:

The computer-mediated milieu renders the body nakedly public. Using radio-waves and magnetic fields, this technique for painlessly exploring morphology,nonetheless raises the specter of universal diaphaneity. It conjures up visions ofan all powerful observer, who has instant visual access to the anatomy, biochemis-try and physiology of the patient [29].

6. Distance

The issue of translucency (noted above) leads to questions of distance. Informaticsand the new visualization techniques have both contributed to a minimization of


distance itself, an alteration of bodily spatiality which changes fundamental notionsof proximal relationship based on the separation of internality from externality. Thishas been accomplished not simply by the technological erasure of surface but by thevery dissembling of bodily space as constructed by the relationship between surfaceand depth. The collapse of space, for instance, has become an excellent facilitatorfor cybersex. “Computer technologies as well as the widespread use of the internethave played a challenging role” representing both escape from the physical bodyand fulfillment of erotic desire [30].

In essence, depth no longer exists within us (as constructed by the new forms ofvisualization). As Stafford puts it:

These medical technologies destabilize the already precarious borders betweenthe exterior and the interior as they visualize the invisible [31].

The idea of distance is also invoked by the recent application of more establishedvisualization technologies in terms of their negation of spatiality. Telesurgeryinvolves a surgical procedure aided by exterior means: the counsel of an off-sitesurgeon who is in constant contact with an operating colleague via a real-time videolink. Apart from its reliance on technology as an intrinsic element, telesurgery’ssocial importance lies in the dislocation of the surgical service itself. Here is a situ-ation where much of the practical surgical knowledge is removed from the veryperson who (physically) conducts the procedure. This breaks the traditional servicechain between the physician-originator of medical knowledge and the patient suchthat the latter may never meet the person who dictates the surgical procedure.

Quite clearly then, telesurgery involves an inversive couplet of proxemic relation-ships. Firstly, it hermetically negates the gulf of physical distance between patientand consulting physician during the operational procedure itself. Secondly, it allowsfor a complete separation between the two persons in terms of their social contactbefore, during, and after the surgery. This second spatial turn spells far more for thepatient than for the consulting surgeon who may yet reserve their right of physicalaccess to a given medical case (patient).

It is the patient who must deal with the bureaucratic and psychological conse-quences of a profoundly altered doctor–patient relationship wherein bodily intimacyis visually granted to the consulting surgeon yet the traditional, reciprocal right ofsocial intimacy (direct communication) is not necessarily in evidence. While con-sulting physicians have complete access to the patient’s visually objectified body,the consulting surgeon(s) can remain hidden behind the screen of technological andinstitutional mediation.

The new visualization technologies not only see the body in different ways anddevise new spatial relationships to itself, but their triumphs have had a tendency topush to the side issues of a non-technical nature in the increasingly technology-centred world of leading edge biomedicine. In these terms, the new forms of visualiz-ation provide splendid sights but a shuttered vision, forging new paths of sciencebut seeming to lack the similar progress in their discussion of the ethical and othersocial dimensions involved. Consequently, in spite of the advantages which such


visualization has given us in seeing the body, other aspects of these technologiesyet remain to be addressed in more conclusive terms. For example, while the non-invasive, visualization technologies used in the mummy projects of the Lewin team(noted above) finally allowed a forensic team to conduct subsurface diagnosis withoutdisturbing the mortal remains, it remains less than clear whether or not such investi-gation constitutes an invasion of the dignity—never mind the sanctity—of the bodiesthemselves (in the terms of their cultural conception).

