The Body Image Exhibition – Take a Look Inside Your Body with Oculus Rift
Organized by UNSW Galleries Director Felicity Fenner and artist Dr John McGhee, The Body Image Exhibition is the very first of three exhibitions n UNSW Galleries’ Signs of Life exhibition season. It is being held at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The exhibition that began on 6th September has brought a vast number of Australian and international artists together to display their work and explore the human body with the help of imaging technologies and animation software. The art exhibition is striving to make a fusion between science, technology, medicine and art by displaying intricate 3D pictures of the human body. To create the art, they have utilized medical visual technology and complex scientific data. The exhibition will end on 8th November 2014.
John McGhee, the artist and organizer of the event, said that the idea for the exhibition came to him almost 10 years ago. He was in UK working on a project to improve communication between doctors and patients, especially in the interpretation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computer tomography scans (CT). At The Body Image Exhibition, the art and technology are mingling and MRI scans and CT imaging are being used to create art out of the human body.
For his artwork, McGhee has used MRI and CT scans and Maya software which is used in the video games and visual effects industry. By merging these two technologies, he designed real-time versions of these animations for the Oculus Rift. McGhee said that it will take you inside the body and inside the data. The creation will help in the medical field by allowing a doctor or family member to experience the same medical visual images as a patient.
His work is now a part of a preliminary project at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. It is being used to help patients deal with paralysis that have occurred due to stroke. Oculus Rift together with the body imagery will let people believe what they are seeing which will in turn facilitate the recovery process. An example was given by McGhee, ‘that if you can help patients visualize movement in areas of the body where there is no movement…the nerves can actually possibly regenerate.’ In conclusion, we can say that the technology shown in the art exhibition looks promising and can do wonders in both the fields of art and medicine.
For more information on Body Image: A fantastic voyage of art and technology, please visit the following links:
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/body-image-a-fantastic-voyage-of-art-and-technology/
https://www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/unsw-galleries/body-image
http://www.cnet.com/uk/pictures/body-image-a-fantastic-voyage-of-art-and-technology-pictures/3/
