Biomedicine on Display

Can’t wait to avoid seeing Repomen when it is released in a theatre near me later in the spring. The trailer shows Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and a lot of lesser known stars running around killing each other in a near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit and some people can’t afford to make the payments on hearts, livers and kidneys they’ve purchased. Probably says more about the cultural expectations around the new transplantation future than about medical research. The dramaturgy doesn’t look particularly inspiring either.

The 23rd Nordic Medical History Congress will be held in Oslo, 25-27 May 2011. Contact Olav Hamran, Norwegian National Medical Museum (medisin@tekniskmuseum.no) for more info.

Just saw the early spring Monday seminar program at UCL’s STS department. I like the nice British analytical touch to it. Much more interesting than the usual fashionable Latouresque ANTsemiotics and other STS’ese sociolects. For example:

• Jeremy Howick, ‘When can we trust the experts? Defending the Evidence Based Medicine stance’, 25 January
• David Healy, ‘They used to call it Medicine’, 1 February
• Sam Schweber, ‘Writing the Biography of Hans Bethe’, 8 February
• Jane Gregory, ‘Producing the post-Fordist public, or: What is Science Communication for in a post-industrial society?’, 22 February
• Helena Sheehan, ‘What (if anything) has Marxism to contribute to science studies?’, 8 March
• Jeff Hughes, ‘Before the bomb: on writing the history of unclear physics’, 22 March

Wish I were in London more often, would love to discuss production of a post-Fordic public or hear Jeff unfold his ideas about ’unclear physics’ (no typo, it’s an intended joke, says Jon Agar, who sent the programme around).

This is the last part of my project description for the Ph.D.-project called “A genealogical study of the concept of ’successful aging’ and its relation to the idea of ‘human enhancement”. See the first two parts here and here.

 ’Successful aging’ in the neurosciences and the link to ‘cognitive enhancement’
In order to narrow the problem field, the project will look closely at how the notion of ‘successful aging’ has been understood and defined in the field of neuroscience in the last decades, and how ‘successful cognitive aging’ has played together with discussions — both in the scientific literature, in science policy documents and in general public discourse — about the possibility for so called ‘cognitive enhancement’ (‘neuro-enhancement’) [12][13][14][17]. Both in the scientific literature and in policy documents on ‘successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’, the neurosciences are considered as the primary field of research; neuroscience also figures prominently in the corresponding public discourse [7][21][23], cf. [25]. The brain and cognition are ascribed significant cultural value in the emerging ‘knowledge society’; healthy cognitive abilities are considered necessary for a life-long contribution to the labour market and for well-being in everyday life, and not surprisingly some of the exponents for the notion of ‘knowledge society’ are also exponents for ‘converging technologies’ [17][21].

Current developments in the field of aging research also have strong discursive links to cognitive enhancement. As the aforementioned EU parliament study argues: “The growing problem of neurodegenerative diseases in ageing societies has turned research and development in therapeutic cognitive enhancers into a very dynamic field with significant resources” [21:26]. Likewise, in enhancement discussions special attention is being ascribed to cognitive enhancement: “’neuro/ brain enhancement’ as a research field stands at the centre of the CT [converging technologies] debate. It attracts the largest share of attention due to its plans to simulate and manipulate brain processes, which – if realized successfully – could directly affect our concepts of the human self and identity” [17:382], cf. [21][23][25]. Also here there may be a significant aspect of user-driven innovation: medications developed in research into age related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease is already being used by young, healthy individuals to (presumably) enhance their cognitive abilities [14][17][21], and, conversely, one could therefore expect that the market for cognitive enhancement may stimulate research in the prevention and treatment of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

These interconnected arenas of aging research, enhancement discourse and general ideas about successful aging will be the focus point of this project. The point of departure is that the connection between the discussion about successful aging and the discussion about human enhancement has been overlooked in the scientific literature and that the two discourses are more closely related than usually presumed. Shedding light on the historical relation between the two notions both in the scientific and popular discourses will potentially have significant consequences for future research, for research politics and for the public understanding of successful aging.

