The Eyes Have It

While browsing the gallery of award winners, you can listen to commentary from the creator of each image describing how it came to be.

The winners of the Awards challenge the public perspective that scientists don’t have an artistic side. Working every day with microscopes and imaging technology, these biologists have been able to capture stunning images through a blend of original and innovative techniques.

Despite the obvious visual appeal of the pictures, their primary purpose is investigation. The images are from research projects with the ultimate goal of helping to improve healthcare through new forms of prevention, treatment and vaccination.

“An annual conference at which medical and health science educators and developers gather from around the world to explore and share the uses of multimedia and information technology in medical education. The focus is on cutting edge developments, implementation of courseware, eLearning, web enhanced curricula, wireless mobile computing, graphic design, animation and digital video. Curricular integration, sharing and evaluation are central themes.”

The 2005 conference was in June but there is a low-volume mailing list that distributes information about their activities and events that I joined. Maybe I can make next year. It looks like there were about ten sessions I would have liked to attend (”Virtual Reality and Anatomy Learning”, “Managing Your Digital Multimedia Assets: The HEALster Project”, “Story-Telling, Emotion, and Media in Technology-Based Medical Education”…). Of course, I would have had to have gone from the HeSCA meeting to InfoComm then straight to Slice of Life.

How the heck did I miss this? I stumbled across the site yesterday and it was, of course, too late for me to make plans to see it today. It would have been nice to see the old neighborhood. USP is right across the street from my first apartment. I’ll have to keep an eye on the Marvin Samson Center for the History of Pharmacy for future exhibits. It looks like it was a great show.

“University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (USP) is exhibiting a selection of original medical illustrations by Frank Netter, M.D. (1906-1991), a world-renowned anatomy artist who is regarded by many as the most accomplished and influential medical illustrator of the 20th century.

“The exhibition at USP consists of 47 unique gouache—watercolor—paintings from a corpus of more than 4,000 of Dr. Netter’s works that display various aspects of illness, trauma, anatomy, development, malformation, pathology, medical testing and diagnosis, and patient care. Many of his impressive illustrations, commissioned by Ciba-Geigy Corporation over several Woman with Dermatosisdecades, appeared in Clinical Symposia, a well-known quarterly clinical monograph used by primary care professionals as a teaching aid and reference. “

I’ll trade you a Cryptosporidiosis and a Cyclosporiasis for two Ecoli O157:H7 Infections.

The Center for Disease Control is offering 31 disease trading cards. The cards are very nicely designed and laid out. The images are compelling. The only thing I don’t like about them is that there is no way to download all the cards at once. Each individual card is in it’s own PDF file.

“Pictures have always played an important role in the scientific process, especially in the history of anatomy Whether woodcut, sketch, sculpture, X ray, or MRI, visual images have helped us observe describe, model, categorize, analyze, and conceptualize the human body. How has this imagery changed the ways we look al our bodies? The Exploratorium invites you to delve into this provocative question posed by Revealing Bodies, an exhibition from March 18 to September 4, 2000, made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts“

A collection of powerful images put together by altenative journalist Kirsten Anderberg, described as “a rabble rouser living in the Pacific Northwest.”

From the site’s intro:

“The following museum includes positive vulva imagery in art, jewelry, sculpture, graphic art, and more. Kirsten is continually saddened to see the widespread disrespect that is displayed towards women’s genitals in most cultures and is offering this website as an alternative for women and men alike, to expand past the corporate, political, and religious brainwashing to learn to love and be proud of the genitals we live with in our lives. Enjoy!”

The site warns that it’s intended for adults and it may be considered NSFW as well.

“NetAnatomy is designed to teach human anatomy to students of the health professions, including undergraduate medical, health sciences, and nursing students. NetAnatomy also serves as a place to review anatomy after one’s initial exposure to the subject, e.g. students beginning a clinical rotation, USMLE (National Board) preparation, etc.”

