Excarnation Machine
@MMRV17 MEDICINE MEETS VIRTUAL REALITY
NEXTMED: DESIGN FOR/THE WELL BEING
Long Beach January 19-21, 2009
Alessandro Marianantoni
Marcos Lutyens
The Excarnation Machine (BETA) is a participatory game that involves assembling and breathing life into an assortment of hi-tech media representations of the human body, generating a 21st century take on the “exquisite corpse.” Our project addresses some of the ethical provocations that contemporary science brings to us, such as genetic manipulation and mutation from within and plastic surgery from without.
By representing the human body with MRI’s, X-rays or ultrasounds, we break through the body’s physical boundaries, removing its sense of gravity and turning it into an anti-terrestrial and quasi-ethereal entity. Thus, in a sense, the body ascends into a cosmic dimension, and yet, at the same time, the antiseptic process of medical imaging causes a qualitative dilution that presents us with a human portraiture that is void of vitality, emotion and warmth.
curator:
Kóan Jeff Baysa
Images from:
Dr. Arthur Toga
Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, UCLA School of Medicine
tracking system based on ARtoolkit