References:
7. Kirk, H. (2008). Med hjernen i behold – Kognition, træning og seniorkompetencer. København: Akademisk Forlag.
12. Balling, G. (2002) (ed.). Homo Sapiens 2.0. Når teknologien kryber ind under huden. København: Gads Forlag.
13. Balling, G og Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2006). Det menneskelige eksperiment. København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag.
14. Greely et al. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature, 456, 702-705.
17. Beckert, B., Blümel, C and Friedewald, M (2007). Visions and realities in converging technologies. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4), 375-395.
21. European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (2009). Human Enhancement Study. Awailable at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/stoa2007-13_en.pdf (14.08.09)
23. http://www.humanityplus.org/read/2009/07/human-enhancement-what-should-be-permitted-geneva-october-20-21-2009/ (14.08.09)
25. Dumit, Joseph (2004). Picturing Personhood. Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press

It’s soon time for a new meeting in the ‘Artefacts’ series (for posts on earlier meetings, see here, here, here and here). This is the 15th annual meeting since the inception of the series in the mid-1990s, and this year’s theme is ‘Knowledge on the Move: Conflict, Displacement and Re-Engineering Society: 1933 to 1989′:

The mass movement of people displaced in Europe was a transformative social phenomenon of the period leading up to and following the Second World War. Many of those immigrants were scientists, engineers, designers and others with technical skills and pent up innovative energies. Their institutions and innovative technologies were left behind or unceremoniously stripped away but their knowledge of science and technology, aesthetic theories and convictions invigorated their new environments and adopted institutions. The result, from the turbulent ‘30s to the end of the Cold War, was a technological and cultural transformation of their — and our — world. This Artefacts workshop will investigate that transformation and movement of scientific and technological artefacts — from communications, to computers, art, music, and, of course, science.

Artefacts XV is held at the Canada Science and Technology Museum and Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa, September 19-21, 2010. Deadline for proposals for sessions and papers is Friday, 11 June; send to Randall Brooks at RBrooks@technomuses.ca; and, most importantly, please indicate in the proposal how selected objects will play a critical role in your presentation.

This is the second part of my project description for the Ph.D.-project called ‘A genealogical study of the concept of ’successful aging’ and its relation to the idea of ‘human enhancement’. See the first part here.

The relation between ’successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’
The project will particularly focus on an analysis of the possible connection between ideas about the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases, on the one hand, and the current merging discourse on ‘human enhancement’, on the other. Like ‘successful aging’, the notion of ‘human enhancement’ — including a large variety of different ideas about the future possibilities for technological improvements of human bodies — became widely spread in the 1980’s and 1990’s [11][12][13][14].

A preliminary survey of the literature indicates that the notions of ‘successful aging’ and ‘human enhancement’ often seem to appear together in the scientific literature and in medical and health policy documents. For example both the European Union (EU) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have published reports that deal with so called ‘converging technologies’, usually defined as a convergence of nano-, bio-, info-, and cogno-sciences and technologies (NBIC). In such reports, the notion of ‘human enhancement’ is a central concept, around which the discussion of the aging population in the developed countries revolves [15][16][21], cf. also [17][18][19][20]. As a study commissioned by the EU Parliament says, “it is safe to say that a side effect of the fast-growing research and development into pharmaceuticals for age-related neurodegenerative diseases will be a number of new drugs which can be used for the enhancement of performance of young, healthy people.” [21:7]

Similarly, in a large number of websites and blogs published by organisations and individuals that support and promote the notion of ‘human enhancement’, the possibility for using such technologies as life extension devices and for delaying age-related physical and/or cognitive decline constitutes one of the central arguments for developing enhancement technologies [11][22]. Websites that express the opinions of the so called transhumanist (posthumanist) movement is one of the most vociferous exponents of this argument. Both these pro-enhancement advocates and science policy reports (like the EU parliament study and the NSF reports) emphasize the fact that the biomedical sciences, biotechnologies and medicotechnical technologies are increasingly producing new technologies capable of simultaneously enhancing the capacities of healthy people and treating diseases, especially age-related diseases [16][21][23]. Thus the discourse about ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful aging’ are discursively intimately connected.

In addition, this integration of the ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful aging’ discourses seem to have a strong element of user involvement. The strong ideological commitment to the integration between the two notions among individuals that view themselves as members of a loose ‘transhumanist’ intellectual movement is probably the best example of user involvement. It is unclear, however, to what extent the scientific community, the ‘transhumanist’ intellectual movement and the public at large differ with respect to an active commitment to integrating the two notions. However, I will suggest that the increasing use of performance-enhancing drugs in the general population (especially among young people) and the increasing dissemination of pro-enhancement policies and visions that challenge traditional views of the use of medicine both work in favour of a similar integration between the two notions.

