recorporealising MRI

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	<title>recorporealising MRI</title>
	<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site</link>
	<description>recorporealising MRI</description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:52:32 +0000</pubDate>
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	<language>en</language>
	
		
	<item>
		<title>Page 1: IMAGES</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-1-IMAGES</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:13 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>


MRI

Interpreting MRI as environments/systems/interfaces
where body-machine and analogue-digital meet


︎︎︎</description>
		
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		<title>Page 2: ABSTRACT</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-2-ABSTRACT</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:13 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>ABSTRACTCorporeal matter as perceived by MRI straddles definitions of substance, organism, subject and object. MRI interacts with the body through nuclear magnetic resonance and electrodynamics, bringing us into contact with the body as a person, as an assemblage of biochemical reactions, as a patient and a cellular, molecular, atomic and subatomically composed entity. 

This research project and exhibition use artistic processes as a method for investigating MRI and what it means to be a body as defined by MRI. The artworks exhibited were created as part of a process of interacting with the physics of MRI and making art objects as scientific devices.&#38;nbsp;

Being largely isolated from how computational technologies work, there is an increasing incentive to make their internal processes visible. Particularly in a broader context where so much of the gig economy is exploitative and obscures the labour that produces electronics and services alike. The environmental, human and inter-species cost is also concealed behind the apparent seamlessness of big tech, AI and user experience design (see Anatomy of an AI). The lives lost in mines, extraction processes, factories and distribution hubs needs to be a central concern. How we communicate and exchange our ideas and feelings is also being shaped by these technologies, this is also a form of unpaid labour. 

This exhibition begins with MRI and MRI data. The sculptural, woven, drawn and painted work exhibited draws on the mathematical and physical processes of MRI. The artwork exhibited makes use of scientific information and biomedical imaging laboratories as part of the creative practice.&#38;nbsp;

The artwork exhibited includes sculptural ‘phantoms’ that are used to investigate the interface between body and machine in MRI and are named after scientific devices of the same name. By thinking about how matter interacts with MRI, I could make these artefacts from within and as part of MRI. My artistic phantoms are made using ‘tissue mimicking materials’ that from the perspective of the scanner, could be part of a living organism.
You will also find woven works, patterns and swatches created in response to the way in which an MRI scanner turns signals from the body into a digital image of the body. These woven works and the patterns developed for them are based on the mathematical processes of signal analysis. They were made from within and part of the MRI process. Drawings, illustrations, diagrams and paintings created as part of my research process are also created to chart my artistic practice's entanglements and constellational nature. 
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		<title>Page 3: PROJECT OVERVIEW</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-3-PROJECT-OVERVIEW</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:14 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>PROJECT 
OVERVIEW


This website presents artworks I created as part of my practice-based PhD project carried out at the University of Portsmouth. This research project began with MRI and makes use of scientific knowledge and personal experiences of medicine and health care. 

Being largely isolated from how computational technologies work, there is an increasing incentive to make their internal processes accessible. 

Through this research project and the experience of making the artefacts exhibited, I developed embodied approaches to understanding biomedical imaging that explore the ways in which MRI data is organised and codified. My sculptural, woven, drawn and painted practices draw on the mathematical and physical processes of MRI. 

Sculptural ‘phantoms’ investigate the interface between body and machine and are semi-figurative constructs informed by how the body interacts with the physics of MRI. I also developed a weaving practice as an embodied method to investigate how analogue signals in MRI are transformed into digital biomedical images. My woven work is a non-pictorial deconstructive reconfiguration of mathematical phenomena needed in signal analysis. My aim&#38;nbsp; was to investigate through artistic creative practice&#38;nbsp;how this aspect of MRI technology works. 

The creative acts of drawing, illustration, making diagrams and paintings chart the entanglements of the body, bodily materials, and their interactions with MRI. The visuals and images produced also act as a map connecting the various elements of my art practice to my findings, materials, processes, places, systems, environments and my experience of being a cancer patient.
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	<item>
		<title>Page 4: THE MRI PROCESS</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-4-THE-MRI-PROCESS</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:14 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>THE MRI PROCESSMRI is a non-invasive biomedical imaging technology that visualises tissues within the body. MRI is an interesting piece of physics that interacts with the body. As a technology it draws on the quantume mechanical properties embedded in corporeal matter - particularly hydrogen ions, also known as protons (H+). MRI brings together multiple aspects of our ontology. MRI interacts with the body through nuclear magnetic resonance and classical electrodynamics and thus physics allows us to connect to the abject. This brings us into contact with the body as a person, a patient, a member of a community, and as a cellular, molecular, atomic and subatomically composed entity.

The magnetic field of an MRI penetrates our materiality and requires both quantum mechanics and classical electrodynamics to work. MRI involves the phenomena of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and the intrinsic subatomic properties of spin, angular momentum and magnetism possessed by atomic nuclei. 

