silently, and back to me

Today I had a conversation with Jeremy about some of my older blog posts. He was most interested in the one I wrote about a conference I attended to discuss some art research. Wetalked a little about presenting art at a research conference. I of course presented all my work as a body of research, but I hadn't actually considered it that when doing the concerned pieces (doing as apposed to making because they were performance-based).

Jeremy was interested in what actual research I've done on my area of focus, the body. The conference serves as an opportunity to do real research, to immerse myself in real biology instead of imagined bodyscapes. Just because I like to make up my own organs doesn't mean I should know about the real ones, right? Right. That's why I'd now like to talk about some actual research I have done to prepare myself for

the work I make.

For starters, I have a copy of

a detailed walkthrough of the Bodies exhibit, which featured a plethora of human bodies that have been stripped, dismembered, and wonderfully preserved. The show clearly

shows each of the organs of the body, not to mention veins, layers of skin, sliced muscles, and fragmented bones. I use this this as my main reference point for the pictures that I draw. I am interested in how bodily structures appear in isolation, frozen in time, and decontextualized, like the nerves on the skull above. Indeed, this is the impression I'd like to give with my work.

I also am interested in textbook illustrations of body parts, especially old ones. I think back to the Brain and Cognitive Science classes I've taken throughout college and all of the ridiculous pictures that have accompanied the classes' lectures. I remember thinking one picture looked like an ice cream sandwich with fields of giant asparagus growing out of it. (I still have no idea what this was supposed to be.) Even if they are "real," these images are silly, oddly colored, and, unless you know better, just plain bizarre.

I find this interesting.

These drawings are respectable because they represent real life. So what happens if they start making things up? Are they any more or less valuable to viewers? I suppose that's something I'm looking at in my work. I find it helpful to browse through old textbooks for inspiration. In this way, I have learned to mimic the basic forms that reoccur in the real body landscape while simultaneously learning how to separate my drawings from that of real biology.

Science 0, Art 1.

photo credit:

left: photo courtesy http://sassywire.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/bodies600.jpg

bottom: photo courtesy http://www.cool-layouts.net/comments/cat/Urban/BooYah.gif