Top-Ranked LABS Abstracts 2014
2014 The full 2014 abstracts are also published in Leonardo Vol. 48, No. 5, 2015.
https://leonardo.info/sites/default/files/favicon.ico
Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University
The Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) is an evolving, comprehensive database of thesis abstracts (PhD, Master's and MFA) on topics at the intersections between art, science and technology. This English-language database is hosted by Pomona College (Claremont, CA), under the direction of editor-in-chief Sheila Pinkel.

Each year, in addition to being published in the database, a selection of abstracts chosen by a peer review panel for their special relevance are published annually in Leonardo (see Vol. 48, No. 5, 2015) and on our website. We are pleased to present below the top-ranked thesis abstracts of 2014, and we congratulate the authors of the theses.

Silvia Casini, The Aesthetics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Jayne Fenton-Keane, Three-Dimensional Poetic Natures

Aleksandra Kaminska, Mediating Poles

Nicholas A. Knouf, Noisy Fields

Victoria Marchenkova, Languages of Russian and Chinese Narrative Video Art

Karen O’Rourke, From Networked Art to Programmed Drifts

Daniël Ploeger, Sonified Freaks and Sounding Prostheses

Nina Sellars, The Optics of Anatomy and Light

Hugo Solis, Axial; A Sound Art Work of an Oceanographic Expedition

The Aesthetics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): Setting MRI in Motion from the Scientific Laboratory to an Art Exhibition

Silvia Casini

In this research project I examine the aesthetics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a technique that generates images of the body/brain for scientific/medical purposes. By using a variety of approaches (philosophy, visual studies, curatorial practice) and materials (artworks, lab experiments) I develop new methods and contexts relevant to the processes by which MRI is resituated in gallery spaces and cinematic environments. Part I, Histories, places MRI within the historical and philosophical background formed by earlier image-generating techniques. Part II, Convergences/Divergences, focuses on concepts such as mirror, scan and grid, all present in the MRI process. This section reassesses notions of identity and portraiture by juxtaposing MRI to MRI-based artworks and, beyond that, to portraiture in moving-image works. Part III, Passages, explores the concepts mentioned above by anchoring them to laboratory fieldwork and to the curating of an exhibition on Marc Didou. In its engagement with a wide range of critical debates and creative practices, this thesis intervenes in the art-science debate by creating a challenging encounter between scientific and artistic practices outside artist-scientist collaboration. In it I envisage a future for film studies that can be more receptive to a wider array of visual and plastic art forms.