CHAPTER 3
COMPUTER TOMOGRAPHY – DERVISHES
35
Pull out of Dervishes installation
36
Pull out of dervishes details
37
As it is not possible to commission CT scans I have had to look for existing CT datasets to
work with. Through extensive research I have identified and worked with a number of
datasets such as the Virtuelle Mummy i (a dataset of an 2300 Egyptian Mummy), Ötzi the
Icemanii (a dataset of a 5300 year old ice mummy found in the Oetztal Alps) and most
recently a set of anonymised datasets available for download via a DICOM software website
called OsiriXiii. As well as allowing access to CT datasets, OsiriX has revolutionised my art
practice: until OsiriX all DICOM software ran either on UNIX or PC platforms and was
prohibitively expensive but OsiriX runs on a Macintosh platform – traditionally the artist’s
computer of choice and is free to download. The addition of OsiriX to my tool palette with its
multitude of export functions has opened up huge possibilities and allowed me to experiment
with data in a myriad of ways; OsiriX allows the user to slice up the body in any direction; it
allows the user to create journeys through the body; alter colour values and even export 3D
surfaces. One striking feature of working with DICOM data in OsiriX is that scans can be
exported as animations, which make the bodies dance or more precisely, pirouette around an
internal or external axis.
One of the datasets available for download from the OsiriX website is called MELANIX.
MELANIX is a woman who was scanned with her arms above her head. There is no
information as to who she is, where she is or when she was scanned. MELANIX has been
severed from her original physical body and now exists, much like Jernigan the Visible
Human waiting to be manipulated, sliced, rendered and surfaced. A feature in OsiriX that I
have found particularly engaging is the 2D Multi-Planar Reconstruction tool. 2D MultiPlanar Reconstruction allows the user to choose axis points in the body to pivot around. This
function allows the body to spin around different axes within itself; it can pivot around its
nose, its heart, its stomach, and its brain. The Mutliplanar reconstruction tool enables a
disembodied vision specific to virtual 3D space. The 360-degree pivot function exists in
military simulations, computer games, 3D modeling software, social networking sites such as
Second Life and as I have discovered, radiology software.
The Panoptic allows us to see all from a hierarchical vantage point. It is a God’s (or Big
Brother) eye view of the world. In 1990 Baudrillard argued that the Renaissance panoptic had
been replaced by the trompe-l’oeil where
…..objects fool the eye (trompent l’oeil) by a sort of internal depth – not by causing
38
one to believe in a world that does not exist, but by undermining the privileged
position of the gaze. The eye instead of generating a space that spreads out is but the
internal vanishing point for a convergence of object. A different universe occupies the
foreground, a universe without horizon or horizontality, like an opaque mirror placed
before the eye, with nothing behind it. This is, properly speaking, the realm of
appearances, where there is nothing to see, where things see you.’ (Baudrillard, 1990,
p. 63-64)
I argue that the emergent space of vision granted through 3D virtual space is a merging of the
panoptic and the trompe l’oeil, which I shall refer to as the Pivotoptic. Unlike with the
Panoptic and the trompe l’oeil, we are no longer bound by having eyes in our heads but our
eyes are in our fingertips, in our mouse clicks that allow us to enter into the trompe l’oeil
space that Baudrillard describes. In fact, the more agile we are at entering and pivoting inside
the database the better we perform, the better we know our data, the better we become at
making and knowing our virtual worlds. Laws of perspective are replaced by density of
information around the axis. The more we pivot, the faster we spin, the more information we
acquire (and also the dizzier we get). The Panoptic rule of standing out/above and looking in
is no longer relevant in virtual space – it is impossible to get an overview of data, the only
way to find the information we want is to go inside it. It is impossible to stand outside the
Internet and look in – the obstructions and distractions are too dense. The same is true of the
DICOM body – a radiologist has to go inside the body to see what they want to see, in the
digital world one has to go inside the data to find the knowledge. From outside looking in
there is too much other information blocking the view.
Dervishes is a series of five sculptures made using the Multi-planar Reconstruction tool
which I have created in an attempt to expose this new vision and to offer a new body politic.
As explained briefly above, the 2D Multi-Planar Reconstruction tool allows you to set an axis
point in the body and then pivot around it. OsiriX allows export of the 360-degree rotation as
an animation which can then be imported into Adobe After Effects and divided in to a series
of individual frames/images. Each Dervish is made up of 36 slices of the body around a
certain axis – every tenth frame of my animation / every 10 degrees in the body. Each image
is then printed onto a glass organza and bound at the centre like a book before being attached
to a hanging system which allows each page / scan to fan out and from a distance give the
illusion of a figure and from close up offer an entrance to the core of the body.iv
Each of the Dervishes has a different pivot point/axis; one Dervish has its axis through the
39
centre, another through the spine, another the belly button, another the left side and another
the right side. The resulting sculptures offer different encounters with the body. The central
axis is where the information is most dense and information gaps or openings increase
(equally) the further you are from the axis point you are. When exhibiting these sculptures
people responded best to the Left and Right Axis and least well to Central Axis. In conceiving
the work I had assumed that Central Axis would be the most successful for not only is the
axis symmetrically placed, it also yields the largest amount of information and allows the
body to be seen equally as you walk around it (or as it turns in front of you for the fabric on
which the images are printed is so light that it catches air currents of passing viewers).
Reflecting on this, I wonder if the success of right and left is that it allows you to stay outside
looking in for longer; It is only when the viewer is standing to the left of Left Axis or right of
Right axis that they are faced with the gap, the cut which allows them to see the density of
the axis.
