Visual mediation and haptic immediacy: watching ultrasound scanning images vs. touching with the naked hand
After the minisymposium with Jens Hauser and Sepp Gumbrecht on the concept of ‘presence’ here at Medical Museion last spring, our research group has repeatedly come back to the relation between mediated visualizations of biomedical objects, on the one hand, and the immediacy of touching them, on the other (see, for example, Jan Eric’s earlier post on Condillac’s statue).
As an anecdotal illustration of the immediacy of touch, I’d like to present the following personal experience.
In mid-March, I accompanied my partner to the National Hospital here in Copenhagen for an ultrasound scan of our then 13 week old foetus. As thousands of other prospective parents we were of course thrilled by what we saw on the screen:
Watching our future baby ’live’ on a computer screen like this was quite amazing, even though we had seen such pictures on the internet before. It’s an experience we share with millions of others: digitalized ultrasound scanning foetus images have become an integral part of the contemporary understanding of what it means to deliver new citizens to the world. A striking image of early life that is easily communicated in our visual culture and as such an illustration of the formation of biocitizenship, both discursively and substantially.
Back to the anecdote: Six weeks later, we went for the second screening and watched the same kind of picture, just more detailed, with ears, fingers, toes and everything. It was, of course, very satisfying to see that the pregnancy proceeded well, and that there was no need to worry.
Yet, none of us were really moved by the experience. And I realised that even though I had been quite amazed during the first scanning session in March, both sessions left me somehow unsatisfied. There was something lacking which I couldn’t really articulate. My partner felt the same way, especially after the second scanning.
It was no big thing, and none of us found it wortwhile discussing it at length. For my own part, I shrugged it off as one of these many moments of distraction that acompany academic life.
However, two weeks after the second scanning, my partner suddenly said one evening: ‘put your hand on my belly’. I did — and there it was: the ‘rumbling’ that I had read about! Something moving inside. Not really kicking, but ‘rumbling’.
Wow! Double wow! This was our baby, no doubt. I couldn’t see it, of course, and I couldn’t distinguish arms, legs or head from each other. It was just a ‘rumbling object’ deep inside my partner’s belly.
From a medical point of view my subjective haptic experience was of course nothing compared with the detailed, objective and communicable ultrasound visualizations. And yet — as an experience of emerging life it was much more evocative. Touching our ’rumbling’ foetus made a much stronger impression on me than seeing him/her (we don’t want to know ’its’ sex yet) in high screen resolution. Now he/she was real — for real!
And then I understood why the two previous scanning sessions had left us somewhat unsatisfied, as if something was lacking. Despite all the exquisite visual detail, the perception of a scanning image is mediated. That is, there is literally a medium between the perceiving spectator and the foetus. In this case, a technically sophisticated clinical platform — an obstetric clinic with trained technicians operating state-of-the-art ultrasound echoprobe equipment according to standardized procedures and with the newest imaging software, etc. — stand between us and the foetus. While my hand on her belly is unmediated (unless you want to call the belly muscles and the placenta a ‘medium’).
As an anecdote this has rather limited evidential value, agreed. But it nevertheless makes me think about the immediacy of touch, and to what extent the sense of touch is an undervalued sense in a world which is dominated by the sense of vision (and partly the auditory sense). (For further views on this, see Jan Eric’s and my paper to the ‘Artefact’ meeting in Oslo last September.)
It also raises questions about touch as a basic cognitive sense (cf Jan Eric’s post on Condillac), about touch as an emotionally loaded sense, about the communicability and possibility for shared cultural experiences of touch, and so forth. Lots of questions for later posts.
(finally, to medical doctors reading this post: I’m not at all against imaging technologies, of course; I’m just fascinated by the relation between visual mediation and the immediacy of touch :-)
09 Jun 2008 Thomas
On the notion of ultrasound images a I can’t help but share a personal experience. As an art history graduate student I am fascinated in the limits of visuality. What is visible in different contexts and ages often linked to technologies of vision, of which ultrasound is one. It is very interesting how important the moment of ultrasound scanning has become in our society. It is a moment eagerly awaited for most parents. And printouts from the scanning are images most parents cherish, and stick on to the refridgerator.
Here comes the sad part: my first pregnancy had to be ended after an ultrasound scanning. I still remember the scanning event as one of the worst moments in my life, the nurse, then the doctor looking over and over again to see what was wrong. I still can’t look at ultrasound images without felling slightly sick. During my next pregnancy (which was perfectly normal) I refused to look at any ultrasound pictures, only after having been convinced by the nurse that everything was OK.
What is my point? Maybe I feel that the scanning event has become too much of a spectacle. That the monitor visible to the parents maybe shouldn’t by default be turned on? That ultrasound should be viewed as what it is: a medical instrument crucial to discover anomalies in an early stages of the pregnancy - not an encounter with your future child. These encounters come all along during the pregnancy, as Thomas wrote, for those who are patient.
Hi Karolina, your experience raises an interesting question, analogous to the one I discussed in the post above — namely, are negative auditory or touch sensations more strongly imprinted than negative visual sensations? In other words, if your pregnancy had been terminated after a stethoscopic investigation during which you had been able to listen to the heartbeat and feel the movements of the foetus, would you then have felt an even more intensive feeling of sickness afterwards when confronted with foetus heartbeats and ‘rumblings’?
That’s really hard to say. I can only guess that hearing no heartbetas when there should be heartbeats could make anyone anxious of stethoscopic investigation of the belly. But the rumblings and movements are in some way so internal (speaking as a woman) that I can’t imagine how that could feel threatening in any way. There is naturally a great sense of loss having “removed” a foeus that has just started moving around, but that feeling is more linked to grief, not fear of a certain medical instrument.