Gisborne hospital’s echocardiography machine might not be art as we know it, but it lights up exactly the same parts of the mind regular art reaches.
The Echo uses ultrasound to lay bare in real-time, colour and 3D, a patient’s beating heart. Suspended in a fan-shaped ray of sonar, the solid form of the pulsing organ coalesces into a surprisingly clear form. The image can be rotated. Parts can be sectioned off as a cube. The cube can be turned this way and that. As if on a virtual Fantastic Voyage, in which a miniaturised medical team and submarine are injected into a scientist’s bloodstream you can travel through the heart’s walls, chambers and pipes.
