Transpose MR is three piece artwork that stems from my interest in medical imaging, specifically with the MRI. It follows from a reading of Ray Bradbury's short story The Veldt, where a family is eaten and replaced by a sophisticated simulation system. The objects that carried out their transposition from real to simulation were lions. It is a horrifying tale of what technology, the television at the time Bradbury wrote the story, would do to the human and its organization.

In these pieces the MRI takes the place of the lions as the object that enables transposition. Our movement between the real and simulation. The MRI, images us, simulates us in nuclear magnetic detail on the screen giving rise to our simulacrum. This simulacrum replaces us in the medical imaging situation where we find ourselves doubled, on the screen and as a physical presence. But, rather than the violent transposition of Bradbury, the MRI is much kinder. It's magnetic claws only strip flesh from our representation, leaving us to make sense of the image that confronts us. The MRI is a lumbering beast, possibly an informationvore that, under the careful administration of its keepers in the clinic, seeks only to find that which ails us. In this setting the MRI is left to dream of its natural habitat of The Veldt.

This work is aimed at an alternative reading of the MRI apparatus and its situation in our lives. The MRI, its similarity to the lions, makes it ideal to place within the setting of The Veldt, tall grasses, trees. This setting is, however, encapsulated in the natural history display. The MRI is a specimen now in a simulated environment, under the scrutiny of both the visitors to the museum and the eyes looking into the peep display. The tables have been turned, what once observed and simulated our bodies is now itself the object of scrutiny and simulation.

Transpose MR: Animation

Photo Documentation