Speaker: Garrison, Laura Ann (University of Bergen)
Abstract: Anatomy has become mainstream. Visuals of human internal structures like the heart, brain, and bones can adorn today’s posters, t-shirts, and totes, ranging from highly abstracted to hyper-accurate styles. What’s wild is that much of society can recognize and read these structures without a second thought. In this talk, I will discuss the history of medical visualization, not as a long chain of increasing complexity and sophistication, but as data-driven views of the bodies that serve as conversational artifacts developed in a particular social, technical, and cultural environment. Reflecting on these various contexts is useful, even necessary, for us to recognize our own contemporary contingencies as both readers and creators of (medical) visualizations in the present and future.
Bio:
Laura Garrison is an Associate Professor of Visualization in the Institute for Informatics at the University of Bergen and affiliated with the Mohn Medical Imaging and Visualization Centre (MMIV) and the Centre for Data Science (CEDAS) in Bergen, Norway. Her research investigates the processes and assumptions designers and developers make when crafting visualizations of complex data, and their impact on audience engagement and behavior.
She received her PhD in Visualization from the University of Bergen for her work on multiscale visualization of human physiology. She was awarded the Dirk Bartz Prize for Visual Computing in Medicine in 2023 and the Karl-Heinz Höhne (MedVis) Award in 2021. Prior to her PhD, she worked as an artist and content director in medical education technology start-ups in Chicago, Silicon Valley, and New York City.