Fig 18. Details of Dervish sculptures
As the creator of the work, I see Dervishes as being a model of disembodied knowledge and
encounter of information to such an extent that I have become blind to the body that
facilitates it. At first, I felt uncomfortable using dataset of a person that I didn’t know but now
I feel it is the most appropriate situation when scans are being post processing so heavily.
Freed from an emotional link to the original (or ‘the truth’ as one radiographer once referred
to the scanee as) I have been able to invest myself and my ideas into the MELANIX dataset. I
identified the data as having the qualities I wanted from a digital body (it was more or less
whole and high resolution) and from then on I used it for my own goals. The aim was not to
try and create a sculpture which represented a body but one which explored how it feels to
work DICOM data, a sculpture that exposed not the body itself but the Pivotoptic vision that
is seeing that body. The DICOM body was used as a space to navigate and explore, fulfilling
40
Cuir’s ‘Know Thyself as Space’ category.
Heart Axis installation
41
Heart detail
42
Womb installation
43
Womb detail
44
Heart and Womb Axis
Heart and Womb Axis were also made using the multi-planar reconstruction tool but in this
instance were combined with the colour and density modes available in the OsiriX software.
CT scanners detect a range of tissue densities from –1000 to 1000 (called the Hounsfield
Scale), which the computer screen cannot display with its limited colour palette. OsiriX
therefore allows the user to see different anatomy / pathologies in the data, for example,
OsiriX allows the user to view a set of CT scans in order to look for bone (between 970 and
1000), skin and organs (between 20 and 80) or pulmonary detail (between –1000 and -800).
In addition radiology has its own standard CLUTs (Colour Look Up Tables) allowing the
body to be displayed in colour ranges such as Hot Metal, GEcolour, Rainbow and Spectrumv.
With Heart and Womb Axis the intention was to concentrate on a subjective viewing of the
DICOM data. By playfully setting the axis through various organs such as the brain, the
heart, the womb, the liver or the spleen, the aim was to create abstracted and alternative
structures for my print based sculptures. In making maquettes, I soon found that these
horizontally placed axes transformed the body into acrobatic arches, reminiscent of Jean
Martin Charcot’s drawings of his ‘hysterical’ patients in the Salpetriere in the late nineteenth
centuryvi, transforming the body through gesture into something that could be read
emotionally and psychologically. As with Dervishes Melanix performed pirouettes around
internal axes’ from which stills were exported to create a sculpture. For Dervishes materials
were chosen that would allow the stills to be put back again in the form of a sculpture with a
certain degree of accuracy – a fabric was chosen that would ‘hang right’. With Heart and
Womb Axis a material was chosen so that it should arch and bend physically as desires,
pleasures and guilt arch, contort and twist.
By combining various density settings and CLUTS, colours and transparencies were selected
purely on aesthetic grounds in order to heighten the abstraction and anthropomorphic
possibilities of the work. The scans were further manipulated through colour and texture of
printing by using specialist colour changing inks. The prints are made up of a number of
layers – the main layer, printed with UV cured inkjet is the standard ‘abdomen’ setting. On
the positive side the same scan in ‘brain mode’ is printed using metallic interference ink.
Additionally on the positive side is a layer printed with optichromic ink (inks that change
colour depending on your viewpoint). This layer is a hand drawn layer of decorative wood-
45
grain like doodles. The same hand drawn layer is printed on the reverse of the print in the
interference ink.
Fig. 23 Still from Spock Movie downloaded from OsiriX website
These multiple decorative layers of printing are much like cosmetic makeup: features are
enhanced in order to visually please and ultimately seduce the viewer. In the ever-growing
world of YouTube and Flicker, there are a number of instances where the DICOM body has
been animated through colour and transparency with software similar to OsiriX, where it is
obvious that through a subjective choice of colours and textures a certain identity had been
applied to the body. One somewhat alarming example is a video on the OsiriX website called
Spock.vii Spock is a 3D rendering of a head, which as its title suggests has been made to look
46
like a science fiction character. Dental fillings cause image artefact that create serration-like
features in CT scans, which when rendered look like spikes coming out of the mouth. The
density levels have been set so that the skin and flesh have become a transparent green
revealing a tracheotomy tube. There is another tube running from a control patch on the left
shoulder down behind the left lung (a pacemaker?). The colours chosen are otherworldly and
the up-turned John Travolta-esque collar gives Spock a strong self-assured presence.
Spock is an excellent example of Cuir’s desire to “Know Thyself” as an object of Science
Fiction. Spock displays a desire to transport the subjects of the scans into fictional space –
like a child would dress up a doll, the creator of Spock and other similar movies are playing
with the possibilities of dressing down (a copy of) the body in order for the subject to take on
new personas that (in the instance of Spock) we recognise from science fiction. DICOM
bodies are becoming characters, they are changing their physical appearance and donning
sub-skin costumes in order to potentially become performers of an unknown parallel
fantastical narrative.
47
i http://www.uke.uni-hamburg.de/institute/medizinische-informatik/index_ENG_16549.php?id=-1_-1_-1&as_link=http%3A//www.uke.uni-hamburg.de/institute/medizinischeinformatik/index_ENG_16549.php [accessed 8th February 2008]
ii See Flekinger, A (2003) trans. Williams, G. Otzi, the Iceman
iii http://www.osirix-viewer.com/ [accessed 4th February 2008]
iv See Appendix III for a visual Methodology Map for the making of Dervishes.
v The titles of the CLUTS (especially Hot Metal, Spectrum and Stern) are highly suggested of a science-fiction/cinematic heritage.
vi See Didi-Huberman Georges (2004) trans. Hartz. A,The Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere
vii http://www.osirix-viewer.com/Snapshots.html [accessed 5 th February 2008]