Furthermore one might expect that the general and widely spread popular attitude to performance-enhancing drugs in Western cultures is an underlying Zeitgeist which supports the current political, scientific (and ethical) discussions about the integration of the two notions in the ‘transhumanist’ movement and among scientists. Finally, one might also expect that such popular attitudes will effect strategic market evaluations in the pharmaceutical industry and thus spill over to strategies for future drug pipelines. In all these respects, the integration of the notions of ‘human enhancement’ and ‘successful ageing’ may well be framed with reference to broader user involvement and user driven innovation (cf. [14][15][16][21][24]). These are preliminary hypotheses only, however, which need further empirical substantiation.

References:
11. Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhumanist Thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(1).
12. Balling, G. (2002) (ed.). Homo Sapiens 2.0. Når teknologien kryber ind under huden. København: Gads Forlag.
13. Balling, G og Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2006). Det menneskelige eksperiment. København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag.
14. Greely et al. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature, 456, 702-705.
15. Roco, M and Bainbridge, W (2002) (eds.). Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. NSF/DOC-sponsored report. Awailable at http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf. (29.05.2009)
16. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4) (December 2007). Special Issue: Converging Science and Technologies: Research Trajectories and Institutional Settings.
17. Beckert, B., Blümel, C and Friedewald, M (2007). Visions and realities in converging technologies. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 20(4), 375-395.
18. Det Strategiske Forskningsråd (2006). Det aldrende samfund 2030 – Rapport fra Styregruppen for det strategiske fremsyn om det aldrende samfund 2030. Awailable at http://fi.dk/publikationer/2006/det-aldrende-samfund-2030-rapport-fra-styregruppen/det-aldrende-samfund-2030.pdf (29.05.2009)
19. Murphy, T. F.(1986). A cure for aging? The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 11(3): 237-255
20. Veatch, R.M. (1979). Life Span: the Hastings Center report on values and life-extending technologies. New York: Harper and Row.
21. European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (2009). Human Enhancement Study. Awailable at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/stoa2007-13_en.pdf (14.08.09)
22. http://www.humanityplus.org/learn/philosophy/transhumanist-values (14.08.09)
23. http://www.humanityplus.org/read/2009/07/human-enhancement-what-should-be-permitted-geneva-october-20-21-2009/ (14.08.09)
24. Maher, Brendan (2008). Poll results: Look who’s doping. Nature, 452, 674-675

How is one’s personal identity constructed these day? I’m asking, because I just read the announcement for a series of workshops and a special issue of the journal Minds and Machines on ‘The Construction of Personal Identities Online’.

Makes me think about how, over the last five or ten years, I have probably spent more and more time at the computer screen than face-to-face with my colleagues and staff here at the museum or talking with colleagues in seminars or at conferences. My sense of professional self — who I am, my identity as a professional, etc. — as well as other people’s sense of who I am has no doubt been formed, even to a considerable extent, through email and blogging and other online activities. (In contrast to my identity as a father, which I don’t believe has been much affected by my online activities.) Scary!

I’ve just begun my ph.d.-project here at Medical Museion. Titled ”A genealogical study of the concept of successful aging and its relation to the idea of human enhancement”, the project is financed by the new Center for Healthy Aging at the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Below is the first part of the project description concerning the notion of successful aging. In two following parts I will first introduce the possible relation between successful aging and human enhancement, and then my attempt to narrow the project to cognitive aspects of ageing and cognitive enhancement. Comments to one or all three parts are much appreciated.

The genealogy of the notion of ’successful aging’
At present there is much focus on the notion of successful aging (healthy aging, optimal aging) in Denmark and other developed countries. The increasing life expectancy of the population in combination with low birth rate and low rate of immigration gives rise to both political and economic concerns about the future maintenance of the living standards for an aging workforce. The increasing number of elderly people gives rise to new demands for developing new knowledge about how individuals can live a healthy life and remain healthy, even in old age.

