Cosmopolitical Futures - The Fate Maps - Human Donor Series - Cuts 000 – 006 - Video installation

Presented as a hyper-realistic panorama and viewed in partial darkness, the work provides an audience with a reflective space that invokes an emotional engagement with the medical and ethical dimensions of regenerative, stem cell research. Stem cells offer new generative opportunities for healing the body and touch on the most elusive aspects of life. Bones are alive; composed of calcified connective tissues and have many morphologies and the work was conceived alongside research groups studying embryonic, fetal and adult stem cells in the UK. The serial structure of the film, interprets raw biological source materials for bone and joint regeneration to demonstrate how sensory encounters with the digital can enhance the visual literacy of medical research. The scanning nature of reading and visual concepts of language are interwoven with dramatic hyper-realistic images of human donor materials passing behind layers composed and combined with temporal repetitions, tonal variations, shifts in scale and magnification, repeating graphic frames, virtual shadows and the visceral pulse of a soundscape composed from abnormal mitral valve heart beat recordings. The letters running horizontally allow a reader to intersect and interact with the work and multiply potential meanings. The underlying conceptual form of the work is based on theoretical work and ethical frame-working of philosopher of science, Karen Barad. Exhibiting six episode video, colour, sound installation, LED monitor(s) and media players, wall mounts/TV exhibition stands, floor speakers (subs), headphones 22:00 minutes, loop. Various alternative installation scales and layouts for single screen or multi channel video projections. Exhibited at I3S Scientific Research Institute, in group exhibition 'The Enhanced Human / Convergence' with artists: Paulo Bastos, Andy Gracie, Marta de Menezes, Herwig Turk, and Perdita Phillips, and Suzanne Anker. The I3S marks an exciting collaboration between the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology / Institute for Investigation and Innovation in Health (IBMC/i3S) and Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FLUP), University of Porto. The collaborating research venue is interested in how scientific medicine is currently visually and conceptually expressed and how creative visual arts-led research can challenge and enhance public access to the understanding of the broader convergent scientific enterprise undertaken within the new institute