The MIT Press Podcast9 Sep 2021

Silvia Casini, "Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology" (MIT Press, 2021)

Our bodies are scanned, probed, imaged, sampled, and transformed into data by clinicians and technologists. In Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology (MIT Press, 2021), Silvia Casini reveals the affective relations and materiality that turn data into image–and in so doing, gives bodies back to data. Opening the black box of MRI technology, Casini examines the bodily, situated aspects of visualization practices around the development of this technology. Reframing existing narratives of biomedical innovation, she emphasizes the important but often overlooked roles played by aesthetics, affectivity, and craft practice in medical visualization.

Combining history, theory, laboratory ethnography, archival research, and collaborative art-science, Casini retrieves the multiple presences and agencies of bodies in data visualization, mapping the traces of scientists’ body work and embodied imagination. She presents an in-depth ethnographic study of MRI development at the University of Aberdeen’s biomedical physics laboratory, from the construction of the first whole-body scanner for clinical purposes through the evolution of the FFC-MRI. Going beyond her original focus on MRI, she analyzes a selection of neuroscience- or biomedicine-inspired interventions by artists in media ranging from sculpture to virtual reality. Finally, she presents a methodology for designing and carrying out small-scale art-science projects, describing a collaboration that she herself arranged, highlighting the relational and aesthetic-laden character of data that are the product of craftsmanship and affective labor at the laboratory bench.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(584)

Soviet Blocks: The Bizarre Puzzle of How Tetris Embraced Western Values with Julien Mailland (MIT Press, 2026)

A geopolitical and legal history of the bestselling videogame Tetris—the stunningly successful game that began in a Soviet research lab monitored by the KGB. Tetris—the game that would take the world ...

5 Okt 36min

The Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize Can Improve Our Lives with Michael Hallsworth (MIT Press, 2026)

In our increasingly distrusting and polarized world, accusations of hypocrisy are everywhere. But our attempts to stamp out hypocrisy may backfire, creating what Michael Hallsworth calls The Hypocris...

4 Okt 49min

Life's Chemical Secret: The Origin of Purpose and Mind with Addy Pross (MIT Press, 2026)

How the ground-breaking discovery of a new material form in chemistry—matter in a dynamic kinetic state—is helping to explain life’s unique characteristics. The materialist view of nature has guided s...

29 Sep 1h 3min

The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism with Max Haiven (MIT Press, 2026)

A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable...

28 Sep 58min

Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026)

Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The wa...

13 Sep 58min

Lee Alan Dugatkin, "Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City" (MIT Press, 2026)

In Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Lee Dugatkin chronicles this little-known crisis, reve...

8 Sep 51min

Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)

They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest clim...

6 Sep 38min

Michelle A. Amazeen, "Content Confusion: News Media, Native Advertising, and Policy in an Era of Disinformation" (MIT Press, 2025)

We often blame social media for the rampant problem of disinformation, but the truth is that mainstream news media is often equally at fault. Not only do news outlets disguise paid content to look lik...

27 Aug 28min