Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

After looking into all of these invigorating projects, my eyes were truly opened to a new perspective on the intersection of medicine and art. I was surprised to learn that the Renaissance was one of the original origins of when art and science really started to come together (Vesna Part 1 3:02-3:57). I was particularly interested in how dissection was one of the original intersections of art and science was dissection (Vesna Part 1 0:05-0:29), which I originally thought was just for scientific purposes and exploration but never seen as a little bit of both. On a similar note, I also thought MRI images were purely for explorative and medical purposes, while Casini describes them as “devices capable of enacting a process of identity-construction and mirror-ing” (99). This opened my eyes to see how medical imagery is considered an art form and can be looked at this way instead of just for medicine. 

 I was familiar with the concept of artists using the human body as inspiration. Even then, it was surprising to see that some artists take inspiration from even more elemental building blocks like the cell, where "The geodesic structure found within the cytoskeleton is a classic example of a pattern that is found everywhere in nature, at many different size scales" (Ingber 49). This is reminscient of the math + art unit, where the natural items presented from humans are so clearly intentional and intricite and such an inspiration for art forms. I also found it powerful that art and medicine have manifested from dissections to performative plastic surgery for survivors and prosthetics for former soldiers (Vesna Part 2 4:01-4:53). This reminded me of an artist who makes prothetics not only practical but creative and aesthetic, bringing a new artistic expression to those who wear a prosthetic. 

   

 The notion of prosthetics also reminded me of DNA alteration research and the hyper-dystopian movie GATTACA where people are sorted based on their genetic advantages, and those who wish to live a high soceity life have to go to extreme measures to cover up their genetic footprint.

 

 These notions all connected to one of the final concepts where medicine technolgy and art were fully intertwined in intricate thought out pieces where the artist used their body as a medium. This was especially exemplified in Time Capsule and other following artists took the intersection of these three fields to new heights and created an entirely new genre of art.  

Eduardo Kac, "Time Capsule", 1997. 

Works Cited 

 Casini, Silvia. "Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts." 

Configurations, vol. 19, no. 1, 2011. Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science. 

 Videos and Images 

 “GATTACA [1997] - Official Trailer (HD) | Now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and Digital.” Youtube, uploaded by Sony Pictures Entertainment, 24 October 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIIZ2P-fiyI 

 Kac, Eduardo. "Time Capsule." 1997, www.ekac.org/timcap.html. Accessed 26 April 2017. 

 “The Woman Sculpting Aesthetic Prosthetics.” YouTube, uploaded by 60 Second Docs, 10 March 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtGbtNve72w