Nick Veasey: Exposing the invisible

57,179 views ・ 2010-01-05

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
So, 120 years ago,
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Dr. Röntgen X-rayed his wife's hand.
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Quite why he had to pin her fingers to the floor
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with her brooch, I'm not sure. It seems a bit extreme to me.
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That image was the start of the X-ray technology.
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And I'm still fundamentally using the same principles today.
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I'm interpreting it in a more contemporary manner.
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The first shot I ever did
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was of a soda can, which was to promote a brand that we all know,
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so I'm not going to do them any favors by showing you it.
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But the second shot I did was my shoes I was wearing on the day.
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And I do really like this shot, because
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it shows all the detritus that's sort of embedded
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in the sole of the sneakers.
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It was just one of those pot-luck things where you
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get it right first time.
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Moving on to something a bit larger,
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this is an X-ray of a bus.
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And the bus is full of people.
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It's actually the same person. It's just one skeleton.
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And back in the '60s,
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they used to teach student radiographers
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to take X-rays, thankfully not on you and I,
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but on dead people.
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01:15
So, I've still got access to one of these dead people
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called Frieda; she's falling apart, I'm afraid,
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because she's very old and fragile.
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But everyone on that bus is Frieda.
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And the bus is taken with a cargo-scanning X-ray,
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which is the sort of machine you have on borders,
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which checks for contraband and drugs and bombs and things.
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Fairly obvious what that is.
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So, using large-scale objects
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does sort of create drama
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because you just don't see X-rays of big things that often.
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Technology is moving ahead,
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and these large cargo scanner X-rays
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that work with the digital system are getting better and better and better.
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Again though, to make it come alive
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you need, somehow, to add the human element.
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And I think the reason this image works, again, is because
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Frieda is driving the bulldozer.
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(Laughter)
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Quite a difficult brief,
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make a pair of men's pants look beautiful.
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But I think the process, in itself, shows how exquisite they are.
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Fashion -- now, I'm sort of anti-fashion because I
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don't show the surface, I show what's within.
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So, the fashionistas don't really like me
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because it doesn't matter if Kate Moss is wearing it or if I'm wearing it,
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it looks the same.
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(Laughter)
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We all look the same inside, believe me.
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The creases in the material and the sort of nuances.
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And I show things for really what they are, what they're made of.
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I peel back the layers and expose it.
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And if it's well made I show it, if it's badly made I show it.
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And I'm sure Ross can associate that with design.
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The design comes from within.
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It's not just Topshop,
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I get some strange looks when I go out getting my props.
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Here I was fumbling around in the ladies' underwear department
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of a department store, almost got escorted from the premises.
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I live opposite a farm. And this was the runt of the litter, a piglet that died.
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And what's really interesting is,
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if you look at the legs, you'll notice that the bones haven't fused.
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And should that pig have grown,
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unfortunately it was dead, it would have certainly been dead
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after I X-rayed it, with the amount of radiation I used anyway.
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(Laughter)
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But once the bones had fused together
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it would have been healthy.
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So, that's an empty parka jacket.
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But I quite love the way it's posed.
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Nature is my greatest inspiration.
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And to carry on with a theme that we've already touched with
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is how nature is related to architecture.
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If you look at the roof of the Eden Project,
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or the British library, it's all this honeycomb structure.
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And I'm sure those architects are inspired,
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as I am, by what surrounds us, by nature.
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This, in fact, is a Victoria water lily leaf
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that floats on the top of a pond.
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An amaryllis flower looking really three-dimensional.
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Seaweed, ebbing in the tide.
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Now, how do I do this, and where do I do this, and all of that sort of thing.
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This is my new, purpose-built, X-ray shed.
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And the door to my X-ray room
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is made of lead and steel.
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It weighs 1,250 kilograms and the only exercise I get is opening and closing it.
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(Laughter)
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The walls are 700 millimeters thick of solid dense concrete.
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So, I'm using quite a lot of radiation.
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A lot more than you'd get in a hospital or a vet's.
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And there I am. This is a quite high-powered X-ray machine.
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What's interesting really about X-ray really
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is, if you think about it, is that that technology
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is used for looking for cancer or looking for drugs,
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or looking for contraband or whatever.
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And I use that sort of technology
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to create things that are quite beautiful.
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So, still working with film, I'm afraid.
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Technology in X-ray where it's life-size processed,
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apart from these large cargo-scanning machines,
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hasn't moved on enough for the quality of the image
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and the resolution to be good enough for what I want to do with it,
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which is show my pictures big.
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So, I have to use a 1980s drum scanner,
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which was designed in the days when everyone shot photographs on film.
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They scan each individual X-ray.
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And this shows how I do my process of same-size X-rays.
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So, this is, again, my daughter's dress.
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Still has the tag in it from me buying it,
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so I can take it back to the shop if she didn't like it.
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But there are four X-ray plates.
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You can see them overlapping.
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So, when you move forward from something fairly small,
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a dress which is this size,
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onto something like that which is done in exactly the same process,
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you can see that that is a lot of work.
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In fact, that is three months solid X-raying.
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There is over 500 separate components.
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Boeing sent me a 747 in containers.
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And I sent them back an X-ray.
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(Laughter) I kid you not.
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Okay, so Frieda is my dead skeleton.
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This, unfortunately, is basically two pictures.
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One on the extreme right is a photograph of an American footballer.
