Week 4: MedTech + Art

The most obvious evidence of art in the medical world comes in the form of anatomy, where artists and medical professionals have worked rigorously on correctly identifying the internal structure and makeup within different species.  This overall structure includes muscles, bones, organs, and ligaments.  While doctors have performed the experiments required to correctly identify the overall structure of bodies, artists are required to actually realistically and accurately represent what doctors have proven from experiment.  One example of such artistic reconstruction can be seen at the Bodies Exhibit, which displays 13 whole body human specimens at the Luxor in Las Vegas (Luxor.com).
 
Bodies Exhibit

The advent of computational technological advancement has allowed for further reconstruction and imaging of internal body structure.  Some examples of such imaging includes X-Rays, MRIs, and CAT scans.  I, personally, have undergone dozens of X-Rays and MRIs during my lifetime, and have been fortunate enough to look at and obtain copies of many of the images.  X-Rays work by utilizing electromagnetic waves to detect the bone structure of a species, with bones showing up as white and other bodily organs appearing black (MedlinePlus.gov).  MRI scans work similarly by using magnetic and radio waves to detect internal organs and tissues and create computerized images that display these organs/tissues (Tidy).
 
X-Ray

Recently, art and medicine have further evolved to include plastic surgery and the insertion of computer chips within the human body.  One such example of the concept of plastic surgery as art came up in this week’s lecture, and that is the example of ORLAN. ORLAN is a French artist that uses herself as the artistic medium.  She has redefined her facial structure so that it aligns with popular figures from historical art.  For example, her forehead is designed after da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and her chin is designed to depict Botticelli’s Venus (ORLAN.edu).
 
ORLAN

Kevin Warwick has been a pioneer in the field of neuro-surgical implantations, as he has inserted an implant into his left arm in order to link his nervous system to a computer in an attempt to assist the disabled (Warwick).  While experiments into this field are fairly recent, they do give an idea of how art and technology can help shape the field of medicine in the years to come; as well as an idea of how far art and medicine have come since the early days of anatomy, to X-Rays and plastic surgery, and finally to computerized implants.


References:
“Biography.” ORLAN, 2017, www.orlan.eu/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

“Bodies... The Exhibition.” Luxor, 2017,
www.luxor.com/en/entertainment/bodies-the-exhibition.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Tidy, Colin. “MRI Scan.” Patient, 23 Oct. 2015, patient.info/health/mri-scan. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Warwick, Kevin. “Kevin Warwick.” Kevin Warwick, Coventry University, 2017, www.kevinwarwick.org/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

“X-Rays.” MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 4 Mar. 2016, medlineplus.gov/xrays.html. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6: BioTech + Art

Image
This week’s topic, biotechnology and art, involves more recent and controversial art, as living organisms are used as an artistic medium.  I found one of the more fascinating works of art discussed this week to be that of Stelarc, the man with a “third ear” implanted into his arm.  While the implanted ear was made of material commonly used in plastic surgery, his own tissue has morphed with the ear so that it is now a fully living part of his body (McCafferty).  In the future, Stelarc wishes to have a small microphone inserted into his “third ear” so that the entire world can listen in, with this worldwide connection being the artistic value that Stelarc sees in his implanted “masterpiece” (DailyMail.co.uk). Stelarc's Third Ear The more controversial side of BioArt comes in the genetic modification of living species, such as Kathy High’s work with transgenic mice.  High was able to genetically modify certain mice by including foreign genetic material and watch the geneti
Read more

Week 8: Nanotechnology + Art

Image
Newman's Microscopic Text This week’s lectures and readings focused on the history of nanotechnology and its recently increasing applications.  One of the more fascinating things that I thought we covered in the lectures was the two competitions offered by Richard Feynman for the advancement of nanotechnology in 1959.  The first was to build a miniature motor that could fit inside of a 1/64 inch cube and the second was to reduce the size of a page of a book to a 1/25,000 linear scale (CalTech.edu).  The first cash prize of $1,000 was awarded relatively quickly to William McLellan in 1960, while the second prize took 25 years until Tom Newman completed the task using an electron beam in 1985 (Kornei).  Such advancements in nanotechnology have obvious application in the artistic and literary world, with new art being created out of nanostructures. I also found the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in the 1980s to be particularly interesting within the field of n
Read more

Week 3: Robotics + Art

Image
Since the dawn of industrialization, what we perceive as art has changed dramatically, thanks ultimately to mechanization.  The explosion of personal computers and Moore’s Law in the latter half of the 20 th century further drove mechanization and computation to set the stage for a new type of masterpiece: robotics (Intel.com). Vitruvian Man What was once reserved for sculptures and paintings, humanoids became a new focus of idealized beauty.  During the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci focused on this idealized, perfect human form, as seen in his Vitruvian Man; but recently, humanoid designers have taken up this focus on realistic human idealization (Stanford.edu).  Dr. Dennis Hong, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA, has succeeded in this blending of art and science into CHARLI, “the United States’ first full-size autonomous human robot” (Hong).  CHARLI is able to walk in any direction, as well as kick, and perform several upper body t
Read more