In addition to image adjustments, the new visualization techniques have contrib-uted to a loss of physical and conceptual reference points. Both Walter Benjamin[32] and Paul Virilio [33] have discussed at length the intervention of technologyin human nature, specifically the spatial distance between the observer and theobserved. Kim Sawchuk, the communication theorist, coined the term “biotourism”[34] to describe investigations of the interior space of the body, a passage from lightinto the dark, from the well-known to uncharted territories. For Sawchuk, this bodilypassage evokes in us a longing for a time when we felt less naked, less exposed,less vulnerable. Her conception, resting as it does at the junction of current scientificresearch, critical discourse and popular culture, uses the authorial narrative ofprowling into formerly hidden spaces—a metaphorical journey into the panorama ofthe bodily interior—to explore the stranger in ourselves. She adds that contemporarytechniques such as MRI imaging profess a safer, less invasive means of touringwithin the body.

This relatively benign perspective has been recently turned into an unusual aes-thetic and artistic experience by Mona Hatoum whose Turner Prize exhibition “Corpsetrangers” (“Foreign Bodies”, 1994) shown at the Tate Gallery, London (1995) andthe New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1997), featured the imagery ofkeyhole surgery as a camera travelled through the artist’s own body. A soundtrackof the magnified sounds of body organs was part of the video loop, while the degreeof visual magnification was heightened by the position of the viewer standing overthe projected image of the body interior [35] contributing to the unusual experience.

Many other artists in addition to Hatoum have added their commentary to thegrowing artistic discussion of the new visualization technologies. In the next andfinal section of this paper, we will examine some of them as a way of coming togrips with the new visualization technologies.

7. Art and the visualization technologies

We are a culture consumed by medicine. The patient is a consumer of medicine,who also is in a metaphorical sense consumed. Due to advances in informationand visual media technologies the penetration of biomedicine into every aspectof our daily life became much more accessible and at the same time more intimid-ating, more mysterious [36].

The range of social discourse drawing upon recent advances in biomedicine is


considerable. Readings of popular culture often include references to the new vis-ualization techniques themselves. In the medical profession, however, the criticaldiscourse by artists working with scientific and biomedical concepts is little recog-nized. This dimension to the relevant commentary is of some importance. In contrastto scientifically trained personnel concerned with the narrowed rigour of their pro-fessional disciplines—artists generally work within a broader context and seek tomake connections between seemingly disparate areas of human activity on a largerscale. They embrace aspects of life experience such as action, memory and sensation,seeking reciprocity between art, creative power and (in this case) biomedicine. Artistsoften foreshadow the message of societal, cultural and technological developmentswell before the impact of social transformation actually occurs. What can they tell us?

By the terms of its very nature, the notion of Art incorporates the dimension ofspectacle—most often that of its most public variants in the sense of exhibition andaudience forming an intrinsic part of the aim of expressive activity. The relationshipbetween mediated, visual representation and medicine is one of long and intricatestanding. From films, through videos, to art installations and variously appropriatedmedical images, the moral and ethical aspects of recent advances in biomedicineranging from the treatment of HIV/AIDS to cloning—have all been challenged andprovocatively interpreted by contemporary artists. While this discourse on the objec-tification of the human body is discussed and represented in traditional art forms, ithas also become a subject of special concern in multimedia forums and net-basedprojects.

It is impossible to fully enumerate the expanding list of internationally knownartists and artistic events dealing with biomedical aspects within the scope of thispaper. However, in the interests of the present discussion, we would like to highlighta few points related to artists whose work is directly pertinent to the issues at handconcerning the exponential growth of biomedical visualization technologies andtheir consequences.

While the presentation and interpretation of medical images has an establishedhistory in the arts, a new trend has emerged of late, one which veers away fromperspectives of surface to focus on the general theme of the human body itself—particularly as seen through the history of medicine or under the light of the newvisualization technologies. The trend involves what might be called the “direct rep-resentation” of appropriated biomedical images, organs and bodily performances.The 1996 “Beyond Ars Medica: Treasures of the Muetter Museum” show exhibitingmedical specimens at the Thread Waxing Space, New York serves as an illustrativeexample in this regard [37]. This unusual presentation of objects included both patho-logical and anatomical artifacts: medical instruments, bones, archival drawings,photographs and a variety of documents. Drawn together, these objects articulateddistinct professional perspectives on the body and successive technologies for view-ing it as a separate architecture of the corporeal, an artifact quite separate fromthe sentient person since objectified by medical science. Although the Museum wasestablished in the middle of the 19th century for purely educational purposes, thisexhibition had another dimension: that of popular spectacle in the sense of a viewing


public interested in the aesthetics of the pieces on display as well as in their intrin-sic meanings.

