Nuclear body

A project by Davide Grassi, Nuclear Body is the result of research into one of the diagnostic techniques used in the field of nuclear medicine: radio-isotopic scanning or schintigraphy. This technique allows the evaluation of a body organ’s state by rendering on a computer monitor a digital image of it. An isotope, introduced intravenously into the patient, after reaching the target organ starts to emit gamma rays, which are than detected by a special gamma camera. By following this procedure methodically, the whole artist’s body was “copied” and “pasted” into a virtual dimension. In Nuclear Body, Grassi utilises schintigraphy not simply as a diagnostic technique, but as a means by which to create a virtual double of a body which could be used in digital environments.

The project was realised in partnership with the Oncological Institute of Ljubljana’s Clinic Centre, and was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana’s Cultural Department. It was premiered in March 1999 at the Ljubljana’s Cultural and Congress Centre Cankarjev dom in the frame of the festival “the Beauty of Extreme II”.

[ text edited from www.cd-cc.si/kultura/grassi/intro.htm ]