Hooke22_3 and other Images by Brad Smith


Hooke22_3 
SimpleCurve1

Re-presentations of MRI data from day 54 human embryos. Embryos from a collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine were imaged using MRI. The three-dimensional image data points were reformatted to confound the spatial dimensions and present a new visual presentation and thus a new interpretation of the original subject. 

Smith explores the consequences of depicting human embryos through a wide range of styles, from data to decoration, including techniques of visualization, illustration, expression, and commodification to consider its moral, political, social, religious, and cultural status. He generates images and pictures that vary from recognizable photographs of whole embryos to mural-sized prints of highly stylized and abstracted patterns produced from manipulated MRI data.

Some of these depictions intentionally accentuate image artifacts or portray impossible and artificially produced visual distortions, contortions, and hybridizations of embryos. Some are informative, some enticing, others are disturbing. Some promote the embryo’s humanity, some its animalism. Some portray the embryo as archetype specimen, others as an individual. Each portrayal leaves a latent impression influencing our understanding of these contended entities.






Mullein – Menace
Verbascum Freefall 01


Naturalized and invasive moth mullein, rudimentary inflorescence, cultivated, fresh-dissected and photomicrographed in Ann Arbor, MI, US.

The moth mullein, Verbascum blattaria, is native to Eurasia/North Africa. It was introduced to eastern North America and first reported in Michigan about 1840. It has subsequently spread throughout the US and southern Canada. 

Smith reseeded 5,000 sq. ft of suburban lawn with an experimental field of grasses and plants native to the midwestern plains of North America. He has deliberated the culling of non-native, invasive, but naturalized species from the evolving meadow vs. allowing them to compete with the natives insinuated into this reformation attempt. Part of the project includes photomicrosopic and macroscopic documentation of the explanted and volunteer arrivals to the field, to portray the array of life striving to make a home in this newly disturbed ground.










Brad Smith is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Programs at the Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan. Smith’s academic administrative work connects visual creative practices with practices in the sciences, humanities, and professional schools. Smith’s creative work addresses the intersections of science and art with a focus on bio-technology and its impact on society’s understanding of the social, ethical, and political status of biological subjects. Smith’s research explores visualization methods for the study of cardiovascular development and has established protocols for Magnetic Resonance Microscopy study of development. He creates animations and graphics demonstrating developmental biology for museums and documentary film companies. Smith holds a B.U.S. degree with majors in Biology and Art from the University of Utah, an M.A. in Medical Illustration from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Anatomy with an emphasis in developmental biology from Duke University.

A link to Smith’s website can be found here.