Idea and execution
In 2009 we opened the exhibition Invisible world. In the preparation we were driven by curiosity about what we could detect and learn about scientific imaging and its relation to a wider culture. The final result turned out to be a more narrowed focused exhibition on scientific imaging.

Colourful and esthetically pleasing images of cells, parts of cells and videos from intracellular processes are easy to find these days – actually they are hard to avoid. Images or models of bodily parts and processes produced by advanced techniques (combinations of microscopes and computers) are used to discover new things and to diagnose, present scientific findings (communication between scientists), to explain and communicate biological processes at a micro level to the public, and to promote and sell science in general. As an example, one out of three cover pages of the journal Nature, in 2008, showed aesthetically enhanced images or models of the microcosm.

Microscopy techniques and ways of processing images of the objects under study have proliferated the last few decades and has become an integrated and essential part of the research process across most scientific disciplines. The news is not so much that science makes use of visualizing techniques to see and discover and understand things, the news is the scale and possibilities when it comes to wide spread use in all disciplines applied to increasingly more topics of inquiry.

The two general motivations for making this particular exhibition were that scientific visualization and the use of images in the research process as well as in diagnostics have increased enormously the last few decades, and secondly that we are faced with a wide range of images of this type thanks to the increased abilities to broadcast them. One can say that scientific visualization and its results are crossing the boundaries between science and the public – transcending what Emily Martin has termed the walls of the scientific citadel. The images are influence by the culture outside, and the images influence upon the world outside science. There are reasons to believe that images of the invisible will do something with our understanding of our body and nature in general. A specifically interesting question these new visualizing technologies and practices raise, is what these kinds of images actually represent?

Images of very tiny objects such as cells, no bigger than 0,000001 mm, and their interior cannot be seen with the naked eye. The fact is that for most of the images at this level we don’t know what things actually look like. We do have to transfer authority to the technology, such as for example confocal laser scanning microscopes. These microscopes have the ability to acquire in-focus images from selected depths. Images are acquired point-by-point and reconstructed with a computer, allowing three-dimensional reconstructions of topologically-complex objects. And images we have seen confirm this. But then again, what we see in these images is only two or three things (very seldom more). Here is an example of an image, randomly picked from Wikipedia: It shows the eukaryotic cytoskeleton, with actin filaments shown in red, microtubules in green, and the nuclei are in blue.

In one way this image represent cells, but it only refers to natural objects in a very particular way. This becomes evident if you look into the production process. Behind every image there is a lot of laboratory work, creative efforts and amounts of technically advanced equipment. The colours in the picture are for sure not the same as those inside the body. Because, inside our body, at this level, there are no colours. So there is a gap between “what things really look like” and these highly artificial objects. The colours depend on the fluorescent markers chosen to be placed into the particular cell. Sometimes colours are chosen for aesthetical reasons, or, which often is the case, in accordance with disciplinary conventions (cell nuclei are most often blue). Colours might also be chosen to make good contrast – to highlight something. Also, in some cases, colours cannot be chosen at all because the only marker that will bind to a specific protein will give, for example, green fluorescence under a confocal microscope.

It is also good to know that, what the images show, are only two or three components of the cell. Tens of thousands of other components in the cells are invisible. And not a least, as the neuroscientist Richard Wingate put it in an interview figuring in the exhibition: “What is actually invisible in these pictures is the enormous amount of technical apparatus and computer processing that is required to generate a final image”. So what kind of image of a cell is this then? What do the images represent?

These questions touch upon the very essence of all scientific activity, as science and scientific facts and findings are the result of a series of representational practices. The controversial question concerning these statements is not whether science is a series of representations, but what the representations represent. In one corner one may find the realists saying; it represents natural properties. In the other corner one may find the extreme social constructivists saying; representations merely reflect cultural ideas and states of mind. We think the truth is somewhere in between here, agreeing with sociologists of science such as Pauwel and Michal Lynch.

