Short Cuts ? Anschlüsse an den Körper
Frieze Issue 37 November-December 1997
DASA, Dortmund, Germany
DASA, or the Deutsche Arbeitsschutzausstellung (The German Health and Safety at Work Exhibition) to give it its full title, is a museum in which you can put on a pair of hygienically padded headphones and take a guided tour of the history of work. Behind this is the serious point that working people - whether typing at computers or tapping blast furnaces - are exposed to danger. Ear muffs, goggles and back exercises were all invented to protect the body during the production process. If the mind responsible for that body is to understand how vulnerable it is and how it works, clear images are needed. ‘Short Cuts - Anschlüsse an den Körper. Ein Cross-Over durch Kunst, Wissenschaft und Körperbilder’ (Short Cuts: connections to the body. A criss-cross tour of art, science and images of the body) is the wordy title of an exhibition that provides just that. The 17 artists involved use photography, video, installation and interactive computers. Curators Iris Dressler (art historian) and Hans D. Christ (artist) state that in organising the show they were interested in ‘surfaces’ and not in ‘physical feelings’.The Body Research Machine
Daniel García Andújar: The Body Research Machine, 1997,
Multimedia-Projekt (Screenshot)
Installation
Coproduction: Hartware MedienKunstVerein
Courtesy: Technologies To The People
Since 2000, a modified version has been part of the permanent collection of the Deutschen Arbeitsschutzausstellung, Dortmund
Shortcuts. Anschlüsse an den Körper, 1997
"'THE BODY RESEARCH MACHINE©' uses innovative technologies based on advanced biometrics in order to record complex data related to the human body. The machine transmits through the body ultrasound waves which are then split up into phase data. While doing so, the machine scans every section of the body for interesting information, transferring all input signals to a special computer database.
Specially developed by TECHNOLOGIES TO THE PEOPLE©, the database system imitates the structure of various atom models and is able to reconstruct, atom for atom, individual amino-acid structures. These data and other information are stored in our central database. The collected data can ultimately be compared with the DNA strings saved in a GenBank.
The Body Research Machine
Installation, 1997 Koproduktion: Hartware MedienKunstVerein Courtesy: Technologies To The People Seit 2000 in modifizierter Form in der ständigen Sammlung der Deutschen Arbeitsschutzausstellung, Dortmund Shortcuts. Anschlüsse an den Körper, 1997 "THE BODY RESEARCH MACHINE© nutzt neuartige Technologien, die auf hochentwickelten biometrischen Technologien basieren, um komplexe Daten über den menschlichen Körper zu erfassen. Die Maschine sendet Ultraschall-Wellen durch den Körper, die in Phasen-Daten aufgespaltet werden. Sie sucht dabei jede Sektion des Körpers nach interessanten Informationen ab und überträgt sämtliche Eingangssignale in eine spezielle Computerdatenbank. Das Datenbanksystem, das von TECHNOLOGIES TO THE PEOPLE© eigens entwickelt wurde, beruht auf dem Aufbau verschiedener Atommodelle und kann individuelle Aminosäurestrukturen Atom für Atom nachbauen. Diese und andere Daten werden in unserer Zentraldatenbank gespeichert. Die gewonnenen Daten können schließlich mit den DNA-Ketten einer GenBank verglichen werden.