Struck 2005

Abstract

Contemporary digital media art investigates intersections between art and science, often by recontextualising visualisation technologies from the medical and life sciences. These images can hold meaning that is aesthetic and ambiguous beyond their diagnostic use. Although this research has shown the significance of visualisation technologies’ aesthetics, it has failed to show how this aesthetic is embedded in a history of science-art intersections in other media such as photography.

The 3-channel audio-visual installation Struck by Michele Barker and Anna Munster addresses the question of how current medical imaging aesthetics are related to the aesthetics of early medical photography. It achieves this by a comparative study of early institutional photography and drawings of the human body and face from the nineteenth century with contemporary Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. In drawing this comparison, it makes a major contribution to the discipline of creative digital media practice by showing that art and science have a long history of aesthetic intersection with respect to medical visualisation.

Struck was awarded an acquisitive cash prize of $8,000 in 2006 by the National Digital Art Award in the ‘dynamic’ category. It was included in an international group show at Eyebeam Gallery in New York in 2005. It toured in the International Digital Art Exhibition showing at the Beijing Film Academy, China. In 2007, it was selected for exhibition at Level 2 Contemporary Art Projects, Art Gallery of New South Wales as one of only 5 solo shows exhibited per year out of a wide field of national and international submissions.