Protons within atomic nuclei are like tiny spinning magnets. The first stage of MRI involves the powerful MRI magnet which aligns the spin of the protons, lining them up like synchronised swimmers. Following this alignment, the protons are energised with radio frequency electromagnetic energy (RF photons) in the form of high-frequency RF pulses. This causes them to resonate. 

As the protons absorb the RF energy, they wobble away from the magnet’s alignment to varying degrees depending on what material or substance they are in. When the RF signal is turned off the protons still resonate. Refocusing the magnet re-aligns the protons, causing them to re-emit the difference in RF as the NMR signal.&#38;nbsp;

The time it takes for the protons to emit the signal is called relaxation time; it generally comes in two kinds of measurement: T1 and T2. The difference in relaxation time and proton density are essential factors in creating accurate MRI images. When the NMR signal is emitted it is detected in the scanner. These signals are converted into a digital biomedical image using the mathematics of signal analysis including a type of maths called Fourier transforms (FTs). This process is computational and mathematical where the wave properties of the NMR signal are used to figure out what kinds of matter/molecules are resonating where.

The body and its substances, molecules and atoms interact with the MRI system (magnet, RF signals and sensors/detection mechanisms) at the ‘body machine interface’. This interface is beyond (or within) the boundary of the skin. The magnet and RF signals are able to work across multiple scales of magnitude. By thinking about MRI in this way I was able to create sculptures that interact with MRI as if it were a body. Making sculptures with the body-machine interface in mind made it possible for my work to intersect, interact and intra-act with MRI. The analogue NMR signal being converted/processed/computationally interpreted into a digital biomedical image is perceived as the analogue-digital interface in my research (a non-scientific term). 

An interface is the means by which interaction or communication is achieved or is a surface forming a common boundary between two or more bodies, spaces, or phases. Interface is a verb and a noun that entails action: to connect or become interfaced. In my making processes I consider the behaviour of corporeal matter at these interfaces and the types of connection, disconnection and reconnection that take place. Understanding what happens at the interfaces helps me decide how to develop practices that interact and interface with MRI on the molecular and mathematical levels. </description>
		
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	<item>
		<title>MRI trials</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/MRI-trials</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jan 2023 18:00:57 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>
	MRI 
TRIALSI began my investigation by taking part in MRI trials at the Cancer Centre in 2018 with Dr Heather Fitzke. MRI images confront us with the fact that our bodily materiality acts beyond us and that medical technology shapes our sense of self. &#38;nbsp;
Seeing my organs autonomously pulsing on the monitor in the control room had a pronounced impact on me. It was like looking into a rockpool within my own body. The affecting power of MRI (its power to change our emotions) is in its potential to reveal autonomic bodily functions and diseases which are beyond our control. The data on the screen revealed my autonomous self: peristalsis, bowel movements, digestion, heartbeats and respiration. Through MRI, anatomy is seen as embedded and relational.

I felt a deep sense of fascination with how my organs moved and worked. Haraway’s situated biopolitics argues for an account of the body as an environment, in a state of simultaneous dissolution and formation which I notice in my data. My organs seemed like invertebrates in a rockpool: a squishy pulsing ecosystem. Organs do not operate in isolation but are interconnected. Their autonomous pulsing and motion seemed creaturely and strange in contrast to my numerous encounters with preserved cadavers in the dissecting room. My organs keep me alive yet I have no conscious sense of their functioning. They function beyond me. 

Being the subject of MRI was an opportunity to experience how to interface or interact with it.  One of my research aims concerns the materialisation of data processes in the MRI system that are not visible or accessible to the subject. The ‘hidden’ processes at the body-machine interface concern the interaction of corporeal matter with nuclear magnetic resonance phenomena (NMR). 
Selecting the correct materials to make phantoms was the first step in interacting with the body-machine (interface). I would refer back to my data sculpture and cross-sectional projections from my scans with Dr Fitzke.


	Anatomy as a rockpool


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		<title>Page 5: DATA SCULPTURE</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-5-DATA-SCULPTURE</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:14 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>DATA SCULPTURE