The notion of ‘successful aging’ is not new. It can in fact be traced back to at least the 1960’s and became ubiquitous in the field of aging research in the 1980′ and 1990’s [1][2][3][4][5]. The dissemination of the notion is connected to a development trend in aging research, whereby scientists gradually changed their understanding of aging as a research object for gerontological/geriatric research. From primarily being concerned with the treatment of diseases in later part of a life course to an increased focus on disease prevention and to a broader public health oriented approach to aging involving several different scientific fields, also beyond the biomedical sciences [4][6], cf. [7].

The aim of this project is to undertake a genealogical study[8][9] of the development of the notion of successful aging from the increased focus on prevention in the middle of the 1980’s until today. The literature on the subject is sparse, consisting of a few short chapters with an overview of the historical development of age research, cf. [6][10]. A more detailed historical study of this development based on the primary literature (scientific articles, textbooks, policy documents, etc.), is supposedly going to produce a deeper and better understanding of the notion of successful aging, which in turn will help qualify the current scientific and public discussions about the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases. The study will thus hopefully also help identify some of the conditions that may influence future understandings of what ‘successful aging’ is and the ways in which the future research in the field might develop.

References:
1. Williams, Richard H., and Wirth, Claudine, G. (1965). Lives through the years: styles of life and successful aging. New York: Prentice-Hall.
2. Rowe, J. W. and Kahn, R. L. (1987). Human Aging: Usual and Successful. Science, 237: 143-149.
3. Rowe, J. W. and Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. USA: Pantheon Books.
4. Baltes, P. B. and Baltes, M. M. (1990) (eds.). Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
5. Bond, L. A., S. J. Cutler, and A. Grams (1995). Promoting Successful and Productive Aging. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
6. Amstrup, K og Poulsen, I. (2007). Geriatri – en tværfaglig udfordring. København: Munksgaard Danmark.
7. Kirk, H. (2008). Med hjernen i behold – Kognition, træning og seniorkompetencer. København: Akademisk Forlag.
8. Villadsen, K. (2006). Genealogi som metode: fornuftens tilblivelseshistorier. Kaspar Villadsen & Ole Bjerg (2005) (eds.). Sociologiske metoder: Fra teori til empiri i kvalitative og kvantitative studier. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.
9. Foucault, Michel (1992). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.
10. Bengtson, V.L. and Schaie, K.W (1999) (eds.). Handbook of Theories of Aging. New York: Springer Publishing Company, inc.

Historians of medicine and medical museum curators have invested a lot of interest in changing historical conceptions of death and the material remains that signify death and afterlife.

But few have turned their attention to death on the internet and other digital media. The announced one-day seminar on ‘Afterlife & Death in a Digital Age’ to be held at the National University of Singapore on 17 April promises to provide some interesting input to how museums could incorporate these new conceptions of death:

How is the dash between life and death, being and oblivion reflected in the age of digital media? How can we approach the subtleties of different cultural practices and beliefs through design? What is the technological response to the ephemerality of our digital and physical existence? What are the issues around ordinary technologies transforming into memorials, evoking powerful memories, nostalgia etc? What is the function of different projects offering technological response to death and afterlife? Are we simply witnessing technological sentimentality and kitsch and designing new forms of ‘earthly and ridiculous immortality’ as Milan Kundera would inspire us to think? What are different design solutions responding to? For example, are they trying to respond to the immense indifference of nature and the universe to human life and death? How can we respond to the ever-increasing mass of digital refuse or ‘dead’ data and what are the implications of and insights provided by reflecting on the inevitable end of ‘civilisation’? What are the legal and ethical implications of ‘freedom of choice’ being supported through technology, digital desecration and the hybridisation of (the remains of) the dead with the living?

Keywords include:

• possible immortality and afterlife through digital media
• cultural issues with dying, death, afterlife and technology
• new forms of grieving and commemorating via emerging technologies
• the motivation, role and function of technological responses to mortality
• digital archiving and the preservation of self and society
• the ethics of supporting death and desecration through technology
• the hybridisation of once living, sentient beings with other biological and robotic entities.

Excellent questions and topics. Hope one of the organizers would like to come over to Copenhagen one day and create an exhibition around these themes with us.

Last month we presented Morten Bülow, the new PhD candidate here at Medical Museion.

