Echo

Echo (2000) was a multi-media video artwork projected simultaneously by satellite downlink at The International Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne and The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow.

From Locus+ publicity to accompany the screening:

Echo is a large scale multi-media artwork in which artist Wendy Kirkup has created a technological ‘body atlas’ of herself by using advanced Siemens Ultrasound techniques. The resultant 22 minute video. consisting of an abstract journey mapping internal body tissues and organs, will be broadcast to two different geographical sites simultaneously using satellite technology: the Hunterian Museum and the International Centre for Life. the massive projected images will be accompanied by an additional audio track, recorded using Doppler Ultrasound, of amplified recordings of the ‘echo’ of the artist’s blood circulating through her system.

Echo was created specially for the two sites. The Hunterian Museum holds in its special collection examples of body atlases dating back to the High Renaissance, most specifically the drawings and copper plates of the Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus commissioned by William Hunter in the 1700s, a series considered to be some of the most influential illustrations for the understanding of the anatomy of female reproductive organs for which contemporary ultrasound technology is now used. The International Centre for Life is a key Millennium Project building that opened in 2000, combining an innovative Life Interactive World Visitor Attraction for the public, alongside the Institute of Human Genetics and the Bioscience Centre, bringing together science and biotechnology, research and education, entertainment and ethics on one site.

Screenings:

2000
Echo, The International Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne and The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow.
2001
Live Art at Site Gallery, Sheffield. Curated by Michelle Hirschhorn.
2013
Biomediations Festival of Electronic Arts and Video, Tranistio__MX05, Mexico, Invited Curator Sarah Cook.