I created a true-to-scale sculpture of my MRI data: a materialisation of un-tangible bodily data. Milled from dense fleshy pink foam, this sculpture is a physical and tactile rendering of what MRI reveals. The changes I made to my data resulted in patchy and globular, partial and flayed forms. My data sculpture is an uncertain embodiment of subjectivity contextualised by the speculative, unknown status of my cancer in 2018. The danger which my data sculpture may or may not contain is emotionally untranslatable. 
My MRI images and data sculpture tethered my phantoms to my bodily matter which is always in flux and always hybrid, subject to ongoing evolution and random mutation. This is what makes bodily matter unfathomable. Disrupting and fragmenting essentialist and totalising social categories is central to queer theory, definitions of the abject, and disability studies and was a parallel between my practice and my experience of cancer (Cox, 2018). Critical factors that influenced how and what materials I would use to make my phantoms depended on matter that was organic or a ‘tissue mimicking material’ (TMM). I also drew from the experience of working with my data by allowing globular forms to emerge through how I made my phantoms. Kristeva (1982) analyses different abject subjects, demarking their commonality in power to disrupt or threaten notions of a whole self. My data sculpture displaces bodily boundaries and disfigures bodily forms. My data sculpture was made before my cancer diagnosis. The affecting psychological response this stirs in me when I hold the data sculpture in my arms illustrates the type of agency inanimate objects can possess. I wanted to harness and nurture this affective power. My data sculpture produced a necessary and troubling reforging of my data via my gaze. No longer a diagnostically readable image, my data sculpture distorts the symbolic and normative discourse of MRI images. Being simultaneously “too alien and too close” my data sculpture informs how I create my phantom organs (Bennett, 2010, pp. 3-4).&#38;nbsp; </description>
		
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		<title>Page 6: MAKING PHANTOMS</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-6-MAKING-PHANTOMS</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:59:14 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>PHANTOMSA phantom is a scientific device used to calibrate and test MRI scanners and other biomedical imaging modalities. Phantoms are made of materials that behave like or mimic specific tissue types and anatomical structures in an MRI scanner. A medical or commercial phantom is usually very simple, consisting of a fluid-filled container that sometimes contains plastic structures of various shapes and sizes to contrast against the fluid. 

Phantoms help scientists understand how images can be used to guide therapeutic interventions, they are also used to improve diagnosis and imaging safety. Imaging phantoms enable medical physicists to test, adjust and/or monitor MRI systems. Phantoms, being of known material composition, calibrate MRI scanners by being used to measure the homogeneity of scanning and imaging performance. They enable medical physicists and technicians to ensure imaging systems and methods are operating correctly and help specialists to reliably tune and operate imaging modalities and interpret biomedical data.Making my own phantoms was a queering of these devices, primarily they are art objects but they are art objects which can exist as scientific devices. My phantoms diverge from the homogeneity and control of scientific devices and become body-like and unruly. By artistically imbuing them with queer bodily divergence I seek to develop alien/mutant/&#38;amp; other kinds of life forms that do not conform to traditional and fixed notions of identity and gender. Through this, I nurtured a model of making that helped me to process my own bodily monstrosity. The cyborgian properties of phantoms manifest in their identity as a body as sensed by the scanner, in their uncanny corporeal simulation in MRI. The term phantom is an unusual name for a scientific device, it conjures the immaterial, supernatural and occult, by contrast, an imaging phantom is defined by its materiality.
 
Each phantom I make is divergent, disorderly, and unstandardised. They may contain similar ingredients but they do not conform to an anatomical formula. I began my investigation by taking part in MRI trials at the Cancer Centre in 2018. In her 2021 publication Giving Bodied Back to Data Silvia Casini describes how MRI images “are entangled with memory and affect” (p. 23) confronting us with the fact that our bodily materiality acts beyond us and that medical technology shapes our sense of self.
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		<title>Making Phantoms</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Making-Phantoms</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jan 2023 17:43:21 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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	Tissue Mimicking Materials- biological matter such as plant matter, foods, soil samples, fungi, hair, skin.- hydrated substances- gels: agar, gelatin, pectin, other polysaccarides - cellulose sponge- latex- resin- wax- water- lipids: oils and fats

To create my phantoms I create organs first. That encapsulare TMMs in ‘bubbler stoppers’ used in DIY brewing. These are then wraped in laters of matter and TMM materials, creating ‘phantom organs’. 
Others are made from cellulose sponge, soaked infidderent materials and submerged in latex. These are then incased in wax or resin tokeep them liquid, retain moisture and can provide a strong signal in the scanners.I placed my phantom organs and TMMs in alginate moulds shaped like an Archimedean solid called a cuboctahedron whose faces are made of equilateral triangles and squares. I encased the organs/TMMs in wax and others in resin to preserve their fluids and moisture content. The term phantom introduces themes of the occult into scientific spaces and protocols, so using a shape associated with magic seemed appropriate and provided one variable (their form) that would remain consistent.


