Touching Thoughts: Volumetric visions in digital pathology, neuroscience and media art is an interdisciplinary project, which was realized in collaboration between the net culture initiative servus.at – Kunst und Kultur im Netz and the JKU’s Medical Faculty (Department of Pathology and Molecular Pathology and Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology of JKU). The project aims to explore protocols and modes of three-dimensional imaging in the field of digital pathology and at the same time, examines how scientific and medical knowledge and truth are generated through digital technologies. Touching Thoughts is the outcome of combining artistic practices & scientific methodology and was “brought to life” through the collaboration between scientists from JKU and media artists.
➡ The scientific thought
In order to get a deeper insight into tissues, neuroscientists and digital pathologists at JKU try to visualise them in three dimensions. By using advanced microscopy techniques, such as confocal and light sheet microscopy, the scientists are able to produce three-dimensional microscopic and nanoscopic visualizations of tissue samples from brain and other body parts. The samples were originated from heatlthy, cancerous or affected by other pathologies tissues. Instead of working with 2D images, advanced imaging technologies allow researchers to reach a new order of magnitude of reality, effectively taking a medical investigation beyond the limits of physical observation. Additionally the 3D visuallisation offers more information for analysis, resulting to better diagnosis.
➡ The artistic touch
With the aim to explore the conditions of the production, the aesthetics, and the modalities of interacting with these type of data, six media artists were invited to participate in the Touching Thoughts project: Simone C Niquille, Chaeyoung Kim & Francesco Luzzana, Błażej Kotowski, jiawen uffline and Sofia Talanti, who worked closely with the scientists on a given set of 3D cell images. Through their own artistic practice, but at the same time inspired by the scientific methodologies, each of the artists focused on different aspects of the imaging process, the production protocols and explored the data visualization.
The resulting projects displayed at JKU medSPACE during the Ars Electronica Festival 2024, described and demystified the computational layers of medical science and shed light on how digital technologies contribute to scientific knowledge. Alongside with the exhibition, there were two presentations at medSPACE accompanied by the participated artists & scientists. A short video-documentation of the project's development will be presented by the end of the year.
Exhibition JKU medSPACE foyer
4th–8th September 2024
Presentations at medSPACE
5th + 8th of September 2024
Participating artists & scientists
Davide Bevilacqua, Sewmi Delana, Saad Ahmed Faisal, Jan Maximilian Janssen, jiawen uffline, Chaeyoung Kim, Sabina Köfler, Błazej Kotowski, Francesco Luzzana, Michelle Mottl, Simone C Niquille, Sofia Talanti, Lisa Wurm
Cooperation partners & supporters:
JKU – Department of Pathology and Molecular Pathology
JKU – Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology
servus.at – Kunst und Kultur im Netz
Ars Electronica Festival
The project is funded by JKU LIT and Land Oberösterreich
Special thanks to the LINZAG, servus.at main sponsor 2024-2025
& to Kunstuniversität Linz
Activities
