This week we covered the intersection of medicine, technology and art. The progression and evolution of the medical industry and specifically advances in technology made large impacts and changes in the field of art. Although not as obvious, art and science have a fairly similar foundational mission - to explore life's mysteries or things we don’t necessarily understand.
In her lecture this week, Professor Vesna discussed specifically the relationship between the human body and art. She started with a personal anecdote that when she was in art school she spent a good deal of time doing anatomical drawings which at the time she felt she was wasting her time but later in her studies she realized the immense benefit it was to have that deep knowledge of the human body. I am a design student now but came from a fine arts background - I agree completely that in the moment the hundreds of drawings of the human body seemed tedious and unnecessary but now my knowledge of proportion is strong because of that.
Professor Vesna started by looking back at the early art and the importance of human dissection and anatomical drawings for artists at the time. She touched specifically on the ancient Egyptians and Greeks process of body mummification. Moving to 1543, she used Andreas Visaleus’ “On the Human Anatomy” as an example of one of the first times an accurate physical body was used to represent treatment of disease. This was revolutionary for its’ time and the field as it centered medicine in concrete science instead of imagination.
With the evolution of technology came the dissemination of knowledge. Artists played a crucial role in the documentation of the scientific discoveries. This is a perfect example of the two fields working off one another to make a huge advancement for society that otherwise wouldn't be possible without the collaboration.
The Visible Human Projects used cross-sections of human body parts to visualize the human body. It was an example of how art helped the field of science take their advancements in science and put them into a system that was readable for the common society. This helped immensely with the spread of knowledge.
I particularly enjoyed Diane Gromala’s TED talk. She was an extremely engaging speaker and I found what she is studying to be very interesting. I didn't know much about chronic pain before this TED talk.
Being a Design Media Arts we are starting to dive into the Virtual Reality space and projects. I really enjoyed that she was bringing science and art into the VR world. I think Virtual Reality is meeting a gap in art where artists and designers want to use technology and art to create physical experiences that you wouldn't be able to experience otherwise. Additionally you can give someone a perspective that isn't their own in a way that they can fully experience it with all senses. Gromala touches on this in her talk when talking about the many more senses we have within our brains beyond the 5 external. I found it fascinating that she talked about VR being a clinically proven pain reliever. I had no idea it had that power. 
I also liked the Peter Tyson’s The Hippocratic Oath article. I knew about the oath from TV shows and movie mainly but I never knew how directly it refers to art - “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science.”
CITATIONS
Gromala, Diane. "Transforming Pain: Virtual Reality." Transforming Pain. N.p., n.d. Web. 2017. <http://www.confrontingpain.com/projects/vr/>.
Ingber, Donald E. "The Architecture of Life." Scientific American (1998): 48-57. Print.
Tyson, Peter. "The Hippocratic Oath Today." PBS. PBS, 27 Mar. 2001. Web. 26 Apr. 2017. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html>.
Vesna, Victoria. "Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov." UCLA. Online.
Vesna, Victoria. "Human Body & Medical Technologies, Part 2." N.p., n.d. Web. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ>.
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