Our contribution is entitled:
Networked neuroscience: brain scans and visual knowing at the intersection of atlases and databases

Anne Beaulieu and Sarah de Rijcke

Abstract
Brain scans have been in heavy circulation these past 20 years as some of the most fascinating and ubiquitous digital images in scientific and cultural spheres. In this chapter, we analyze how the scans are both digital and networked images that depend on suites of technologies (Shove 2007) for their constitution and meaning. In particular, we will show how the production and reading of brain scans function in different suites, some of which reinforce a modernist, mechanical, pipeline approach to brain imaging, where digital images are acted upon as measurements, and others that highlight the interactive and interventionist potential of digital imaging, where brain scans are constituted as fluid animations. We argue that brain scans come to be associated with specific kinds of authority through complex ecologies of visualization routines in digital visual culture. In particular, brain scans are focal points in arrangements of scanning and database technologies, constituted in electronic networks where individual experiences are mediated by interfaces. New modes of seeing and novel technologies co-evolve with adjustments in particular epistemic approaches, at times resembling earlier practices and at times moving towards new kinds of objectivity.

We will be submitting an abstract for this conference, on one of complex topic we’ve been investigating in this project, at the intersection of STS and new media studies. We’ll be trying to characterise the epistemological styles we have  found around networked, digital images–in other words, analysing the new forms of visual knowledge practices around databases of images. Watch this space!

Go read this!

Scaling Vectors: Thoughts on the Future of Scholarly Communication

Abstract

This essay proposes that bold new forms of experimentation and bookishness are necessary if we are to advance (and perhaps save) scholarly publishing in the humanities. Possible issues facing presses are considered through consideration of two examples in scholarly publishing that involve the author. The first example, the experimental journal Vectors, highlights the advantages and limits of certain types of multimodal scholarly communication for the humanities. The second example, the new Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, points toward new methods of workflow and publishing that link archives, scholars, and presses. The essay ends with a list of key questions that presses will need to address as various stakeholders collectively expand what we understand humanities publishing to be.

The first talk, in Indianapolis, will focus on the production, handling, and dissemination of images of art at the Rijksakademie for the visual arts in Amsterdam – a setting where new, networked technologies blend with existing documentation practices. I am interested in the entanglement of images and art works with the institute’s image database. In addition, I focus on how the visual documentation relates to the complex experience of making/seeing art objects. And how do these documentation practices relate to other electronic settings and networks in which the images might circulate (artist’s website, Flickr, sites galleries, etc.)?

The talk at the science studies colloquium at UCSD will center around our project label “Network Realism:” a new form of visual knowing, taking place at the intersection of digital images and computer networks at the point where they purport to convey the ‘real’. I will discuss results from our fieldwork at four sites where network realism is central: the Rijksakademie for the visual arts; the Tropenmuseum (an ethnographic museum); real estate database Funda; and Flickr as used by scholars who study street art. At each of the fieldsites, images are part of databases and circulate in complex electronic networks in ways that are not reducible to, but are intimately related to their digital format. The manipulation of digital images in networks enables other kinds of knowledge than those possible by physical co-presence with the objects represented.

At the  UCLA conference, our contribution will focus on networked knowledge and epistemic authority in the development of virtual museums, based on the fieldwork pursued at the Tropenmuseum. In light of the popular claim that new technologies will radically reconfigure existing socio-technical relations and dramatically alter the basis for scientific and scholarly authority, we will argue that it is important to draw attention to emerging forms of epistemic authority in relation to pre-existent institutional and infrastructural elements.

My own contribution will be built around a series of vignettes, narratives about moments from the field, that will serve to discuss methodological sensibilities, decisions and processes. So far, the themes will be:

• following the actors
• authority in a network
• symetry of people and things

And I want to come up with one more to stress ethical issues in practice.

In the course of preparing for this, I’ve come across some recent (and not so recent) material that could also be of interest but that didn’t make it to the reading list:

Rabinow, Marking Time (suggested by Ine Hoyweghen)

Kien, Global Technography

The Googlescape project website reloads automatically, showing a new randomly selected ‘landscape’ somewhere in the Netherlands every minute. The photographs are displayed in the middle of the screen, against a black background. It is as if you are looking at these photographs as works of art. This experience is heightened because Janssen left out most of  Google Streetview’s interactive interface, and because she used other display conventions familiar to the art world besides the centered presentation, for instance by giving the photos a title, an ‘author’ (Google), and a date.

Googlescape made me ponder on the differences between interactive Google streetview users, who usually look at particular places with a particular goal in mind, and Janssen’s passive spectators, who watch the randomly generated views on Holland pass before their eyes. The composition of the photographs is also intriguing. The Google camera was placed on top of a car. When these images travel to Janssen’s website in the guise of landscapes, they feel artificial, in the sense that they do not refer back to a human body or an eye behind the camera. This sense of artificiality is enhanced due to the stitching of different images taken at regular intervals. The human, ‘subjective’, element of individual scene selection we know from conventional landscape photography was not part of the production process.

Interestingly, some of the images do come across as very pleasing to the eye, and it would not surprise me if they could serve as sources of inspiration for landscape photographers.

