Medica 2007: Food for thought about how to display recent biomedical objects
I spent a few days last week trying to keep my head above water at the 39th Medica Fair held at the Düsseldorf Messe Centre. With more than 4300 companies exhibiting their products to around 137000 visitors, Medica is the world’s largest medical fair and allows close inspection of (literally) everything from hospital ventilation systems over chemical analyzers to band aids.
The purpose of my visit was two-fold. First, how do medicotechnical companies display their products, set up exhibits, and breathe attractiveness into instruments, software, and utensils that they wish to sell; second, how, in terms of design and marketing, do exhibitors differentiate their particular products from those of compeeting companies. To my defense, it should be noted that I actually tried to pursue these two goals with some degree of perseverance. But to be honest, a lot of the time I was simply drawn in by the magnitude of the event, the endless number of objects on display, and the range of different products that somehow come together under the heading of modern medicine.
Still, I did find it quite rewarding to wander around the booths and look at the ways in which companies present their products. Clearly, materiality is at the forefront of this way of engaging with biomedicine. Often, objects line the perimiter of the booth (check out the line of heavy artillery in the picture below) and must be negotiated before you encounter softer materials, such as flyers, information, and sales persons.
Of course, this setup is not intended to fight off potential customers. Rather, it emphasizes the invitation put forward in most booths to interact with the product, to touch, handle, and inspect objects and only then move to the level of meaning, interpretation, and negotiation. The booth below will let you perform laparascopic surgery on a capsicum, and then sit you down and talk about the experience if you like;
and this one lets you try out electrosurgery on a piece of bacon:
Anyway, there is a lot more to be said about the exhibition strategies displayed at Medica and of the thoughts it provoked in me about what the recent biomedical heritage actually is, and I will post some more digested impressions shortly.
20 Nov 2007 Søren
Great stuff — including the ‘heavy artillery’ line-up and electrosurgery on a piece of bacon! Rikke and I went to see the nuclear medicine industrial exhibition in connection with the Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine at the Bella Center in Copenhagen in mid-October (Rikke should do some etnographic work on scientific poster exhibitions and I was just curious). We thought it was very impressive, with some 250 companies represented in two halls — but you say 4.300 in 17 halls?! Where were http://www.medgadget.com/?
I fully agree! I want to read more. I think this is a genre in its own, essays on medical fairs. There certainly is a history to it. The displayed piece of raw meat made me think of an old exhibition that I read about when writing my ph.d. It was the exhibition of medical instruments in South Kensington, London, 1876. Back then, it wasn’t biomedicine that was on everybodies lips but experimental physiology, vivisectionists and cruelty to animals. I remember reading some great catalouges of the exhibition and recall that the instruments that were displayed there were thought to mirror the aesthetic preferences of different nationalities; instruments made in Utrecht were considered neat, the Parisian ones pleasant, instruments from London solid and so forth. I guess these categories of taste have been rendered obsolete in our Global era, or? As to the piece of meat: complaints were made by several leading physiologists that instruments intended for animal experiments couldn’t be shown in real action, that is together with some frog, rabbit or other experimental organism. Instead, models of frogs in papier-maché were used. Did you by any chance happen to catch any comments on the use of raw meat and pepper Søren?
I think the reference to how real animals could not be used at the fair in 1876 is just great. I did not ask questions about the ethical aspects of using animal tissue in the demonstration, or vegetables for that matter, but I am sure there is a great story to be told here.
Re. national differences in the design of instruments, I think you are right that globalisation has probably torn down a lot of boundaries on this point. But there is no doubt that companies differentiate their products through design, so rather than national you would probably be able to trace corporate distinctions. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, Philips MRI-scanners certainly have an easily recognizable appearance, and even though their use of yellow colors now seem to be exchanged for blue, you will still quickly recognize a Philips machine.