art and the body ~ visceral audio

medicine and art: imagining a future for life and love
mori art museum, tokyo

28 nov. 2009- 28. feb. 2010 

part 1: discovering the inner world of the body
how did people around the world first acquire understanding of the mechanisms of the
human body and the vast world it contains? the first section of the exhibition answers
that question by tracing various scientific developments through a vast array of artifacts.
exhibited works include anatomical drawings by leonardo da vinci and michelangelo,
anatomical diagrams and models from around the world. there are also works of contemporary art
by andy warhol, magnas wallin, and bai yilao, as well as traditional japanese works of art by maruyama ōkyo and kawanabe kyosai.

part 2: fighting against death and disease
this section looks at how people perceive death and disease and how they have tried to fight against it. in addition to presenting the history of medicine, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and scientific technology, this section poses philosophical questions about the nature of life and death. exhibited works include japanese anatomical texts as well as medical journals and historical medical instruments from around the world. there are also paintings on the theme of medicine and works of contemporary art made by damien hirst, marc quinn and yanagi miwa.

part 3: toward eternal life and love in light of the latest developments in biotechnology, cybernetics and neuroscience, and with reference to medical materials and works of art, the third part of the exhibition poses the  following questions: considering reproduction is simply the endless repetition of the life-death cycle, what really motivates humans to reproduce? is it possible to pinpoint the real objective of human life and its likely future? what is life? exhibited works include drawings by rené descartes, illustrations by francis crick of the double-helix structure of DNA, and contemporary artworks by francis bacon, jan fabre, matsui fuyuko and others. see Tibetan anatomical drawing below

and .... mapping the body through sound

By Jane Elliott Ever wondered what sounds your heart makes? Each part of the body has its own special sounds as it works deep within us. Now an artist and a doctor are hoping to make a new map of "The Sonic Body", by revealing its sounds, from veins to organs and muscles. The noises they record, using sensitive medical equipment such as scanners and the trusted stethoscope, will then be made into an interactive art installation triggered by visitors walking through a model of a body. Body Curator Rowan Dury said the project, which should be completed by next autumn, would provide a new way of perceiving the human body. "We will be using high-tech medical facilities and the aim will be to find interesting sounds. There could be very rhythmic sounds going on within all of us that we are unaware of. "We will then take these, they will be sampled and an audio sound will be created." Ms Dury said there would also be text explanations about the parts of the body being sampled, creating a greater awareness of the organs or body parts involved. Artist Marcus Woxneryd said he hoped the project would reveal a number of unusual sounds, many of which are currently only audible to medics as they carry out examinations. "We will be sampling the sounds using things available to us like stethoscopes and ultrasounds, and we will try to use them to record sounds such as blood flowing and then bring those sounds out into a public place. "People will need to walk around the installation it to trigger the sounds. As they interact, the movement will change the sounds and they will get an orchestral symphony of the sounds of the body. "It will definitely give them a different experience of the body and hopefully they will relate to the body in a newway. "We are not sure how factual it will be, but we hope to make it medically informative as well as exciting." Mr Woxneryd has previously created a similar installation 'Terminal' using sampled and archival sound from Liverpool Street Station. He said he was very excited about the opportunity of working so closely with the human body. Engaging Dr Francis Wells, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon, at Papworth Hospital, who will be working with Marcus, agreed: "It is a really fascinating idea trying to turn it into a piece of engaging art work and of using the sounds. "How we will deal with the silent brain is an interesting phenomenon. "We intend to use pretty much all of the body, even the muscle creaks, and we are looking to see what we can then do with them." He said patients would be asked if they wanted to take part and added that the sounds could be taken as part of their routine investigations. Most of the sounds will be recorded from outside the body. Dr Wells said he had always been very interested in the link between arts and medicine and recently pioneered a new way to repair damaged hearts after being inspired by artist Leonardo da Vinci's medical drawings. Verity Slater, from the Wellcome Trust, which has just given the project a £15,000 grant as part of their Sciart awards, given to support and encourage a collaboration between art and the sciences, said: "This project really brought the idea of exploring the body to life."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4318160.stm

3 Tibetan Anatomical Drawings c. 1800

in this way, the body can be seen as the meeting point, or the point of departure for journeys
into the two very different worlds of medicine and art. the scientist/artist who obviously stood
most prominently at this intersection was leonardo da vinci. he left us not only accurate anatomical
drawings, but also the mona lisa. developments in science and technology have been essential
to the advancement of medicine in the past, and these days medicine is advancing with progress
in molecular biology. we are now able to explain the mechanism of DNA and shed new light
on the question of what a living organism is. this exhibition brings together roughly
150 important medical artifacts from the wellcome collection in london, historical art works
as well as about 30 works of contemporary art. it is a unique attempt to reconsider the
fundamental question of the meaning of life and death from the parallel, yet rarely compared
perspectives of medicine and art, or science and beauty. also, three anatomical drawings by
leonardo da vinci from the royal collection will be on display for the first time in japan.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/8241/medicine-and-art-imagining-a-future-for-life-and-love.html

Interview with Jan Fabre

I drive my own brain

"The pursuit of aesthetics for those educated in the eighteenth century did not belong to art academies and paintings alone, but was a way of life. The body increasingly became a visible and tangible medium through which artists could transmit codes of aesthetics that were also interpreted as codes of ethics.

"As Eagleton points out in The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990): ‘The beautiful is just political order lived out on the body, the way it strikes the eye and stirs the heart’. Cultural ideologies harnessing scientific exactness to artistic beauty were the canons on which paintings and sculptures were produced. Like the reading of text, the reading of art also had its own language and could be deciphered and translated accordingly.

"While life classes involving a nude female were restricted to married men, there was no shortage of ‘anatomized’ females adorning the medical folios of this period. Many of the truncated and finely engraved images show female anatomy in all shapes and sizes. The lack of open access to the life class at the Royal Academy of Arts for single men and women artists necessitated their learning anatomy from such folios; consequently, there was a growing medical interest in biological sex and sexual differences, and a growing market for publications of this kind. Anatomical folios used in the teaching of art had a scientific influence on artists in their studies. In addition to the rules of proportion as laid down by the Renaissance architect Vitruvius, classical ideals of beauty, and the slavish adherence to anatomical accuracy, artists were beginning to address new

scientific theories concerning female anatomy and biology."

http://www.answers.com/topic/art-and-the-body

I wonder if this lead to the meddling of medicine in the female body and the fascination with 'Other' being subsumed by control of the Other through medicine