About

Touching Thoughts is an art-science cooperation project that aims at exploring protocols and modes of three-dimensional imaging in the field of digital pathology, and how scientific and medical knowledge and truth are generated through digital technologies.

The collaboration involves researchers from the Medical Faculty of JKU and invited artists Simone C Niquille, Chaeyoung Kim & Francesco Luzzana, Błażej Kotowski, jiawen uffline and Sofia Talanti. The scientists worked together with the artists on a set of images of body tissues realized by confocal and light sheet microscopy, which allows the production of three-dimensional microscopic and nanoscopic visualizations of brain samples and other body tissues affected by cancer or other pathologies. Such 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.

How does the digital make all this possible? How can such a research process, which relies on complex machines and large data processes, be made more visible through everyday digital technologies? How can we demystify the technological layers of machine vision and make the scientific process behind the image more visible? What is the role of the human being in such algorithmically created realities?

The artists involved in the project explored the visualizations and data produced by the scientists, examined the production protocols, and each focused on selected aspects of the imaging process. Simone C Niquille created an audio piece about the three dimensions of the human body and the technologies that attempt to capture its volume, interviewing scientists and documenting their goals, ideals, and visions for volumetric representation. Chaeyoung Kim & Francesco Luzzana followed the journey of the sample and the protocols that regulate its movements, inviting the audience to become part of this choreography of hands and gestures. jiawen uffline reflected on the porous boundaries between what is the scope of observation, the cells and their components, and the inevitable leakage of interstitial fluids and data. Błażej Kotowski tested the invisible rules that govern the uncoordinated synchronicity of cellular automatisms, creating an evolving simulation of living, healthy, and cancerous tissues. Finally, Sofia Talanti imagined the final transcendence of the cyborg, a creature of organic and mechanical nature that represents both the quest for scientific knowledge and the limits of any technology.

These projects together with new images produced by the scientists and further documentation materials about the imaging protocols, are on display during Ars Electronica Festival at JKU MED Campus in two presentation sessions in the medSPACE and in an exhibition.