Individual artists take a different, and far more personal tack. They often use theirown bodies to emphasize the intellectual discourse on current issues surroundingbiomedicine. In addition to Mona Hatoum (noted above) some of the best knownartists in this category are Orlan, and Stelarc, each of whom has chosen to directlyengage with the new technologies of the body (visual and otherwise).

Since 1990, the French performance artist Orlan has undergone a public series ofplastic surgeries in order to alter her face, in order to fashion a new being and tocreate what she terms “Carnal Art”. Orlan is not her given (birth) name but whatcan only be considered an artistic pseudonym taken on in reflection of the artificialityof her changing features. The main questions which this act of will symbolize, reston the cognitive parallel between body and identity. To what extent is her today-face her real face? Have these bodily alterations changed her relationship to herselfin terms of primary identity? Conducted as performance art, the surgical operationshave been guided by a computer-generated image to which her face is (re)cut. Inmany ways, the deliberateness, precision and irrevocable conclusiveness which sheinvests in the process of her surgeries is entirely consonant with the subject matter ofher artistic themes; for Orlan is specifically interested in those advanced biomedicaltechnologies that question the very status of the human body as a corporeal ‘given’.In her work she challenges concepts of selfhood and questions the status of the bodyversus current biomedical technologies of transformation, temporary and otherwise.Not surprisingly given the commercial imperatives which hover throughout the tech-nologies under her consideration, Orlan also markets films of her surgeries as wellas (preserved) body parts labeled:

This is my body this is my software [38].

These products of seemingly fundamental bodily self not only satirize the commer-ciality of biomedicine but also bring into the foreground the issues of post-moderninterchangeability. Like the idea of indistinguishable “non-places” (cash-machinekiosks, airport terminal lounges, etc.) postulated by Auge [39], will the human bodybecome but a question of paltry experience without a determined sense of (bodily)identity?

By replacing several of its functions, the flesh-body might become obsolete or isalready obsolete. This notion is argued by Stelarc, the Australian performance artistwhose current work focuses on the “post-biological body and its relationships tocyberspace”. While his Ping-body performance has utilized the internet as an energysource (in electrical connection with his body), it is the artist’s ‘Stomach’ perform-ances which are more relevant to this paper [40]. In the ‘Stomach’, Stelarc insertsa micro-camera into his mouth, slowly lowering it through the passageway of hisesophagus and into his stomach. The vivid, living images captured by the cameraare simultaneously projected onto a large screen seen by the audience. This perform-ance has been categorized by a recent commentator as one of artistic sacrifice, for:


The inside of his body offered itself to the artefact which transmitted the pictureof the internal spaces of his body with the help of video technology. So, thereare no secrets left anymore [41].

“Possessed”, the installation by Louise Wilson [42], takes a different tack to ourrelationship with the body. It does so by way of linking art with artist through theexperience of medical research itself. In order to obtain her primary material whilereaching deeper into medical processes, Wilson has volunteered herself as a testsubject for biomedical research and thereby gained access to her own body in termsof the new visualization technologies. The installation subjects the viewer to a visualpanoply of both MRI and PET images of the artist’s physiology as linked with anaudio component. Like her oeuvre as a whole, this work seeks to convey the percep-tions gained in the course of her experiences. At the same time, it makes the pointedsuggestion that just as increased specialization means greater isolation and subdiv-ision of knowledge, the imagery of the medical industry becomes more and moreremoved from its human context. The sense of separation which is the result ofsuch technology is closely paralleled by two of the primary emotions which patientsexperience in the course of contemporary medical treatment: alienation and anon-ymity [43].

