Biomedicine on Display

In August, the Danish Initiative for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP) will arrange a ‘discussion of the broader implications of living technology’ that might be interesting to anyone who thinks the boundary between inorganic and organic, living and dead, or technology and humans is exciting. Or to anyone who wants to get a glimpse of the future of science and medicine, maybe?

As the organisers write on their webpage:

Today, genetically modified organisms are designed and used in the laboratory to allow pharmaceuticals to be synthesized with precision in large quantities; autonomously working robots acting on the same principles thought to underlie insect behavior are increasingly introduced not only in industrial production but also healthcare; and adaptive network traffic controllers are currently being developed to control the flow of the ‘arteries’ of working life.

I first wondered at the scale of this technology — is this ‘just’ another word for nano-technology or are we talking robots of the more impressive kind (in terms of size)? And is it then robots like the robotic seal used for Alzheimer’s patients or something more science fiction-like, as the picture above, taken from the ISSP website, implies? The answer, according to ISSP, is that it is all of this:

Three examples of living technology are synthetic biology attempts to make living systems from scratch in the laboratory, ICT systems exhibiting collective and swarm intelligence distributed across the world wide web, and robots currently cleaning our households, providing companions for the autistic, and the like.

The preliminary programme for the discussion does not seem to emphasise healthcare, though the need for “thinking through the implications” of this technology looks to me to be particularly important in this field. The concept of living technology might appear to be a contradiction in terms (just like ‘synthetic biology‘), but maybe it will become the next big thing in healthcare.

Here’s another new example of a apparently fruitful collaboration between art and biomedicine – an opera called The Lion’s Face exploring Altzheimer’s disease and dementia. This time even with a public engagement with science twist. As Felicity Callard – who were involved in the production of the opera, and who just advertised it on the Neuroscience and Society mailing list – describes:

Fundamental to the development of the opera was the sustained involvement of patients, healthcare staff, family members, as well as basic & clinical researchers. The librettist & composer visited the biomarkers labs, talked extensively to the various stakeholders and witnessed various practices of dementia care.

The opera premiered at the Brighton Festival in May 2010, and will come to the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, London in July 2010. The opera explores the lifeworlds and current research practices surrounding Alzheimer’s disease, and opens up a variety of questions vis-a-vis how aesthetic projects engage with social scientists, scientists and other stakeholders in the development of creative work that explores biomedical research and practices.

This event seems increadibly interesting (from my point of view investigating neuroscience and concepts of aging), and I certainly wish I was going to London this summer so I could experience it.

It’s not only that it appearently is really good science communication in the sense of communicating the experience and important aspects of a dreaded disease – see Dementia opera so realistic it could be used as teaching aid for medical students – but also that it shows the potential of art as a interactive medium for both public engagement with science and science engagement with public. Which, by the way, is just what I think the ideal medical museum should be!

Events like the upcoming ‘Congress for Curious People’ — organised by Joanna Ebenstein (Morbid Anatomy) and some of her Observatory friends and colleagues — makes me think that New York, NY, is sometimes a more rewarding place to live than Copenhagen, DK (at least if you are interested in curiosities and collections). 

The Congress (which is held 9-18 April in conjunction with the Coney Island Museum) includes panels examining the collecting of curiosities, the history of ethnographic display and the interface of spectacle and education in 19th and 20th century amusements, and the politics of bodily display in the amusement parks, museums, and fairs of the Western world. It also features nightly lectures on topics as the taxidermy of a Victorian curiosity-collector, the history of automata featuring an actual automata demonstration, a meditation on ‘the saddest object in the world’, taxidermy in the fine arts etc. A ‘Collectors Cabinet’, showcasing astounding objects held in private collections, will be on view for the entire Congress. In conjunction with the events at the museum, Observatory will host ‘The Secret Museum’, an exhibition exploring “the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world”.

Much more on Joanna’s blog! And by the way, Joanna is hopefully attending the conference on ‘Contemporary biomedical science and medical technology as a challenge to museums’ organised here in Copenhagen, 16-18 September, so we will get a chance to discuss contemporary medical curiosities with her then.

The Hybrid Art Science Networking Association, which is led by Leeds-based artist Paul Digby and Sheffield-based scientist and artist Lizz Tuckerman, enables artists and scientists of all disciplines to meet, and encourages cross-disciplinary interaction. It is supported by Arts Council England, Yorkshire.

The Hybrid Art and Science Exhibition was held in various locations around Sheffield. My drawing was part of a collection of work on display at the Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery.

The piece selected for the exhibition is called ‘Bacteria Drawing’ and was made in May 2009. The drawing is a collaborative piece and is constructed from 22 drawings which form one large piece. It is about 170 cm in height, approximately150 cm approx wide and spreads about 170 cm along the floor out from the wall.