We are also lucky to have recruited a new postdoctoral fellow — Lucy Lyons, whose research examines the role of drawing as an activity which engenders new revelations and communicates insight in its audience whilst maintaining the dignity of the subject being observed.

Lucy Lyon’s PhD-thesis from Sheffield Hallam Unversity, titled ‘Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressive’ (2008), was based in the Museums at the Royal College of Surgeons of England where she drew the processes used to create, preserve and conserve specimens with a rare congenital disease. The PhD-project explored a system of drawing called ‘delineation’ that requires direct close observation of an object and portrays the specificity of unique visual experiences as opposed to generic archetypes. As well as making drawings of the skeletons of deceased patients, Lucy has interviewed patients living with the condition, and has worked closely with medical researchers studying the cause of the disease. Her work reveals the power of drawing to delineate the hidden structures of disease. The project showed that drawing is not mere documentation but is about participation. Understanding is gained in the activity of drawing.

Her research led, among other things, to an exhibition at the Hunterian Museum in the autumn of 2008 — read more about it here. She is currently on leave from the City & Guilds of London Art School. Read more about her earlier experience here, and see some of her art work here.

Lucy’s 2-year postdoc project at Medical Museion, titled ‘Now I see it! Drawing information from the collection’ focuses on the activity of drawing as a way of gaining insight and communicating information. It is aimed at visiting members of the public, the museum staff and medical and technical community as well as other artists and researchers. It is a participatory project that will encourage all to engage in different ways with the museum and the objects within it.

The project is financed by a grant from the Nordea Foundation to the Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health Scences, University of Copenhagen. The Center was established last year with a budget of 300 mill. DKK for a five-year period — and a smallish amount of the total will be used for studies of healthy ageing science communication in a museum context here at Medical Museion.

We thought our storage facilities were warm enough to work in, even in the winter. But the current Arctic spell — which is a proof of the simple fact that global warming isn’t evenly distributed around the world — has forced one of our external designers, Mikael Thorsted, to wear winter cloths when inspecting artefacts for our new exhibition:

.

What is going on? Well, ‘Primary Substances‘ — the first exhibition in our brand new extramural temporary exhibit area in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences — is closing tomorrow. It will be followed by ’Healthy Aging’, which approaches the major global challenge of ageing (sic!, see disclaimer below) in three different ways — through science, art, and cultural history:

Through science: Studies of the process of aging is a rapidly growing international research field. How can the biological and social sciences and the humanities help us experience a more healthy old age? In a series of wall panels we are presenting the new multidisciplinary Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, established in 2009 by means of a grant from the Nordea Foundation.

Through art: Science is not very good at capturing the existential dimension of aging or visualizing the accumulated layers of life experience. But that’s something that art can do. Acclaimed photographer Liv Carlé Mortensen has created a photo and interview collage series of portraits of Danish centennarians, called ’100 Light Years’ (we are displaying the series of commissioned photo collages that Liv made for our intramural ‘Oldetopia’ exhibition two years ago).

Through cultural history: Finally, aging has its own visual and material cultural symbols. Two showcases in the lounge area are going to display historical objects from our rich historical collections that represent four kinds of aids that have been associated with old age — artefacts that have helped us overcome the deterioration of bodily functions.

The show is produced by myself together with Bente Vinge Pedersen, Jonas Bejer Paludan, Ion Meyer and Nanna Gerdes from Medical Museion. Design and graphics is taken care of by Mikael and Lars Møller Nielsen, Studio 8, Copenhagen.

We are also working closely together with Tina Gottlieb, administrative head of the Center for Healthy Aging, and the team leaders of the Center’s five research programmes, who have contributed text proposals and images for the wall panels. But lots of editing and re-writing, because few academic scholars really understand how little text you can actually display on a 125×85 cm wall panel :-)

‘Healthy Ageing’ is scheduled to open on Monday, 8 February. More about it later.

(Disclaimer: for purely irrational reasons, I don’t like the American spelling of ‘aging’, but prefer Br. Eng. ‘ageing’. However, the Center for Healthy Aging, which pays for the show, has adopted the American spelling practice, so we courteously adjust to this fact to avoid a bi-lingual show.)

I’ve just received the announcement for the 11th annual meeting of Universeum (the European network for university heritage) in my inbox.

