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March 14, 2006

Digibodies Online Exhibition

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Virtual Spectacles

The Digibodies Online Exhibition presents a linked multimedia exhibition of selected international artists whose work centres on the theoretical, ethical, and practical consequences of technologically enhanced biomedical visualization (imaging) of the body. Using the Internet for research, contact, and communication, remote curatorial teams of students collaborate with participating artists to develop the exhibition as an extension of their shared cyberculture-a culture that exists at the crossroads of art, technology, the biosciences, and popular culture.

Two critical questions-questions that preoccupy artists and scientists alike-emerge from the curatorial process of the Digibodies Online Exhibition and haunt these websites. One is the key ontological question: Given the new database technologies for biomedical imaging, what constitutes an individual, a self? The other is the key epistemological question: Are our metaphors for the body-our ways of imagining ourselves and of knowing who we are-changing as a result of current technologies for visualization? We are also left wondering: Do I exist somewhere in the sum total of these MRI slices? How do I recognize myself in the high resolution DVD spectacle of my medicalized image?

In an attempt to answer such questions, the student curators cross both geographical and professional borders to survey over fifty websites. They present original research, first-hand conversations with the artists, biographies, selected images, and summaries of twenty current sites by artists active on the web. As well, they have developed new sites for some internationally recognized artists whose work with biomedical imaging contributes directly to our current experimental reality.

Posted by jo at March 14, 2006 08:35 AM

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