If you’re in the Philadelphia area in the next few weeks, it looks like the Dali exhibit isn’t the only reason to stop by the art museum. Through June 26th, there’s also Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books.

“This lively exhibition traces the history of the colorful purveyors of patent and quack medicines over the past four centuries. It contains seventy-five works ranging from humorous caricatures of itinerant quacks, flamboyant advertising posters, and promotional pamphlets for rival panaceas (each supported by extravagant claims of efficacy), to prints that document the first governmental attempts to curtail the more flagrant abuses.“

Some of us from work are going to be there on a “field trip” in early April. I’ll try to post a review if time allows.

“Police in London are trying a new shock tactic in the war on drugs. Images showing the decline of addicts will be shown on posters, bar mats and flyers. This first image shows Roseanne Holland at the age of 29 before her heroin habit took hold.”

“Q: Why a comic strip?

A: It was the right medium for the story I wanted to tell. Comic strips meld words and pictures to convey an idea with more economy and grace than either could alone. I was inspired to pursue the idea when I accompanied Mom to chemotherapy one day and did a quick sketch of her napping during the several-hour session. That sketch became ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black’ and encouraged me to give “Mom’s Cancer” a try.”

[via metafilter]

“Posters highlighted on this page were included in ‘HIV/AIDS in Africa’ exhibit at Northwestern University Library. They represent a small sample of posters concerning HIV/AIDS in Africa that are part of the collection at the Herskovits Library.“

“My current work plays on the sensuality and beauty which underlies sense and being itself. My work takes a literal look at the foundation of our physical existence. I create sculptures of proteins, the universal building blocks of life. … Creating organically shaped sculptures out of a large number of geometric pieces fascinates me, because the complexity of a living being is similarly made up of simple “inanimate” subunits. I want to follow science in its reductionist approach and present its isolated finds in an art context. Science needs to separate; it requires the scientist to detach himself from the observed object and separate the object into its parts in order to objectively analyze it. Art, on the other hand, requires the artist to become one with the object in order to transform it into an art object. Because of this, art has the unique power to heal what has been separated: The art object is an object that has been given life by the artist and the ability to live in the viewer. My protein sculptures offer an emotional experience of a world that is usually accessible only through our intellect.”

[via Btang Reblog]

“Virtopsy® was born from the desire to implement new techniques in radiology for the benefit of forensic science.”

From the Popular Science article “Why Give a Dead Man a Body Scan?“:

“It’s a criticism supported by the cacophony of the courtroom, where prosecutors and defense lawyers often present dueling pathologists, each reinterpreting autopsy reports to favor one side or the other. Complicating a jury’s difficulty in following such arguments are the typically gore-drenched autopsy photos that prompt many to turn away in horror. “We [in Switzerland] are not so used to shows like CSI,” Thali points out. “It can be a real problem.” In the future that Thali envisions, any pathologist taking the witness stand can bloodlessly redissect the victim in full view of the jury by calling forth the original data stored on the discs. “Graphic, yes. Gory, no,” he says.”

“Illustrations were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas and it was often the case that new developments in the sciences were accompanied by corresponding developments in illustrative techniques. These techniques are the subject of Seeing Is Believing, which complements an exhibition of the same name on view from October 23, 1999-February 19, 2000 at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library.“

Beauty rendered from deformity.

“Because I am an artist and tend to think in visual terms, I needed to be able to picture what my scoliotic spine looked like. As I began to learn about anatomy, I realized that the imagery was quite visually compelling, and could be interesting on many levels, from the literal to the metaphorical. I decided to undertake “an artistic inquiry into scoliosis.” I would use my artist’s duality: living through the experience and at the same time observing it and turning it into art. Scoliosis is a flawed model of the beautifully designed human musculoskeletal system, but I wanted to portray it as having its own more complex beauty, one that viewed deformity as differentness, and differentness as individuality.”

50 of these multi-layered paintings based on medical images of the artist’s own skeleton are currently being exhibited at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

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