What does it mean to see the heart? In medical imaging, the heart — at once tangible organ and enduring metaphor — becomes data, compressed into signal and rendered into image readable only by expert eyes. The short film Visio Cordis takes this transformation as both subject and method, asking what is lost or obscured when intimate biological experience passes through the lens of technology, and what a poetic intervention reveals about who sees, who feels, and how. This keynote presentation includes a screening of the 20-minute experimental film followed by an artist's talk and Q&A.

This lecture will take place in Tuttle Lecture Hall (Room 134) in the Princeton University Art Museum.

Bio

Sophie Hamacher is an artist, teacher, and curator whose multidisciplinary work spans film, printmaking, ceramics, and text. Her work investigates media histories, surveillance, and medical imaging and moves between independent studio practice and collaborative projects with artists, scientists, and scholars. She is the editor of Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance (MIT Press, 2023), a wide-ranging anthology of art and writing that examines the impact of surveillance on contemporary motherhood.