eiffel balky: Growing crystals on a cut body poses ethical questions

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Growing crystals on a cut body poses ethical questions

Sean Treacy, contributor

(Images: The Invisible Human)

In a warehouse-like room in Washington DC, a 3D replica of a man?s lungs dangle from the ceiling, a glowing neon tube thrust through its centre.

The lungs soak in a tank of warm water mixed with a powder that forms clear crystals across the organs' surface. Over time, the organs transform into a white, jagged, glowing blob - a bizarre mix of the roundness of living tissue and the angular rigidity of minerals.

This misshapen chandelier is part of The Invisible Human installation at the Industry Gallery, the brainchild of artist-architect Tobias Klein and material researchers at Ordinary Ltd.

To one side of the lungs hang the finished works: the man's abdomen, covered in fine white crystals, and his heart, which is bottom-heavy with big crystal blocks but mostly bare around its top. To the right of the lungs is the pelvis, naked and waiting its turn for the crystal treatment. The exhibit also features nine cross-sections from an MRI scan of the man, each being similarly crystallised in turn.

The work was inspired by The Visible Human Project, a scientific study that started in 1994 in which the corpses of a man and a woman were frozen and sliced into sections. The man was Joseph Paul Jernigan, a convicted murderer who donated his body to science before his lethal injection and was sliced into 1871 sections from head to toe, each 1 millimetre thick.

Jernigan's remains have shed light on details of human physiology, but the murderer was unaware that his cadaver would be sliced up and made part of the public record. The Invisible Human takes that moment of debatable ethics and transforms it into a disquieting symbol of a different sort. On the visible organs of a man cut into slices, mineral blocks thrive like an aberrant alien mould. The crystals, however pretty, do not belong there - and yet they thrive all the same.

Before getting the crystallisation treatment, each 2D cross-section and 3D model organ was made from nylon powder using 3D-printing technology. The nylon fabric is riddled with tiny pores, perfect for a young, growing crystal to latch onto as it forms.

The crystals are made of potassium aluminium sulphate, an ingredient in some deodorants. When mixed with water, it can form crystals if the temperature of the water is slowly cooled. The more gradual the temperature drop, the bigger and more translucent the crystals. When the temperature goes up, the crystal growth stops.

That subtle influence of temperature on the crystals is what drives this exhibit. But then, an even more subtle force (even invisible) has sway over the temperature: you.

Anyone with an internet connection can head to the exhibit's website and "tell" the crystals what to do - for at least a little while. You can place a series of crosses on a diagram of each art piece currently being soaked in water full of potassium aluminium sulphate.

These crosses determine what parts of the tank will feel the heat, and thus where the crystals will grow. For example, you could spread the crosses out, keeping the temperature relatively stable throughout the tank - but where's the fun in that?

Or you could pile all the crosses into one tiny point, focusing all the heat on that spot and making it impossible for crystals to grow there, but cooling down the rest of the tank, where crystals get a chance to thrive.

So observers of The Invisible Human are also participants in the project, and the more people take part, the more chaos is added to how the crystals grow. This is why, for example, the 3D abdomen has a fine crystal coating throughout its surface while the 3D heart's crystals are less consistent.

Ultimately, though, The Invisible Human gives rise to a sense of unease. It would seem more if crystals, which are normally unwelcome and sometimes even deadly to human biology, were not so aesthetically pleasing.

But that's the whole point. Klein's exhibit sows visual and emotional discord, and invites us to think about the origin of that incongruity. Was it to do with the brightly glowing crystals flourishing on what resembles bleached chunks of a person? Was it that all 1871 millimetres of Jernigan were uploaded to the internet for all to see almost two decades ago?

Or was it that you got involved when you placed some crosses on a diagram and casually clicked "Submit"?