week 4

Unlike all the other subjects we have covered, when I saw that we were covering medicine and art, I understood the artwork within it immediately. The body is the most complex and amazing piece of art in the world. The intricate connections and symmetry of the human body is simply awe inspiring. Two ears, two eyes, two arms, two legs, everything just makes sense in the anatomy of the body. With technological advances we have made, we are now able to see and experience the human body fully and the art that it is. In the Cassini article on the MRI, he states, "Through MRI’s sound, subjects become aware of the wholeness of their bodies, as sound assails the still body being scanned and provokes acute sensations in every organ". The wholeness of the human body is an intricate work of art. Even the best architect would struggle making the human body with all of its organs and systems functioning together in unison.

The organization of all the systems in the human body and the processes of these systems is incredible and above is an image that only begins to show the first layer of it all. Professor Vesna mentioned a body exhibit in lecture 1 for this unit. I actually attended a body exhibit in high school called "Bodies Revealed". I can say that this was 100 percent the most interesting experience of my life. Looking at real bodies and all the layers within them made me really start to think and this is how I began to see the human body as art. 

The human body can also lead to art. Professor mentioned that when human body dissections became popular, artists attended many viewing in order to accurately depict the human body. They were then able to draw for the rest of the community the images they saw. They used the knowledge to draw the anatomical images of the human body and create images of the raw human body accurately.

References:

http://www.bodiesrevealed.com/about-the-exhibition.html

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts by Silvia Cassini

http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/december-2008/deconstruction-mri

Professor Vesna Lecture 1

image 1:
http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/Science-Stories/Our-Senses/Sci-Media/Images/The-body-s-systems
image 2: 
http://www.putnam.org/Exhibit-Halls/Changing-Exhibits/Bodies-Revealed
image 3:
http://www.cliftoncollegeuk.com/collegenews/1333/