SLICE
2025
Using the overwhelming amount of documents and CT scans I received from the NHS after I had a stroke in 2022. SLICE brings together my medical confusion and quest for knowledge with slices of my head as the visual subject. While my body is physically present in the CT scans in this book, I have no memory of the event as I was in a medically induced coma. These CT scans are a testimony of the event of my stroke as are the handwritten notes accompanying them which I pulled from the written accident and emergency reports from the NHS as well.
A CT scan is “...a computerized x-ray imaging procedure in which a narrow beam of x-rays is aimed at a patient and quickly rotated around the body, producing signals that are processed by the machine’s computer to generate cross-sectional images, or ‘slices’” (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering). The extractive process of a CT scan turns X-rays into digital data which a computer then turns into visual data for doctors and nurses to use for diagnostic purposes. As the subject of CT scans which generated over 10,000 x-rays, the issue of medical objectification, especially as I use these scans for personal purposes, is centred in my mind.
While calibrated by a trained medical professional, the thousands of slices of my body turned into data and then visualised by a machine provide me with an intimate view of myself and my own inner workings. The sight of my own brain in these CT scans creates an eerie feeling of staring into a void, almost seeing something just out of reach.
Machine vision and the creation of these images for diagnosis has provided me with numerous questions after my stroke. What do these images mean? How can I read them? What happens next? The abstraction of myself in these CT scans due to both my mental absence and the volume of them creates an uncanny feeling of almost-recognition. SLICE, feels like an early iteration exploration on the topic of machine images and I am keen to continue to experiment.