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The one on the left is an x-ray.
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But this time I had to use a real body.
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Because I needed all the skin tissue to make it look real,
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to make it look like it was a real athlete.
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So, here I had to use a recently deceased body.
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And getting a hold of that was extremely difficult and laborious.
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But people do donate their bodies to art and science.
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And when they do, I'm in the queue.
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So, I like to use them.
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(Laughter)
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The coloring, so coloring adds another level to the X-rays.
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It makes it more organic, more natural.
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It's whatever takes my fancy, really.
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It's not accurately colored to how it is in real life.
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That flower doesn't come in bright orange, I don't think.
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But I just like it in bright orange.
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And also with something technical, like these are DJ decks,
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it sort of adds another level.
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It makes a two dimensional image look more three dimensional.
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The most difficult things to X-ray,
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the most technically challenging things to X-ray
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are the lightest things, the most delicate things.
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To get the detail in a feather,
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believe me, if there is anyone out here who knows anything about X-rays,
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that's quite a challenge.
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I'm now going to show you a short film, I'll step to the side.
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Video: (Music)
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The thing in there is very dangerous.
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If you touch that, you could possibly die
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through radiation poisoning.
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In my career I've had two exposures to radiation,
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which is two too many, because it stays with you for life.
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It's cumulative.
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(Music)
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It has human connotations.
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The fact that it's a child's toy that we all recognize,
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but also it looks like it's a robot,
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and it comes from a sci-fi genus.
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It's a surprise that it has humanity,
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but also man-made, future, alien associations.
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And it's just a bit spooky.
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(Music)
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The bus was done with a cargo-scanning X-ray machine,
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which is used on the borders
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between countries, looking for contraband and illegal immigrants.
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The lorry goes in front of it. And it takes slices
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of X-rays through the lorry.
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And that's how this was done. It's actually slice, slice.
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It's a bit like a CT scanner in a hospital. Slices.
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And then if you look carefully, there is all little things.
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He's got headphones on, reading the newspaper,
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got a hat on, glasses, got a bag.
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So, these little details
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help to make it work, make it real.
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(Music)
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The problem with using living people is that
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to take an X-ray, if I X-ray you, you get exposed to radiation.
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So, to avoid that --
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I have to avoid it somehow --
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is I use dead people.
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Now, that's a variety of things, from recently deceased bodies,
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to a skeleton that was used by student radiographers
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to train in taking X-rays of the human body,
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at different densities.
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(Music)
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I have very high-tech equipment of gloves, scissors and a bucket.
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(Music)
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I will show how the capillary action works, how it feeds,
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I'll be able to get all the cells inside that stem.
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Because it transfers food from its roots to its leaves.
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Look at this monster.
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(Music)
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It's so basic. It just grows wild.
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That's what I really like about it,
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the fact that I haven't got to go and buy it,
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and it hasn't been genetically modified at all.
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It's just happening.
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And the X-ray shows how beautiful nature can be.
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Not that that is particularly beautiful
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when you look at it with the human eye,
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the way the leaves form. They're curling back on each other.
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So the X-ray will show the overlaps in these little corners.
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The thicker the object, the more radiation it needs,
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and the more time it needs.
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The lighter the object, the less radiation.
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Sometimes you keep the time up, because the time gives you detail.
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The longer the exposure goes on for,
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the more detail you get.
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(Music)
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If you look at this, just the tube,
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it is quite bright.
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But I could get a bit darker in the tube, but everything else would suffer.
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So, these leaves at the edge would start to disappear.
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What I like is how hard the edges are,
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how sharp.
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Yeah, I'm quite pleased with it.
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(Music)
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I travel beyond the surface and show
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something for what it's worth,
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for what it's really made of, how it really works.
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But also I find that
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I've got the benefit of taking away all the surface,
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which is things that people are used to seeing.
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And that's the sort of thing I've been doing.
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I've got the opportunity now to show you
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what I'm going to be doing in the future.
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This is a commercial application of my most recent work.
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And what's good about this, I think, is that it's like a moment in time,
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like you've turned around, you've got X-ray vision
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and you've taken a picture with the X-ray camera.
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Unfortunately I haven't got X-ray vision.
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I do dream in X-ray. I see my projects in my sleep.
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And I know what they're going to look like in X-ray and I'm not far off.
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So, what am I doing in the future?
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Well, this year is the 50th anniversary
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of Issigonis's Mini, which is one of my favorite cars.
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So, I've taken it apart, component by component,
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months and months and months of work.
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And with this image, I'm going to be displaying
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it in the Victoria and Albert Museum
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as a light box, which is actually attached to the car.
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So, I've got to saw the car in half, down the middle,
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not an easy task, in itself.
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And then, so you can get in the driver's side, sit down,
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and up against you is a wall.
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And if you get out and walk around to the other side of the car,
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you see a life-sized light box of the car showing you how it works.
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And I'm going to take that idea
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and apply it to other sort of iconic things from my life.
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Like, my first computer was a big movement in my life.
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And I had a Mac Classic. And it's a little box.
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And I think that would look quite neat as an X-ray.
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I'm also looking to
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take my work from the two-dimensional form
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to a more three-dimensional form.
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And this is quite a good way of doing it.
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I'm also working now with X-ray video.
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So, if you can imagine, some of these flowers,
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and they're actually moving and growing
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and you can film that in X-ray, should be quite stunning.
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But that's it. I'm done. Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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