Ontology of an Image

Abstract

Life begins with cells. That is the first chapter of every book on biology. Life is cells. Life has no existence before the cell. That is to say, it goes something like this: “Cells are basic units of structure and function for all living organisms and the structural order in cells forms the basis for properties of life including interaction with environment, movement, energy processing, growth, reproduction and evolution.” The cell appeared as image, as diagram, until it became represented in some more technological manner, which is, not to say photographed, strictly, but digitally apprehended. Recently, I have seen a human cell and its contents shimmering in purple, pink, green and yellow, and blue. What I have seen is “an image of a cell” made by a biomedical animator, Evan Ingersoll, in association with biological chemist, scientific visualization researcher and artist, Gael McGill. Its lateral view shows the internal segments of a cell: perceptible are the cell wall, Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, and hundreds of protein structures and membrane-bound organelles. It is a Eukaryotic cell, which is found in humans, animals, fungi, and plants. The rendering of the cell—which can be clicked on, enlarged, manipulated, its aspects highlighted, its pathways and movements delineated—is an effort to recapitulate the myriad pathways that are mobilised in signal transduction, protein synthesis, endocytosis, vesicular transport, cell-cell adhesion, apoptosis, and other such biological processes. If we engage with this image, we can see ourselves at work, or perceive work and process underway inside ourselves in our smallest parts, the minimum point of life—or, if the cell is not us, and this one is not, of course, directly, then what we see is something that has not been seen before, in all its intricacy, and we should feel some intimate relation to it, if only because it has made so much effort to please us. Do we see the cell? Do we see something that is like the cell? Is the cell an image? Or do we see instead a diagram come to some sort of life, a model painted, dressed in some way? Is this what is presented to us: something known in itself that has been converted into something to be known by us? There is no cell that has these colours in this way. These wild colours, these sparkling effects. Like blossoms and golden ONTOLOGY OF AN IMAGE