The meeting will be held in Uppsala, 17-20 June, on the theme ‘University Heritage: Present and Future’. The organisers invite submissions of papers devoted to “academic heritage in its broadest sense, tangible and intangible, namely the preservation, study, access and promotion of university collections, museums, archives, libraries, and buildings of historical and scientific significance”.

Academic heritage institutions traditional roles are collecting, preservation, research and teaching. Increasingly, they are expected to develop public programs and exhibitions as well as to assume a stronger role in marketing their university’s identity. These roles can pose considerable challenges. How can we position ourselves within the growing constraints of generating external funding, creating new audiences and keeping our institutions’ identity?

The present and future status of university museums is a very important topic for a museum like ours (we are a unit under the University of Copenhagen). But frankly, this call doesn’t sound as inspiring as it could have been. I had expected a more clearly defined theme for the meeting, focusing more on, for example, the complicated transition phase that university museums are in at the moment — squeezed as they are between, on the one hand, schemes for national research governance based on scientometrics etc. and, on the other hand, new market-oriented and populist national museum policies. Both trends are eroding traditional scholarly ideals for the production and preservation of and engagement with the academic heritage.

And frankly, the format of the meeting looks pretty uninspiring too. Proposals are invited for the usual 20 min (including 5 min discussion!) presentation format only. I would have expected a somewhat more imaginative spectrum of formats, like panels, group discussions, small workshops on selected topics, etc. I don’t expect online Twitter-sessions, but if Universeum has the ambition to set agendas for the future of European university museums, it should strive for sharper thematic programmes and a more up-to-date meeting format.

But one can of course be happily surprised. And Uppsala is absolutely gorgeous in early June. So if you haven’t been discouraged by this post, send your proposal + short bio + short mention of research interests to universeum@gustavianum.uu.se — before 15 March, 2010. 

More info here: http://www.gustavianum.uu.se/universeum2010.

If you happen to be near or in Philadelphia the weekend after next, you may consider attending the upcoming Medical Film Symposium. A awesome lot of film-makers, -theoreticians, and -historians will watch and discuss films that explore “the relationship between moving images and medical science”.

The Mütter Museum (no link provided, they have a malicious virus on their website right now!!, no kidding) will host the well-rounded Saturday program and the Friday night screening will take place in the Pennsylvania Hospital Surgical Theatre, which (Joanna says) is the oldest surgical theatre in the United States).

See the screening and academic program here. Register before Friday, 15 January. Joanna will attend the symposium in the role of “official blogger” for the event, so we can all expect to read well-written accounts about what went on — for example, whether the Saturday night party will turn into a symposium in the original meaning of the word, or not.

Musician John Boswell has just released the third part (called ‘The Unbroken Thread’) in his Symphony of Science series of music videos — the explicit goal of which is

to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the masses, in a novel way, through the medium of music.

Boswell’s thing is to remix and tune the spoken words of famous scientists like Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking etc. with high-profiled popularizers (David Attenborough, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkin, etc.) and combine them with footage and his own electronic music compositions.

I really don’t know what to say. One side of me just loves to watch and hear the four secular gospels of the creation of the world — i.e., the history of the Universe, the history of the Earth, the history of Life, and the history of Humankind — after all, we atheists too need mind-expanding narratives we can live by:-). One of the most awesome narratives (combining the last three secular gospels into one) I’ve seen is Claire L. Evans’ ‘Evolution in 60 seconds’.

On the other hand, there are limits to what my aesthetic sensibilities can cope with. And even though ‘The Unbroken Thread’ is occasionally able to raise the right feelings of secular sublimity, Boswell’s re-mixing of pretentious voices, his outdated electronic tunes and the use of worn-out molecular animations combines into a major artistic flop. How can he for a moment believe that he will be able to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy “to the masses” (what a phrase to use!) with this kind of music video production?

I’m sure The Knife together with Korb would be able to create a much more sophisticated musical and visual rendering of the four secular gospels of creation.

The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo is currently showing an exhibition called ‘Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love’, showcasing 150 works of art — some are installations designed by artists, other are historical medical artefacts that are contextually transmogrified into art objects by being situated in the art museum space, like these:

From Boing Boing.

Adds to my general impression that the identity of a medical artefact — as a historical museum artefact, as a clinical tool, as an art object, etc — is all about context. Framing means everything.