Oscar Wilde once said that "life imitates art". But did the Irish playwright ever have a CT scan? And if he
had, would the poet who was once jailed for "gross indecency" now claim that
art imitates medical imaging?
Wilde Radiology
Computed tomography (CT) is a medical imaging and
non-destructive testing (NDT) technique that produces a three-dimensional (3D)
image of the inside of an object. In medical applications, this "object" is
often a lung, liver, kidney, spleen, or other organ. In industrial settings, CT
scanning is used for the non-invasive testing of materials.
According to RadiologyInfo, a Web site from the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the
Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), CT imaging is "one of the best
and fastest tools" for producing "cross-sectional views" of the human body.
Known as CT scans or CAT scans, the resulting images are quite colorful. CT
scanning for NDT also produces CT scans with rich shades of red, blue, green,
and yellow.
"Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with
definite form," wrote Oscar Wilde, "can speak to the soul in a thousand
different ways". These lines, recorded many years before Britain's Godfrey Hounsfield
invented the first commercially-viable CT scanner in 1971, could complement an
unusual art exhibit featured recently in the New York Times. Sartre Stuelke, an artist-turned-medical-student, is
using CT scans to create inside-out art from everyday objects.
Inside Everyday
Objects
On his Web site, Stuelke writes that "the way cameras and
film see what is in front of them is radically different than the way our eyes
see things". Clearly, the same is true of CT scanners and CAT
scans. Stuelke's artwork is designed to penetrate the interior world of metal, plastic, and
organic materials – the things of everyday life. As the artist recently told the Times, his goal is to ask people to "think
about how things are constructed".
So did Sartre Stuelke succeed? His 18-page slide show (link
below) examines a mechanical dog, a rubber duck, an iPhone, a McDonald's Big
Mac and Chicken McNuggets, a squeak toy, a Swanson's Hungry Man fried chicken
TV dinner, and a toy rocket. There are also slides
of a wind-up rabbit, Motorola Razr cell phone, toy submarine, mechanical
elephant, clamshell iBook, Norelco electric razor, stuffed animal, and Christmas
Barbie.
There's also a CAT scan of what Stuelke calls "our recently
retired toaster". The kitchen appliance stopped toasting on one side of the
bread, yet "the CT scan couldn't really reveal why though".
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/03/23/science/032409-Scan_index.html
Other Resources:
http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?PG=bodyct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computed_tomography
http://www.quotesdaddy.com/quote/960638/oscar-wilde/mere-colour-unspoiled-by-meaning-and-unallied-with
http://satre.itrnet.com/studio/studio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
The Y Files
Steve Melito
| 
Re: Art Imitates Medical Imaging
