Week 4- Medical Technology and Art

        On thing that I have not has a lack of in my life time has been injuries. And with these injuries have come lots of tests including x-rays, MRIs, CT Scans, and likely others I was not even aware of. 
 

 My first memory of such tests was an x-ray I had taken of my wrist after a hockey accident. As explained in the lecture, Rontegen’s early testing paved the way for doctors to have the ability to see my hand without actually making an incision. The thing that stuck with me more however was when Professor Vesna described Rontegen’s wife’s reaction to seeing her X-Ray, which was, “I can see my death”.
When skin is removed, the
bone is all our hand is left with
While I’ve looked at pictures of x-rays probably hundreds of times, never before had I considered it a preview of what was to come in life. 
 

        While X-rays was my first memory of medical technology, it was certainly not my most striking. That title belongs squarely in the corner of the CT Scan. During a check for a tumor in my brain, I was given the the opportunity to have a radiologist show me certain diagrams of the inside of my skull. The whole time she was talking, all I could think about was how incredible it was. How so much information could be stored in something so neatly packaged, almost in an indescribable, beautiful manner. 
Depiction of all the neuroscience
of the brain
As Diana Gromala stated during her podcasts, images of ones own body “evokes really intense visceral response”.  


 To me, all of this is a reminder of Leonardo DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man”. A combination of art and science. Beauty not just on the outside of the body, but the inside as well. A creation that is near impossible to duplicate.  If there’s one thing I remember from 5th grade science class, it’s that image of the man with his arms spread, and in some ways, depicting the introduction to the combination of human
anatomy, medical technology, and art as we know it today.
Works Cited: 
Bulgerov, Vitaly. "Robo Cop (2014)." Art of Vitaly Bulgarov. MGM Sony Pictures, 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.

Kac, Eduardo. "NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ENIGMA." NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ENIGMA. N.p., 2009. Web. 01 May 2017.

"Leonardo's Vitruvian Man." The Vitruvian Man. History.com, Apr. 2012. Web. 01 May 2017.

UCLA. Bodies© INCorporated. N.p., 2016. Web. 01 May 2017.

Verstappen, Maria, and Erwin Driessens. "Driessens & Verstappen." NotNot. N.p., 2010. Web. 27 Apr. 2017.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 1, 2017 at 12:48 PM

    I too wrote about X-Rays, but took a different perspective. I did not look at it as you did, being able to see what the ultimate future holds for us. I agree that beauty is on both the inside and outside of the body. The organs we have and other parts inside of us that keep us alive are all artistic as well! Although another thing i wrote about with x-rays is how we all look the same in them, therefore it really makes you think about the perspective of beauty. Great post!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 9- Space and Art

Image
Week 9       For me, as well as most kids I'm sure, space is fascinating. The endless possibilities and discoveries never cease to amaze. So much so, the first classed I ever enrolled for at UCLA was Astronomy 3. But while space mass everything seem huge, it also reminds you just how small things really are. Like in the power of 10s video, with a simple exponent, you can go from something as small as an atom to as large as a galaxy. This is why there was a need for exploration As many things went in the mid 1900s, the space exploration was really a 2 man race between the United States and Soviet Union. Here, a time magazine cover in the 1960's depicts the US and Soviet's battle to reach space first Although the Soviets were able to successfully put the first person in space, I had never heard their name before this lecture, but the names of American astronaut Alan Sheppard is forever engraved into our psyche. This shows just how much the U.S wanted to remain the
Read more

Week 2-Mathematics and Art

Image
Week 2- Mathematics and Art            Undoubtably, mathematics has played a major impact on the influence in art (and as I discussed last week, science) in our lives. When things are created, there are very rarely done so in a care-free manner, but rather with extremely precision and focus to a task at hand.   One prime example of this could be Filippo Brunelleschi, who was an Italian architect, and a person that many considered to be the first modern engineer. In his mind, "there should be a single vanishing point to which all parallel lines in a plane, other than the plane of the canvas, converge". This belief is one that has been taken to heart by many which lead to some of the most revolutionary changes in the way we live our lives. Primary, the smart phone. The "iPhone" or what we now know as the iPhone 1, was revolutionary in its design Never had there been a device that was oriented around a single point. But that it what the engineers
Read more

Week 8- Nanotechnology and Art

Image
When I think of nanotechnology, the first thing that comes to mind is robots. Not the big ones, but the small ones. The ones that are so small, they could fit on your finger tip, as I have seen multiple times on science blogs, 60 Minutes, and other mediums of information. This is an artist representation of a possible nano-robot that could be created by the U.S. Air Force However, I do not often think about the common every day information that was presented in this weeks lectures and readings. Firstly, just thinking of a nanometer as 1 billionth of a meter, or as Professor Jim Gimzewski described it, the length of a glucose mol ecule, was simply mind-blowing. One of the quotes that Gimzewski discussed that really spoke to me was Richard Feyman's description that, " “The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of  maneuvering  things atom by atom” Even  today, after all we already know about non-tech, the idea of taking the sma
Read more