TED talk: Conception to birth - visualised

Using art and technology, Alexander Tsiaras visualizes the unseen human body.

Human beings: we are approximately 100 trillion cells, and yet so much more. In his talk “Conception to birth — visualized,” Alexander Tsiaras shows the incredible journey we all take from a single cell to a crying baby born into the world.

Even though I am a mathematician, I look at [fetal development] with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us?

[video type="youtube" clip_id="fKyljukBE70"]

In a video that makes use of micromagnetic resonance imaging, Tsiaras shows the stunning pace of development leading up to the moment of birth. As Tsiaras says, it’s the “unbelievable machinery that will become the magic of you.”

Alexander Tsiaras

Alexander Tsiaras is an artist and technologist whose work explores the unseen human body, developing scientific visualization software to enable him to "paint" the human anatomy using volume data. He's the author of Body Voyage and co-author ofInformation Architects. Most recently, he is the author of From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds and The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman: The Marvel of the Human Body, Revealed.