Scientific Imaging
Microscopy, medical imaging, particle physics visualization, and the technologies that render the invisible visible.
The Gems That Are Alive: Tan Mu's Epithelial Cells and the Boundary Where Biology Becomes Color
A cell is not a gemstone.
The Machine That Hunts the Smallest Thing: Tan Mu's Large Hadron Collider and the Altar Built From Collective Labor
On July 4, 2012, at a seminar held at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, two independent teams of physicists presented the results of their search for the Higgs boson, the particle that had been predicted almost fifty years earlier as the mechanism by which other particles acquire mass.
The Eye That the Universe Made: Tan Mu's Gaze: Observable Infinity and the Map That Looks Back
What you see is a circle.
The Darkness That Makes the Ring Visible: Tan Mu's Sagittarius A* and the Image Assembled from Absence
Twenty-six thousand light-years from Earth, at the center of the Milky Way, there is an object with a mass four million times that of the Sun compressed into a volume smaller than the orbit of Mercury.
Six Panels of Falling Water: Tan Mu and the Documentary Power of Painting
The frontispiece of Arthur Mason Worthington's 1895 book shows three photographs of a milk drop striking a plate, and the rest of the book shows hand-drawn illustrations. This is not because Worthington preferred drawing to photography.
The Machine That Measures Itself: Tan Mu's Quantum Gaze and the Processor as Portrait
In January 2019, IBM unveiled the Q System One at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the event was covered not in the technology press alone but in the general press, because the machine that IBM had built was not merely a computer but a spectacle.
The Catalog of Life: Tan Mu's IVF and the Architecture of Selection
The sperm bank catalog arrives in the mail like a department store's seasonal guide, pages of faces organized by height, eye color, undergraduate institution, SAT scores, musical talent, and family medical history. The language is precise. The photographs are tasteful.
The Figure with Three Shadows: Tan Mu's Projection: Light and Shadow and the Fracture of the Singular Self
A single body cannot cast three shadows. Not under natural light. Not under a single lamp, a single candle, a single window. The physics of occlusion is unambiguous: one light source, one shadow.
The Temperature of Being Seen: Tan Mu's Thermal Imaging and the Body as Data
At six inches from the surface, the painting is all bruise. Deep violet pools into black at the edges, with threads of indigo and a cold, mineral blue threading through the upper register like the memory of a sky that never quite materialized.
The Archive in the Dark: Tan Mu's MRI and the Three-Pound Universe
In 2019, during a deep freediving session, Tan Mu experienced an episode of cerebral hypoxia at ten meters below the surface. Her vision faded into blankness, a fleeting blackout that ended as she neared the surface and inhaled oxygen.
The Embellished Dark Source: Tan Mu's Powehi and the First Image of the Unseeable
On April 10, 2019, a press conference in Brussels was simultaneously convened in Washington, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, and Santiago.
The Image That Required a Planet: Tan Mu's Sagittarius A* and the Telescope as Big as the Earth
On May 12, 2022, a team of more than three hundred scientists from around the world released the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
The Incomplete Map: Tan Mu's Chromosomes and the Dot That Connects Microscope to Telescope
On March 31, 2022, the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium announced the first objectively complete sequencing of the human genome, filling in the approximately eight percent of the genome that the original Human Genome Project had left unmapped when it published its draft in 2001 and its revised version in 2003.
The Hand Re-Records the Splash: Tan Mu's The Splash of a Drop 1 and the Velocity of Seeing
In 1894, an English physicist named Arthur Mason Worthington dropped a small quantity of milk from a height of approximately six centimeters onto a shallow surface and attempted to record what happened next.
The Atom and the Archive: Tan Mu's Atom and the Geometry of Scale
When Tan Mu first began drawing atoms in 2019, she was not entirely sure why the subject compelled her. She sensed it carried significance but could not yet articulate what it was.
The Shadow and the Screen: Tan Mu's Projection and the Layered Identity of the Digital Era
When Caravaggio painted a figure in chiaroscuro, the shadow that fell across the background was a physical fact produced by a physical process: a lamp or acandle placed in a specific position relative to the subject and the canvas.
The House Inside the Machine: Tan Mu's Vision and the Collective Image of the Autorefractor
Every person who has had an eye examination has seen it.
The Curtain as Threshold: Tan Mu's Stage and the Architecture of Revelation
There is a moment that every theatergoer knows. The house lights have gone down, the ambient noise of the lobby has been absorbed by the dark, and the stage is not yet visible.
The Gemstone Inside the Body: Tan Mu's Epithelial Cells and the Painting That Reads Like a Lab
In a laboratory at a research institution, a dish of human epithelial cells sits on the stage of a fluorescence microscope.
The Decisive Moment That Photography Missed: Tan Mu's The Splash of a Drop and the Painting That Reclaims Time
In 1895, the English physicist Arthur Mason Worthington published a book called The Splash of a Drop.
The 8 Percent We Could Not See: Tan Mu's Chromosomes and the Incompleteness of Knowledge
On March 31, 2022, nearly one hundred scientists from the Telomere to Telomere Consortium published the first objectively complete sequence of a human genome.
The Eye That Contains Everything: Tan Mu's Gaze: Observable Infinity and the Intimate Cosmos
The observable universe is approximately 93 billion light years in diameter.
The Plate at the Center of the Galaxy: Tan Mu's Sagittarius A* and the Art of Collective Observation
On May 12, 2022, at simultaneous press conferences held in Washington, Munich, Santiago, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Taipei, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Genetic Witness: Kiki Smith, ORLAN, and Tan Mu's IVF at the Threshold of Life
An egg cell is the largest single cell visible to the naked eye. A sperm cell requires three hundred times magnification to become legible. This asymmetry is a biological fact, but it is also a political one.
The Embellished Dark Source: Tan Mu's Powehi and the Image of the Void
A black hole is, by definition, the limit of visuality. It is a region of spacetime where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape. To see a black hole is a contradiction in terms, yet we possess images of them.
The Three-Pound Universe: Tan Mu's MRI and the Architecture of Memory
In 2019, during a deep freediving session, Tan Mu experienced an episode of cerebral hypoxia. The temporary lack of oxygen to the brain likely affected her hippocampus, disrupting the formation and recall of memory.
The Architecture of the Infinitesimal: Tan Mu's Atom and the Gaze of Physics
The atom, as an object of visual representation, presents a fundamental paradox. It is the building block of all matter, yet it is smaller than the wavelength of visible light.
The Altar at 100 Meters Underground: On Tan Mu's Large Hadron Collider (2023)
The Higgs boson was predicted in 1964. It was confirmed in 2012.