Re | Solution

Photos

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A twelve-metre-high wall installation adorns the foyer of the Multiscale Imaging Centre (MIC) at the University of Münster. The artwork takes an artistic view of the research taking place in the building – the imaging of cells in motion.

The wall relief visually resolves the human organism into its building blocks. Arranged organically, holes and pins of different sizes serve as abstract symbols, depicting cells, molecules or atoms. White on white, the silhouette of the body is initially invisible. It is only the interplay of light and shadow that causes it to abruptly materialise, revealing images of the body and its building blocks. In much the same way, biomedical images do not portray the inside of the body directly; rather they are created by artificially generated signals such as light, sound or radiation that are measured and translated into images by different technologies.

It is not only because the light changes during the course of the day and from one season to another that the installation never looks quite the same. The way it is perceived also alters as we move closer to or further away from it, reflecting the desire to do the impossible: view the entirety and its constituent parts simultaneously. The same happens in biomedical research – microscopy can be used to make individual cells visible, yet all we then see is one small section of an organism. Conversely, when we use whole-body imaging methods to represent an entire organism, we cannot make out the individual cells. Scientists at the MIC study processes in the body in these various spatial dimensions and are developing methods by which to gather data at the individual cellular level and combine it with information about the organism as a whole.

From time to time, moving light animations are projected onto the installation. They symbolise how individual components create an emergent image of the body as a dynamic system – an image that is in a state of constant transformation, reflecting the behaviour of these components and their interactions.

Cordula Hesselbarth is a professor at the Münster School of Design and teaches media-based scientific illustration. She is also an artist who engages with questions relating to nature and science.

More information

• Eckhard Kluth: Cordula Hesselbarth: Auf | Lösung. Multimediale Wandinstallation. w/k - Zwischen Wissenschaft & Kunst 2022. DOI: 10.55597/d16392
• Eckhard Kluth: Körper-Bilder lesen. Wie in Kunst und Wissenschaft Naturgesetze erforscht werden. UniKunstKultur Sommersemester 2018; 31-43.
• More information about Cordula Hesselbarth

The university received financial support from the company Brillux in Münster to implement the artwork.