http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/05/14/the-visual-bias-of-the-word-display/ Medical Museion Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:58:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/05/14/the-visual-bias-of-the-word-display/comment-page-1/#comment-246125 Jan Eric Mon, 14 May 2007 12:15:22 +0000 http://www.corporeality.net/museion/2007/05/14/the-visual-bias-of-the-word-display/#comment-246125 yes the visual certainly overshadows the other dimensions of materiality in medical history and Western culture at large. I noticed that I didn't quite manage to convey the meaning of haptic perception to the auditory in Gothenburg last Friday. Partly because I wasn't explicit enough, partly because the slides I showed depicted images, instruments for visualization, visual representations, cross-sections of the retina etc. Hence, my choice of display, obscured what I was trying to get through, that the concept of haptic perception is currently being deployed by film scholars, art historians and media theorists, in order to include our other sensual modes to the study of images and make visual culture a less monosensual business. Okej, I admit that this approach, however admirable, is still confined within the sovereignity of the visual. In this respect, the other senses do pose a challenge to medical museums. Above all the senses of taste and smell. Imagine an exhibition hall, void except for a range of small bottles, or flacons, which contain the olfactory world of contemporary biomedicine; the smell of labs and clinics, the perfume of protein-research, the scent of biobanks, the odor of human waste. Here's some inspiration from Andrew Johnston's reseach team in East Anglia. http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/bio/news/Cloning+the+smell+of+the+seaside yes the visual certainly overshadows the other dimensions of materiality in medical history and Western culture at large. I noticed that I didn’t quite manage to convey the meaning of haptic perception to the auditory in Gothenburg last Friday. Partly because I wasn’t explicit enough, partly because the slides I showed depicted images, instruments for visualization, visual representations, cross-sections of the retina etc. Hence, my choice of display, obscured what I was trying to get through, that the concept of haptic perception is currently being deployed by film scholars, art historians and media theorists, in order to include our other sensual modes to the study of images and make visual culture a less monosensual business. Okej, I admit that this approach, however admirable, is still confined within the sovereignity of the visual. In this respect, the other senses do pose a challenge to medical museums. Above all the senses of taste and smell. Imagine an exhibition hall, void except for a range of small bottles, or flacons, which contain the olfactory world of contemporary biomedicine; the smell of labs and clinics, the perfume of protein-research, the scent of biobanks, the odor of human waste. Here’s some inspiration from Andrew Johnston’s reseach team in East Anglia. http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/bio/news/Cloning+the+smell+of+the+seaside

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