The drawing was made in Lisbon in May 2009 and is an outcome of my involvement in an invited residential project with Drawing Spaces at Fábrica Braço de Prata in conjunction with the Gulbenkian Institute of Science.

Over the last ten years my research has been created in the lab or dissection room rather than in the traditional setting of the artists’ studio. As a way to bring the lab into the gallery and to demonstrate the role of drawing, I allowed bacteria to grow on Petri dishes left in the project/gallery space at Fábrica Braço de Prata.

Using a microscope and drawing attachment, I invited members of the public to come and draw the bacteria they saw when looking down the microscope. The bacteria growing was formed from the breath of those who walked in and out of the project/gallery space. The participants were effectively drawing their own breath. Therefore they contributed both to the existence of the object they observed and to the method of revealing their continuous insights and understanding of their encounters with this phenomenon.

Using a drawing attachment on the microscope which allowed them to look down the microscope and see the bacteria whilst simultaneously seeing a projected image of their own hand holding the pencil meant they were effectively ‘tracing’ what they saw directly onto paper. They engaged with something that would normally repel them and through the activity of drawing, they saw the beauty and detail in bacteria. Rather than being concerned with the mechanics of making a drawing, they concentrated on the activity of actually looking, something we all frequently forget to do.

Joining together all the drawings made, the piece ‘Bacteria Drawing’ grew and developed collaboratively, paralleling the growth of the actual bacteria itself.

This drawing brought about further evidence of how important the activity of drawing is to understanding and dignifying observed subjects. The public saw the beauty of the unfamiliar by drawing. The project showed that drawing is not mere documentation but is about participation. This participation is embodied in the relationships that develop between artist and object and that the object observed is dignified through the respect and understanding gained in the activity of drawing.

We have tried many different ways of marketing our exhbitions to the prospective audience (posters, direct-mails, postcards, you name it) — with varying success. One of the problems with posters and postcards is the one-way communication; if people want more information, they have to make an extra effort.

In connection with the new extra-mural exhibition ‘Healthy Aging: A Lifespan Approach’ that opened two weeks ago in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences (see here). we tried out a more personal way to get in contact with our prospective audience.

The idea was to give students and staff at the University’s Southern Campus (Faculty of Humanities) and the Faculty of Health Sciences an opportunity to put a human face on Medical Museion. So some of our student docents were sent out to hand out flyers in the main buildings of the two faculties and to answer whatever questions people they met might have.

All in all, this ’in-your-face marketing’ operation was a success. It gave us a nice opportunity to have conversations about our collections and hear how students and staff responded do the exhibition. If any other museums has had similar experiences. wse would very much like to hear about it.

Here’s student docent Andreas handing out flyers in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences. In the background you can see a part of  ‘Healthy Aging – A Lifespan Approach’:

More pictures here.

We here at Medical Museion are always on the outlook for new and interesting institutional experiments to learn from. This week’s announcement of up-coming events at OBSERVATORY is inspirational:

The Culture of Curiosity is everywhere these days. Wunderkammern appear in popular art, cutting-edge fashion, film, books and museum exhibitions. This aesthetic has proved surprisingly durable and popular for over 600 years. From temple to home to museum, the Culture of Curiosity continues to exert an irresistible pull on our collective psyches, and it shows no signs of falling from favor any time soon.

I guess our (formerly) own Camilla — who has specialised in how the practice of the Wunderkammer can be transferred to present-day museum practice — couldn’t have said it better. (By the way, her book on Ole Worm’s Wunderkammer, Genstandsfortællinger, is about to be published in Danish…).

So here is OBSERVATORY’s current event programme:

• Friday, November 13th: The Culture of Curiosity – with Evan Michelson, co-owner of Obscura Antiques & Oddities(AKA “The Morbid Anatomy Gift Shop”).
• Sunday, November 15th: Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius – with Colin Dickey.
• Saturday, November 21st: Opening of OBSERVATORY’s next art exhibition, ALL SORTS OF REMEDIES: work by Herbert Pfostl.
• Friday, December 4th: Occult America – a talk by Mitch Horowitz.
• Thursday, December 10th: Exquisite Corpses – Illustrated Lecture and Artifacts from the Mütter Museum with the museum’s director, Robert D. Hicks.
• Friday, December 18th: Art as Magic and the Cold Hard Facts of Life: Herbert Pfostl in conversation with James Walsh.

Wish I lived in Brooklyn, NY. For CO2-reasons, I wouldn’t even think of flying over there. For more information, see www.observatoryroom.org