The Vrolik collection was originally privately owned by Professor Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859) and his son Professor Willem Vrolik (1801-1863). It was the last collection of its kind in the Netherlands. Increasing specialization in science and medicine decreased the need for a collection that covered the very broad spectrum of comparative normal and pathological anatomy. Six years after Willem Vrolik passed away in 1863, an Amsterdam citizens committee acquired the entire collection. It was handed over to the Athenaeum Illustre, the predecessor of the University of Amsterdam. Today, the collection is housed at the AMC.

On the Foam website, we read that Van den Bogaard’s assignment “was not just to document the collection, but to visualise it in a much freer manner. (…) The result transcends traditional scientific photography in which the medium primarily serves a specific branch of science. Van den Bogaard has succeeded in creating many photos which fascinate not only because of what they depict, but because of how the specimen is depicted. The specific use of both natural and artificial light, his choice of a particular camera and special lens and his well-considered use of the blue background in photographing many of the specimens ensure that the photos far surpass the straightforward recording of a collection.” A similar text was displayed at the beginnig of the exhibition. We therefore entered the exhibition space with this specific ‘artistic’ mind-set.

Personally, I came across a lot of photographs of anatomical specimen when I was working on my dissertation on brain imaging. I thought I was used to dealing with the discomfort one may feel in not knowing if consent was given to anatomists for using the human remains. I thought  I was used to these kinds of images, also to more aesthetic ones. I guess I was wrong. I found it to be quite an unsettling experience to look at these aestheticized photographs of anatomical preparations, ranging from parts of the human face to anencephalic fetuses, and to find beauty in the womb of a chicken, for instance (image on the right).

Considering the long history of anatomical imaging, using an artistic eye for the purposes of clinical, medical-scientific documentation has from the mid-19th century onwards become much less common. But Van den Bogaard’s photographs fit well with an earlier tradition of anatomical display, dating back as far as the Renaissance. One of the most famous examples is Andreas Vesalius’ spectacular folio of the human anatomy, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, published in 1543. In Vesalius’s day, the beauty of the images was seen as an essential part of achieving accuracy. In the Netherlands, the 17th century anatomist Frederic Ruysch is still well-known for his artful anatomical museum. Ruysch preferably displayed his specimen in separate cabinets, each displaying a separate anatomical still life, a nature morte (Luuc Kooijmans, De Doodskunstenaar, Bert Bakker Publishers, 2004). Quite similarly, Van den Bogaard’s photographs can also be seen as timeless memento mori‘s.

In some ways, the move of the Vrolik collection from the  academic hospital to the white walls of a gallery is less successful. Van den Bogaard’s aesthetic photographs are accompanied by captions with very dry descriptive medical information, revealing the fact that the exhibition was commissioned by the academic hospital. This has a very disquieting effect. Medical-anatomical information is prioritized over, for instance, background information on the photographer’s artistic and technological choices. I considered this to be a missed opportunity to build bridges between the two poles, and resorted to the web to find more information on Van den Bogaard’s take on the exhibition. Luckily, Radio 6′s De Avonden aired an interview with the photographer on May 6.

On the other hand, this type of photography and captions might actually fit quite well with the long-standing tradition of anatomical display I was referring to above. As said, the combination of artistic visualization and anatomical description was much more common in Vesalius’  and Ruysch’ days.  Moreover, it was also quite customary for scholars to look for ways in which to disciplineartists.

The aim is to understand how photos (but also floor plans, 3D plans, and videos) contribute to the constitution and circulation of a knowledge about real estate objects, as a kind of everyday knowledge that is strongly visual.  Through participant observation, I follow how material is produced by real estate agents, how it is used by house-buyers, and how Funda as a web-based information infrastructure plays a role in shaping this. I’ve also been tracing how other sources of visual material get used by house-buyers, and how various sources relate to each other.

By the way, I’m still looking for users of Funda or potential house-buyers to talk to, so get in touch if you’re willing to talk to me about your experiences (anne.beaulieu@vks.knaw.nl).

After interviewing Coralie Vogelaar at the Rijksakademie in January, and hearing Kim de  Groot (Jan van Eyck Academy) present her work at last week’s VKS Maastricht workshop, it struck me that there’s a lot of synergy between their individual projects and our work on Network Realism. It is very interesting how their work really embodies the idea that images are not merely tools, but are themselves sites of knowledge production and dissemination.  In the case of Hendrik-Jan, his forthcoming book on Wiki Loves Art (see also our two earlier blog posts on the topic) promises to be a critical reflection on WLA and Wikimedia Commons in general and an artistic re-use of images under CC-license at once. He hopes this will ‘create a never-ending loop’ of cultural capital. Coralie’s work – and her cooperation with Tinkebell is perhaps the most well-known example – also clearly reveals how the re-use of images and other sources on the web produces new, at times controversial, knowledge. Lastly, Kim de Groot is currently studying ‘the inverted relation between image and reality’ at the Jan van Eyck, in a project that specifically focuses on the performativity of images. Kim is coming to the Virtual Knowledge Studio on May 6th. I am really looking forward to exploring these and other links between our respective projects.