Further down the rabbit hole
Group project by Alaina Nugnis & Lina Wolff
SoSe 2025
This installation explores the gender data gap in medical care, where bodies outside the male norm are often overlooked. What fills the uncertainty of leaving an unbearable scar? Microscopic forms embedded in glass serve as a metaphor for the structures that surround us but remain unseen. Recordings of microscopic examinations, showing sexualised objects, are intended to evoke discomfort. The projection onto a circular surface references the microscope as a tool for (in)visibility. Separated audio and video reflect the isolation of clinical settings, raising the question: whose bodies are being seen and whose are overlooked?
Multimedia Instellation
Video+Audio
Duration: 10 min
Beamer projection on wall
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Process Documentation
BACKROUND INFORMATION
This work is based on a previous semester project witch explores how the lack of female representation in research and clinical trials has led to disproportionate adverse drug reactions in women. These effects are the result of healthcare systems historically designed around male bodies, often treating them as the default in diagnostics, treatment, and pharmaceutical development, showing that care systems are taking better care of male bodies then of any others.The unequal treatment gets visible through gaps, most common known as the gender data gap.
1- IDEA FINDING
We knew from the beginning that the focus would be to create something physical, to include all senses. I really wanted to use the glass which we found in Room 204. Not just to explore new materials, but because it visualizes the gender health gap perfectly. It is physically visible, see through so you know what to expect on the other side, even though you are not able to enter.
The first idea was to let an ultrasound device hallucinate. Closing the gap between reality and utopian imaginations on how a world without health gaps could look like and trying to fill these using AI generated images. AI s function by analyzing visual input through multiple neural network layers. With each layer, specific features are exaggerated, leading to a progressively surreal image. When the algorithm encounters ambiguity, it begins to “hallucinate”, projecting its own learned patterns onto the input. We wanted to critically examine how both care systems and AI technologies are structured around existing assumptions.
After brainstorming the prototyping started.
Experiments with glass
After making some try outs with the glass it was clear to say that the material itself already transports a lot of information.
Along the way we started exploring the microscope in the class Micro- and macro worlds, supervised by Alexander König and Alessandro Volpato. To understand how the glass functions we created collages out of multiple pictures taken with the microscope and printed them onto overhead foil and while the paint was still wet pressed it on to the glass which created abstract patterns.
