In that respect, the New York Times’ article on Felice Frankel[1], a photographer of what she calls “the beauty of science”, was of great relevance and a good starting point for inquiries on visuality and science. Frankel seems to be very aware of the connection between images and the meaning they convey. In order to attract potential viewers’ attentions she sometimes alters her photographs of scientific phenomena in order for them to make a bigger impact and she does not seem to find anything wrong with that. In the contrary, she thinks that “this should be part of every scientist’s education, the manipulation and enhancement of images”. To me, this article was so relevant because I feel that if every scientist had such an attitude towards their work, then the ethics of research and distribution of knowledge would become more than questionable. Images can be altered on the computer within seconds. If entertainment and attention becomes more important than the truth, then science is on a very dangerous way. Keeping in mind the fact that the VHP has been used for Hollywood movie animations and funny videos to be watched on youtube it can be asked whether science is still on the right path after all.
In connection to that, Donna Haraway’s idea of “the god-trick” becomes very important. I felt I had to include this source I found in my webliography, even though it is an abstract of one of her own works. However, it should not be disregarded as it addresses the aforementioned question of objectivity[2] in science in a unique way, giving insight to and explanation of this question also in regard to gender and politics. More importantly, Haraway states that the increasing visualized world today has even already transcended the god-trick in some way, saying that “[v]ision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice.” In relation to the VHP, this dimension of visuality as something common and habitual is certainly worth thinking about.
However, and this is what is probably so new and revolutionary about the VHP, it even goes beyond the idea of visuality as an ordinary practice in real life. A man died, his body literally dissolved in the real world until it vanished – and now the matter that disappeared in real life can be found reconstructed in cyberspace. This fact introduces the question of virtuality and visuality online that this article on The Digital Self [3] addresses in a very interesting way, arguing that “[t]he digital self in cyberspace challenges traditional notions of the self and calls for redefinition of the self when extended into cyberspace”. I found this source very helpful and crucial, since the question of visuality and constructing the self in cyberspace yields yet a different perspective on the VHP, namely, how the space is constructed that the Visible Humans find themselves in now and how the people that have access to the data sets may understand themselves.
The question of visualization is also addressed in this draft[4] I could find, examining the relation between technology and the body and stressing the thesis that
the significance of the VHP considered as a biopolitical object arises from its lending a mode of visualisation to the conceit. Its limitless capacity to decompose and recompose the virtual corpse lend it to biomedical fantasising about human life and Life in general as an informational economy which can be animated, reproduced, written and rewritten, through biomedical management. […] It is a field of visual fantasisation which plays out certain forms of mastery over a completely compliant, imaginary body, whose morphology has no integrity of its own, but is completely at the disposal of the master.
I found this a very valid and also interesting idea. Especially introducing the concept of the ‘master’ over the visualized body was a notion I thought to be highly significant to the topic.
It can hence be deduced that the VHP per se is first and foremost a visualization of a body – and this body, in the first instant of the project – was required to be male and as normal as possible. In connection to this requirement, what must be asked is what exactly makes a body appear to be normal and whether the definitions of normality and gender are even relevant in cyberspace today. Is science, a rather male-dominated field, still gendered in cyberspace and what happens to gender in cyberspace in general? Exactly these question are answered by the following very interesting online source[5] which is unconventional in many ways, taking the idea of visualization to a further level. It plays with our understanding of cyberspace through giving us various links to follow, and thus fragments our perception of the information given in the same way that visualization is fragmented online. The source argues that online gender is a question of choice and that mind and body are separated in cyberspace. Since the VHP clearly divided the body’s mind from its physical matter I found these ideas and the ways they were conveyed very interesting in many respects, even though the question of visuality was only addressed peripherally. Nevertheless I thought it to be a valid source for the guiding question to be researched.
All in all the sources to be found on this topic are manifold, very different and open a broad field for analysis and further reading – the topic seems to be as broad as cyberspace, visuality and virtuality itself.
Bibliogrpahy
Dean, Cornelia (2007) ‘She Calls It ‘Phenomena.’ Everyone Else Calls It Art.’
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/science/12frankel.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&ore
=slogin&oref=slogin (accessed 22 August 2008)
Haraway, Donna J. (1991) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the
Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ http://science.consumercide.com/haraway_sit
knowl.html (accessed 22 August 2008)
Karge, Martha (1999) ‘The Digital Self in Cyberspace.’
http://www.uwm.edu/Course/com813/karge2.htm (accessed 22 August 2008)
McAdams, Melinda J. (1996) ‘Gender Without Bodies.’
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/mar/mcadams.html (accessed 22 August
2008)
Waldby, Catherine (1996) ‘The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data.’
http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/wildbiol1.html (accessed 22
August 2008)
[1] Dean, Cornelia (2007) ‘She Calls It ‘Phenomena.’ Everyone Else Calls It Art.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/science/12frankel.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin (accessed 22 August 2008)
[2] Haraway, Donna J. (1991) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ http://science.consumercide.com/haraway_sit-knowl.html (accessed 22 August 2008)
[3] Karge, Martha (1999) ‘The Digital Self in Cyberspace.’ http://www.uwm.edu/Course/com813/karge2.htm (accessed 22 August 2008)
[4] Waldby, Catherine (1996) ‘The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data.’ http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/wildbiol1.html (accessed 22 August 2008)
[5] McAdams, Melinda J. (1996) ‘Gender Without Bodies.’ http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/mar/mcadams.html (accessed 22 August 2008)
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