We were theoretically inspired by studies within the field of science and technology studies. In this field science is studied as practice and work, more or less like any other activity. With this theoretical backdrop we worked along the two following statements concerning scientific representation: 1) “Any technique or medium, however sophisticated and advanced, at best can provide some highly mediated renderings of [a] presumed reality” (Luc Pauwel, 2006: viii). 2) “[...] a mere object approach [to scientific representations] [...], which would devote all attention to the representation as a free-standing product of scientific labour, is inadequate. And essential for this approach is that “each visual representation should be linked with its context of production” (ibid: 21).

We made a preliminary description of the exhibition and contacted scientists using images and/or imaging technology in Norway and in London. We conducted short field works in an anthropological sense. By this, we got to know the scientists and they became interested in the project. This was our way to approach this complex field, to get an understanding of the production context and of what imaging technology is useful for, as well as what the limitations are. We were particularly interested in how this was perceived by the scientists and to get theirs point of view.

From the very beginning we cooperated with Piotr Zamecznik, whom is an artist and an experienced exhibition designer. We wanted to create an exhibition were scientific work and its products were presented along with the scientists’ own perceptions of it. It was our intention to make the scientists speak, not at all entirely on their premises, but as a dialog – with us and with the visitors. This is our understanding of bringing science and scientists into the exhibition.

Final exhibition concept
This quite open ended strategy slightly turned us a bit off track from where we thought we would go when we started out. We had to admit that we did neither have space nor time to follow up all our initial questions, concerning for example the relation between scientific imaging and the wider culture. Although some elements touch upon this aspect, such as the installation about imaging awards, and also the DNA-stairway, which is made to tell the story about how a grey image, made by an x-ray crystallography, has turned into what Martin Kemp has called a Mona Lisa of modern biology. The exhibition became more focused, and we ended up with an introduction to scientific imaging in general and a room for reflection upon what we actually see when the invisible is represented in colourful and thoroughly constructed images. In addition we made a brief introduction to the history of scientific visualization by exhibiting a few key objects. An early light microscope was exhibited, as well as a mobile x-ray apparatus, an early electron microscope, a product catalog for fluorescent probes used for confocal microscopy, and a particle accelerator was represented through a lead glass calorimeter. Our intention was that these few objects should play the role as anchor for short texts were we should give the audience a way into the field of scientific visualization.

By arranging the microscope devices in a linear way, we tried to illustrate what seems to be a quite general point. When things get smaller the technology you need to see gets bigger. In addition, this arrangement could illustrate a general point about translation of things which are too small to be seen by the unaided human eye. Referring to Pauwels, “one has to rely on – and thus transfer authority to – the machine in order to chart often unknown territory” .

Some of the texts were made in cooperation with the scientists. For the electron microscope (EM) we made a digital story together with the scientist whom worked with this precise microscope. The microscope, a Tesla BS 242 table microscope, bought from Czechoslovakia by the University of Oslo in 1958, was the first EM used for scientific purpose in Norway. When it first arrived it was set up and managed by a young research assistant, Bjørn Johannesen, and used in a lab for neuroanatomy. During one of our fieldtrips we managed by coincidence to come across this man, today a professor emeritus. He took part in the restoration of the microscope, and as we worked together we made audio recordings all the way and photo documented the process. We also found that a promoting video for the Tesla microscope came along with the instrument in 1958. So together it became an installation in the exhibition, rather than an object with a text.

We also present other scientists in video interviews and audio recordings, and we made a documentary film together with a molecular imaging laboratory in Bergen. The documentary lasts for about 15 minutes and takes you through the process of making images by electron microscopy and confocal microscopy, concerning a brain tumor in a rat. We visited the laboratory a couple of times and stayed there for a week to make the film. We insisted on filming all the work, which was a lot, to illustrate the amount of preparations, choices, technical processes and all the equipment needed to produce such images. Visitors who see the whole film understand that the images are not necessarily reflections of natural objects and relationships.

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