This video is derived from the cross-sectional images of the human body produced for the "Visible Human Project" of the National Library of Medicine.
The Visible Human Project®, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, involves the creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the human body. It consists of magnetic resonance (MR) images, computed tomography (CT) images, and cryosection images of representative male and female cadavers. The male was sectioned at one millimeter intervals, the female at one-third of a millimeter intervals.
The video installation project Untitled (after the visible human project), realized in 2002, is based exclusively on the cryosection images produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for the Visible Human Project®. The French visual artist Patrick Martinez employed these images to create two animated movies, one for the female and the other for the male. Martinez also digitally reconstructed a number of images that were missing in the original dataset of the NLM (due to the division of the cadavers into four blocks using a saw before serial sectioning) and added them to the sequence to create a complete journey (head to toe and back) through each of the bodies. The videos are looped and produce the hypnotic sensation of an ebb and flow of almost abstract pictures. They also give one the sensation of travelling through the bodies at great speed. The two videos are intended to be shown next to one another, on two distinct screens.
The two human subjects used in the original project of the NLM were of different heights and therefore the time necessary to scan vertically through their respective lateral sections is also different. Consequently, this time difference puts the two videos progressively out of sync until they briefly catch up with each other.
Patrick Martinez' video document/artwork deals with the limits of technological representation of the human body, underlining the paradoxical relationship between high resolution and abstraction and playing with the notions of symmetry, identity and difference...

Patrick Martinez