Mairi Macleod, contributor
Hair & Brush by Jo Hodges (Image: Alan Dimmick, Glasgow)
Walking through the gigantic blood vessel at the entrance to the Glasgow Science Centre, I can only imagine what lies in store. I?ve come to Scotland?s leading science museum to see Going Viral, a new collaboration between immunologists and Scottish artists, and I?m hoping to be transported deep into the body, to a celebration of the immune system.
Once inside the gallery, it feels not like a body but an abstract art exhibition, which indeed it is. Still, it is different to any science museum display I?ve ever seen, and the works are all about interpreting and exploring the functions of our immune system and the daily battles it fights.
The project was conceived by the British Society for Immunology and comprises stories, film, sculpture, images and music. According to Hannah Hope, a medical mycologist and BSI public engagement officer, the scientists' role was to explain their work to the artists and act as consultants. The collaboration began with an away day, the six artists and four scientists together, to brainstorm ideas. ?It was a lot of fun and it really makes you look at things from a different point of view,? Hope says.
After this consultation with the scientists, the artists went off to develop their ideas. A prominent theme in these is the emotional impact of treatments for disease.
For instance, artist Jo Hodges focused on the personal stories and aspirations of transplant recipients, which is an eye-opener for anyone not personally acquainted with the process. Transplant recipients are, in a sense, a success story for immunology, but on the downside they often have to rely on immunosuppressant medication for the rest of their lives.
?My idea was to use people?s significant objects - really personal objects related to their experience of having a transplant,? says Hodges. Once the subjects had chosen an object, Hodges then had fractions of them imaged using state-of-the-art microscopes used by immunologists, and projected the images onto the floor with a quote from each person explaining why this object was important to them. In this way, the images combine looking at the way research is done with very personal stories of the organ recipients.
The contributors each chose very different things. ?For Hilde it was a lock of hair because when her liver failed, all her hair started to fall out and that was a really big thing for her. It was about her identity, her story? says Hodges.
Alison, who?s had four kidney transplants, chose the earthy flooring of her woodshed, which after the surreal sterility of the hospitals where she spent so much time, represents her family and home to her.
This personal angle is not something that immunologists researching disease treatments normally come into contact with. One of the scientists Hodges worked with was Gail McConnell at the Centre for Biophotonics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow - a research facility combining the work of physicists and biologists to develop microscopes to see how cells respond to treatments.
McConnell says that working with artists for Going Viral has given her a very different insight into her work. ?Using something like a microscope we always focus down to such a tiny level that eventually even the specimen doesn?t matter - it?s irrelevant that it?s human tissue,? she says. ?But this [collaborative exhibition] makes me think about the kind of work that we?re doing and how it impacts on real people and what the societal benefit is.?
McConnell is currently developing an optical seek-and-destroy system to help control the spread of the disease leishmaniasis. When videographer Hugh Watt saw the massive array of mirrors and lenses in the microscope, he was fascinated by the minute scale of what the scientists were doing.
For one of his artworks Watt suspended a camera into the path of the microscope?s laser beams and then rotated it through 360 degrees in half an hour. The result is a video of the lenses moving at a snail?s pace across three massive screens, giving the impression that you are inside the equipment.
?This piece of equipment?s job in the science lab is to observe, and in the work I do I?ve tried to make the lenses observe this space - so we become the subject,? says Watt.
Kirsten Family by Jaqueline Donachie (Image: Alan Dimmick, Glasgow)
Other video installations came from artist Jacqueline Donachie, who chose to explore the association between sunlight and vitamin D production, and the recent discussion, particularly in Scotland, about a potential link between lack of the vitamin and multiple sclerosis. Donachie enlisted the help of Kirsten Moore, who was diagnosed with the condition in her 40s, and told her story with photographs of Moore and her family and footage of a series of interviews with her.
The personal stories documented through the gallery we a highlight for me, shedding a unique perspective on experiences I had never considered before. As a whole, however, I feel the exhibition might have been enhanced by including some of the aesthetic appeal of the science itself; perhaps some of the imagery of cells produced by the biophotonics group.
That said, the exhibition doesn?t stop with the art, and may well change the way scientists think about and do their work.
?The artists have all been very individualistic in their approach and I guess scientists are often quite herd-like,? says Hope. ?We go to our conferences where there?s one particular field of thought. I think scientists should maybe be a bit more creative. Yes, new ideas have to be backed up with evidence, but scientists should take the opportunity to voice those maverick ideas and get them out there.?
Going Viral runs at the Glasgow Science Centre until 21 October
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