It has been suggested that, in addition to anxiety, in an investigation of authenticitythere exists an implicit eroticism which is contained in artistic works dealing withthe newly forming spectacle of the body [44]. John Baturin has been using externaland internal images of the body as metaphors to investigate how truth is constructed[45]. How do we manipulate images, data, bodily facts? How do we manipulate thetruth of ourselves as socially constructed individuals?—he asks. In his series EnemiesWithin, Baturin seeks to evoke these issues by his depiction of bodily arbitrariness,feeling that such provocation by artists calls into question practices that are bothpolitical and scientific, and that might involve cultural dimensions.

The multimedia artist Nell Tenhaaf has been deeply involved in what she sees asan uninvestigated link between the rarified arena of science and that of popular cul-ture at large. “Artists . . . ” says Nell Tenhaaf, “can bring a broader framework toscientific research to counterbalance the very strong bias that has been shown togenetics” [46]. In her opinion there remains a critical need to find a greater area ofcommon language with scientists—an act or process of exploration which she con-siders a mutually informative action. In her art, as in her textual work, Tenhaaf hassought to play a key role in this process:

I’m trying to make sense of contemporary science and its burgeoning techno-logical infrastructure. As an aficionado in this domain, I feel regularly bombardedby specialized information, that usually has a science fictional and even apocalyp-tic ring to it [47].

While the body itself might be obsolete in the opinion of doomsayers such as Maril-ouise and Arthur Kroker [48,49], or we might already be cyborgs, fabricated hybridsof organism and machine as suggested by Donna Harraway [50], the value of human


existence remains supported by others such as Kathy Ackers [51]. The relative truthof this philosophical tension may very well lie in the middle ground between thesetwo perspectives. To quote Roy Boyne in his article “The Art of the body in thediscourse of post modernity”:

If the separation of the subject and object was the achievement of the age ofreason, and the de-subjectification of the world was the secret of modernism, thenpost modernism marks the return of the subject [52].

But we might add: virtually dissected, fragmented, fractured, scrutinized, packagedand when necessary reassembled.

Among the questions which remain, how will we reconcile this newly formedhuman body? How do we accommodate the digital spectacle?

In spite of the argument elaborated in our discussion above, is there any hope fora humanizing of the new visualization technologies increasingly used in leading edgebiomedicine? Researchers and software companies have invested a considerableeffort to develop software agents and digital proxies on our behalf. It is thought thatthese agents will appear as “living” screen entitites rather than the commonly usedicons of today [53].

For example, the ALIVE system developed by the MIT Media Laboratory,“allows, wireless, full body interaction between a human and a rich graphical worldinhabited by autonomous agents” [54]. It illustrates how digital tehnologies havecontributed to a dramatic change and a new affinity in the relationship betweenhumans and machines. The resulting sense of intimacy is reinforced on a thoereticallevel by experimental theories which claim that consciousness is an electromagneticcomponent of ionic currents generated by the human brain in the course of its func-tioning. Curiously some of these holistic theories have historical antecedants; manyof them can be traced back to the turn of the century and Nicola Tesla’s [55] studiesof electromagnetic energy and its relationship to human consciousness.

It remains to be determined what is the true significance of increased visualizationin the medical sciences and the use of “artistic” scientific images by the industry.If it is true [56] that a key switch from modernism to post modernism involves ashift from epistemology to ontology, from knowledge to experience, from theory topractice resulting in a replacement of the plurality of interpretation by the investi-gation of multiple realities—then who better than the contemporary Artist to interpretthe future?!

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank James Leach and Jeremy Squire for their commentson ideas expressed in this paper. Nina Czegledy would like to express her thanksto Sean Cubitt for his support. Andre´ Czegledy’s contribution is indebted to MarilynStrathern for her established commentary on medical technologies.


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