	Making Phantoms

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&#60;img width="2300" height="2300" width_o="2300" height_o="2300" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d132385ad61ad03227de8ebca50851c3e308e4019dfc8f9294abc36d19f0a0cf/1F75F052-C91D-4946-ADB4-9CAD901403C9.JPG" data-mid="163337800" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d132385ad61ad03227de8ebca50851c3e308e4019dfc8f9294abc36d19f0a0cf/1F75F052-C91D-4946-ADB4-9CAD901403C9.JPG" /&#62;
&#60;img width="1566" height="1950" width_o="1566" height_o="1950" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e98339c054e6356eb1185930af635daf857c8284e290aa6d4765dad3d88a2b0f/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-21.50.52.png" data-mid="163335155" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e98339c054e6356eb1185930af635daf857c8284e290aa6d4765dad3d88a2b0f/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-21.50.52.png" /&#62;
&#60;img width="2088" height="2030" width_o="2088" height_o="2030" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/188dc23b276e9f17643acde87bfbb24b1c1055832ca27bfbfd37f88bd1574acf/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-21.51.17.png" data-mid="163335168" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/188dc23b276e9f17643acde87bfbb24b1c1055832ca27bfbfd37f88bd1574acf/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-21.51.17.png" /&#62;


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		<title>Page 7: Phantoms</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-7-Phantoms</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:46:39 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-7-Phantoms</guid>

		<description>PHANTOMSMaking these artworks began by trying to understand how MRI physics interacts with bodily matter. Phantoms exist to test and enhance biomedical imaging modalities, they are cyborgs due to their ability to represent but never be an organic body (Haraway, 2016a). Materials such as water, fats, gels, sugars, proteins, natural waxes and polysaccharides are found in or produced by organisms. Latex which is produced by a plant is an interesting substance to use. Other materials such as saline, PVC, distilled water, antiseptic, and gelling agents return NMR signals that match those of bodily substances. Materials that can do this are called tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs).

I experimented by injecting liquid gelatin, latex and plant matter into different compartments of devices used in brewing called bubbler stoppers. They were cut at different angles using a saw, placed in alginate moulds at different angles and encapsulated in either wax or resin. Polysaccharide gel was an important TMM to consider as it “forms part of the tissue cell walls, intercellular coating spaces, and connective tissue” and “some of the internal components of living organisms are like the gel” (Ahmad, et al. 2020). A gel can be made with agar, pectin or gelatin and can be injected into a phantom organ. 
I soaked cut pieces of cellulose sponge in pectin jelly containing differently concentrated saline to mimic salt variations found in organisms. Once set, I submerged the sponges in latex and let it cure. TMMs were assembled into organs using bubbler stoppers and other plastic vessels and then sealed off to protect them from the effects of the resin or wax later on in the process. After being cut at various angles and sealed at one end they could contain numerous substances. The water content in pineapple slices and other plant matter ensured a strong signal in the MRI environment. Agar is found in plant cells and used in scientific contexts for the propagation of cell cultures. I used dissecting tools to make each organ and carefully positioned, pushed and pulled ingredients such as lichens, pineapple slices, shea butter and a sponge soaked in water into the dissected bubbler stoppers. I then injected latex and gelatin into the bubbler stoppers and through their various compartments. 

An approach called ‘Assemblage Theory’ offers a way of doing practice-based research that benefits from charting, mapping and exploring the extent of practice and how it is entangled with materials, processes, spaces, communities and objects. These drawings map how TMMs are used and interact as if they were organs. The phantoms were scanned with Dr Bernard Siow at the MRI department of the Francis Crick Institute and at the Future Technology Center at Portsmouth to test reconstruction algorithms created by Dr Anush Kolakalur. Scanning as part of my artistic practice and used in scientific experiments was an interesting opportunity to bring scientific methods into the arts and apply a creative artefact to scientific studies. 
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		<title>Page 8: SCANNING PHANTOMS</title>
				
		<link>https://recoroprealisingdata.cargo.site/Page-8-SCANNING-PHANTOMS</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:52:32 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>recorporealising MRI</dc:creator>

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		<description>


ART OBJECT 
AS SCIENTIFIC 
DEVICE

The process of scanning phantoms at The Francis Crick Institute and Future Technology Centre transformed my work from art objects into scientific specimens.&#38;nbsp;Phantoms were prepared in line with laboratory protocols and my practice became both an artistic and scientific endeavour. Throughout 2019, early 2020, in autumn 2022, and Spring 2023 I scanned phantoms with Dr Bernard Siow: the MRI wizard at the Francis Crick Institute. Science-in-action merged into my creative work as Siow and I prepared the phantoms for the scanner in full PPE as required by laboratory protocol. We decontaminated the surface of my phantoms and sealed them in sterilised sealable plastic bags. After scanning they would be stored in a fridge in the lab along with other samples and specimens.In November 2019 I made a collection of phantoms to scan using CT at the Future Technology Centre (FTC) with Dr Anush Kolakalur. In these laboratories, I was able to ‘play scientist’ through an interruption of usual routines where my phantoms and I were “technocorporeal unit[s]” and non-standard laboratory subjects (Oslon, 2018, p. 120). I incorporated visits to the lab as part of my practice and interpreted ideas proposed by scientists as creative input.&#38;nbsp;

 
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