"The AIDS Virus is clearly the most talked about piece in our collection . . . while this country has the fourth highest concentration of HIV infection in the world, Zimbabweans are still generally reluctant to talk about the disease. The PHSCologram offers us a chance to discuss AIDS in an informal, less threatening way, but nonetheless important way. Zimbabweans are drawn to the technology that the piece evokes. Americans are stunned by the artistic feel, the vivid color and amazing shape of 'the disease'.”
-Anmarie McDonald, American Embassy Harare Zimbabwe 1998
invisible
visibility
This unique body of work visualized as PHSColograms brings together scientific research that explores biology, chemistry, computational physics, and viral data imagery, enabling scientists to view their work in three dimensional space that deepens their understanding of the phenomena they are investigating.
The emotional, scientific, and artistic success of our work in visualizing the AIDS virus inspired us to continue working in this direction with scientists who had their own 3D data. When they saw our PHSCologram of the AIDS virus, they understood and appreciated how PHSColograms could help further their own research. This was a watershed, Renaissance moment that led to important collaborations with the Scripps Research Institute, NASA, major universities, and distinguished institutions. Some of the data the scientists had access to included X-Ray Crystallography, MRI, Mammogram, CT, PET, and other imaging techniques. Once we create the 3D rendered data in-house, like the AIDS virus, or receive multiple rendered views from scientists, we then translate the rendered images into our PHSCologram medium at (art)n.
Many of these works have been featured in gallery and museum exhibitions including the International Center of Photography, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Keck Center Gallery, National Academies, Washington D.C. Selected works were also commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, National Institutes of Health, and Scripps Research Institute.
"You could view the image of the herbicide molecule or the representation of a woman with a brain tumor as symbols of an infernal aspect of modernity. Or the computer itself, as a pervasive sociological shaper of consciousness, might be addressed from a paranoid perspective. A mystical approach might lead to a vision of molecular and mathematical configurations as Platonic archetypes."
–Ken Johnson
Art in America, May 1991